Quantified KM value story number 119 – finding knowledge at Accenture

One of the ways in which KM adds value is through helping poeple do work faster and better.  Here is a story of howAccenture estimated that value.

Accenture make documented knowledge available to their staff through a portal known as KX. IN order to estimate the value delivered through KM they decided to focus on one component of Knowledge Management –the use of KX – and to focus on one single benefit – the savings in time delivered through the use of knowledge gained through the KX portal.

They estimated these savings through a survey, which asked the following question

“Please estimate the amount of your time that you saved during the last two weeks as a result of this knowledge.

“During the last 2 weeks, this information saved me AT LEAST:”
“During the last 2 weeks, this information saved me AT MOST:”

The results from this survey were used to calculate average time savings, and thus average cost savings.  They found that for annual KX costs to the sample population of $170,000 they were delivering savings of $2,400,000.

This equates to a 2500 percent Return on Investment