Collaboration Tools Improve Productivity Drastically

With Enterprise 2.0 just over, I am still talking about social and collaboration with others. I came across an interesting data about the collaboration space and thought I will highlight it here. We all know how the modern collaboration tools increase the productivity in an organization by manyfold. There are many studies that put a number on the ROI, mostly, specific to certain tools from specific vendors. Now, Forrester has put out a Google sponsored report that talks about the increase in productivity and cost savings with Google Apps.

First, let us be clear that this is a Google sponsored study and we need to take the numbers with a grain of salt. Even then, the visible productivity increase is undeniable. Some of the key findings of this report are (The ROI calculation was based on a representative organization with 18,000 users from different parts of the world and the three year results of switching to Google Apps from the traditional infrastructure):

End users are familiar with the cloud based personal email ensuring a smooth transition for the organization (see my post titled Bottoms Up Adoption, CIOs Watch Out. The end users are driving adoption in many organizations and consumerization of enterprises is a trend in full force)
The end user productivity gains were much larger than the IT cost savings
Usually, many organizations switch to Google Apps by replacing or augmenting an existing email solution. However, Forrester’s research found that a growing number of organizations started using Google’s collaboration tools like Google Sites and Google Docs first before migrating to Google’s messaging platform
The risk adjusted ROI is a whopping 307% and the risk adjusted net present value (NPV) is $10,039,612 for the 18K member organization. More interestingly, the organization could break-even in mere 7 months

As I told before, a vendor commissioned report is, actually, just a vendor commissioned report (due to lack of a better phrase). However, the trend shown in the report is undeniable and we can see it in our everyday briefings from end-users and direct interactions with them at different forums. The modern day collaborative tools are changing the game completely increasing the productivity within an organization manyfold. The SaaS nature of these apps offer ROI at whopping numbers. This is something every organization should take into account and plan for the adoption of such tools in the near future.