Proving a Return on Investment for Web Content Mangement for Government Agencies

Government agencies are continuing to be asked to become more accountable in their performance. As a result, many federal agencies are faced with a need for sound methods by which to measure results and demonstrate fiscal responsibility. One method shown to be effective at assessing the value of agency IT programs is return-on-Investment (ROI.)

The application of ROI is a particularly useful IT tool in the federal government, since many of its agencies are mission oriented, but their organizational goals are not necessarily captured as cost savings or profit. Many agencies’ strategic plans, for instance, include specific goals to increase customer service, develop the professional skills of its workforce, reduce costs, as well as improve efficiency. However, proving a Return on Investment (ROI) for Web Content Management (WCM) in the federal sector can be difficult. 

Business and organizational drivers have continued to change since communications, marketing support and services have begun to be channeled through the web. Agencies have many websites dedicated as the channel of choice to its constituents and since government agencies are not for profit, the term ROI takes on less meaning. From this point forward we will help you prove a Value on Investment (VOI) for your WCM implementation initiative.

Of course you can always calculate “we have two people who take Word documents from content experts and copy and paste their content into HTML web pages. These people together with salary and benefits make around $200,000 annually therefore; we can save this much per year”. This type of rationale is just not logical! Prove the efficiency, prove the intangibles but most important, prove the value to solving organizational objectives.

BASE-10 begins generating a measurable ROI from day one. Because BASE-10 integrates a robust yet easy-to-use framework for content and document management the value is noticeable across the organization through lower operating costs, agency-wide efficiencies, staff empowerment, and cost-avoidance benefits.

Measurable VOI benefits include: 

  • Elimination of human errors that can breach the lines of law, ethics, compliance and governmental responsibility.
  • Reduce costs: Stop paying costly third party contractors to make simple site changes. Empower content experts to manage and control their content. 
  • Reduce the burden and dependence on internal IT.
  • WCM allows a proper taxonomy, architecture and meta data models to bring successful content delivery and higher satisfaction to end-users.
  • WCM allows you to set site-wide standards for website deployment and content updates.
  • Determine the true VOI by its contribution to the organization. How can WCM help you reach your agency goals? Clearly defined goals such as better communication, customer service, outreach and public relations can be clearly measured by deploying and maintaining mission critical websites. 
  • Forget the cost to implement WCM – what are the costs of low entry manual labor to not implement WCM.
  • Time to market: WCM automated workflows significantly reduce the amount of time to make changes on your website or intranet. The average website edit in WCM software to publish can be in real-time to a few days. Manual site edits can take weeks.  
  • Reuse Web content: Centralized content and document repositories all staff to create content once and reuse many times across your websites.
  • Improve effectiveness: Integrated enterprise search helps return results your users are looking for.
  • Enhance your identity: Because websites are most organizations public face, it is critically important to protect your style, brand and identity. WCM helps to maintain and strengthen your identity by enabling sites to present timely, accurate content in a consistent manner and interface.
  • Rapidly deploy Web applications: WCM enables business users to deliver Web applications, such as online forms for internal and external use. HR and marketing pros can now manage their own forms (such as expense reports and reader surveys), collect data, and take action -- without involving IT.

To summarize, the ground work to proving a ROI begins with establishing its true value. As more agencies become accountable for their internal initiatives, they must show how an enterprise WCM implementation can solve an organizational goal, make the agency more efficient and prove they are establishing standards to assisting the end-users.  That’s why the agency is here, right?

For more information or to set-up a product demo:
Sean Fagan, 301-838-8919
sfagan@tenthfloor.com