Clearvale and the ROI of Enterprise Social Networking

Clearvale is an Enterprise Social Network that provides streamlined and secure collaboration between your employees, business partners, and your customers; enabling you to socialize across and beyond the enterprise.

There you have my Clearvale elevator pitch.  It’s succinct, punchy, and (hopefully) invites you to ask more questions about Clearvale.  If you’re reading this blog, I assume that you have questions—or at least a significant interest—in what Clearvale can do for you.

As this is my first post on this site, I thought I’d start with something everyone can easily understand: Return on Investment (ROI).

First, let’s start with the investment portion.  Clearvale’s pricing is perhaps the best value around when you compare it to that of other vendors.  Clearvale is a hosted turnkey solution, with zero reliance on your IT or developer resources to get up and running.  Clearvale’s pricing is based on monthly usage, which means no hefty up-front licensing fees.  Your investment is low because BroadVision isn’t a startup company with antsy venture capitalists to appease; we can offer you more for less because we have been in the business for 17 years, have a stable customer base, and have a seasoned team with extensive experience building enterprise-grade applications.

But what about the returns?  What are they?  Why should you invest in an Enterprise Social Networking solution at all?  A few reasons:

  • Your Workforce Is Changing
  • Your Employees Are Valuable
  • Your Knowledge Is Valuable
  • Clearvale Can Help

Let’s face it; the average workforce age is getting older as the baby boom generation nears the retirement years.  When they retire, expertise and knowledge will be lost.  Clearvale can help mitigate that loss, resulting in enormous savings for your company.

Consider the cost of losing an employee, either to retirement or to the job market.  In 2006, Ross Blake published an article in which he associated cost estimates with employee attrition.  The replacement cost of a mid-level employee represents 150% of their annual salary.  Replacing a senior staff member costs as much as 400% of their annual salary.  That’s a huge cost.

When you look at reasons why people voluntarily leave companies, low morale, lack of communication, and a lack of personal investment often factor prominently in HR exit interviews.  According to John Dooney, manager of strategic research at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the HR cost alone of losing an average employee is about 40% of the departing employee’s salary.  With Clearvale, you can provide a robust communication and collaboration network within your company to keep employees informed, engaged, and invested in your company.

Retirement is another reason why people voluntarily leave companies.  Some companies opt for costly methods for coping with this loss of expertise and wisdom, such as bringing retirees back in for consulting stints or extending their employment periods as the replacement hires learn the ropes.

Clearvale offers a cost-effective alternative.  You can leave the virtual door open to retired employees who can continue contributing to the discussion, answer questions, mentor new employees, etc.  By implementing an ESN solution before the impending retirement bubble hits, you can begin collecting the knowledge and experience of your senior employees in a single, indexed, searchable place; Clearvale.

Clearly, if you are able to retain more institutional knowledge which new employees can use to get up to speed faster, thereby reducing the learning curve and minimizing productivity lag, you can save a tremendous amount of money.

What about these new employees?  They are millennials, the Web 2.0 generation raised on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.  They are highly adept at using social networking applications for coordinating all their activities.  Providing a familiar, frictionless, yet entirely secure, communications environment for your new employees will enable them to work more effectively and contribute more quickly to the discussions and projects that fuel your company’s innovation and success.