Showing Return on Investment from KM

Published On:
January 31, 2022
Authored By:
APQC
Members-Only Content:

Metrics should always be part of a bigger picture that involves understanding business needs and meeting stakeholder expectations, regardless of whether those can be easily quantified. But a purely anecdotal approach is simply not realistic for most organizations. Data-driven executives and business sponsors want tangible evidence not just that people appreciate KM, but that it is driving tangible business outcomes. Without such evidence, it’s hard to get resources for sustained investment.

In this article, we review four approaches that leading organizations take to demonstrate the business impact of KM:

  • value path measurement,
  • direct comparisons,
  • success story quantification, and
  • asking users to estimate business impact.