Yammer Analytics: Why It s Time

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Godfrey Morton
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1 Yammer Analytics: Why It s Time Organizations have invested heavily in Yammer as their enterprise social network. It s time to find out how well it pays off.

2 Seventy percent of businesses use enterprise social networks. Ninety percent of them claim to see benefits from them. 1 But how can they be sure? This white paper will help you understand how to use analytics to reinforce best practices and get the highest return from your Yammer investment. Executive summary Enterprise social networks promise to open up access to valuable information and expertise to employees, customers, and partners. They have the potential to drive collaboration and ease communication across formerly disparate organizational boundaries, to unlock a wealth of knowledge and to create business value. Businesses have started to view enterprise social networks as a strategic investment, according to Forrester s Forrsights Software Survey. 3 For Yammer, specifically, this investment has the potential for a startling return on investment 365 percent, to be exact. 4 To get the most out of the strategic investment, however, requires actionable analytics. Actionable being the key. Without actionable analytics, you have annecdotal evidence of how well Yammer performs, but that s difficult to benchmark and doesn t give you the data you need to drive effective campaigns internally, harness influencers or reinforce best practices. Although Yammer comes with some analytics capabilities, you are constrained by only being able to analyze conversations within either a 7-day or 28-day window. To really measure the effectiveness and impact Yammer has on your organization, you need much, much more than that. In this white paper, we ll discuss how a robust third-party analytics solution can help you achieve the tremendous ROI that Yammer has the potential to deliver. We ll show how the right Yammer analytics can help you: Increase employee adoption and engagement Identify top-performing Yammer groups and replicate their success Discover unanswered questions in Yammer and increase user trust Measure employee morale and sentiment Find top Yammer influencers and champions Knowledge workers on average spend 28 hours weekly to write s, search for information, & collaborate internally. 2 1 The Social Economy: Unlocking Value And Productivity Through Social Technologies, McKinsey Global Institute, July Ibid. 3 Forrester Forrsights Software Survey, Q4 2011, December The Total Economic Impact of Yammer, Michelle S. Bishop, Forrester Research, April 2011.

3 Enterprise Social Networks: Tremendous Potential to Be Unleashed IDC expects global sales of enterprise social networks to grow more than 42 percent annually between 2011 and IDC expects the global market for enterprise social networks to grow from $767.4 million in 2011 to $4.5 billion in revenue by 2016 a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42.4 percent. 5 The reason for this aggressive prediction is clear. Enterprise communication has changed. Employees who rely on phone calls, standing meetings, and even can no longer sustain the pace of business. Employees want and need to share ideas and collaborate in real time, and thanks to the diminishing line between consumer and enterprise technologies, now they can. With enterprise social networks like Yammer, businesses can bridge the communication gap and accelerate collaboration and productivity. When deployed effectively, the upside of an enterprise social network is huge, according to McKinsey. 6 $1.3 trillion 2X The potential improvement in business value from better enterprise communication and collaboration with an enterprise social network % The annual global business value that could be unleashed by enterprise social networks. The potential improvement in knowledge worker productivity from deployment of an enterprise social network. But these improvements won t necessarily come easily. Today, McKinsey estimates that only 3 percent of companies get substantial benefit from social technologies across all stakeholders: customers, employees, and business partners. 7 Without analytics to show where the deployment has succeeded and where it has lagged, such a cultural shift is impossible. 5 The Transformative Power of Enterprise Social Networking, Michael Fauscette, IDC Analyst Connection, January The Social Economy: Unlocking Value And Productivity Through Social Technologies, McKinsey Global Institute, July Ibid. 3

4 Yammer Analytics Are an Imperative CIOs, human resources (HR), and corporate communications teams routinely roll out Yammer enterprise-wide because they recognize the clear value of an enterprise social network. How much value? A potential ROI of 365 percent, according to Forrester Research. 8 But analytics are a huge part of whether you can unlock that ROI. The analytics that Yammer itself contains don t offer the necessary depth or scope of insights to help you identify those actionable details. You need a third-party analytics solution that offers a full suite of metrics to realize the full potential of your Yammer network. In this white paper, we call out five measures to successful Yammer deployment using analytics: Measure employee adoption and engagement Identify top performing Yammer groups and replicate their success Discover unanswered questions in Yammer and increase user trust Measure employee morale and sentiment Find top Yammer influencers and champions Yammer s ROI Potential Comes From: Improved collaboration and communication De-duplication of work Reorganized processes Improved employee productivity Better information-sharing and access to expertise Higher employee engagement Faster onboarding of new employees Improved vertical communication between company leaders and employees A public venue for and record of conversations 8 The Total Economic Impact of Yammer, Michelle S. Bishop, April 2011, Forrester Research. 4

Measure Employee Adoption and Engagement The first measure of Yammer s success is whether employees actually use it. All else follows from that.

5 Measure Employee Adoption and Engagement The first measure of Yammer s success is whether employees actually use it. All else follows from that. But how do you measure employee adoption and engagement? Even with a whopping 365 percent ROI at stake, many organizations are left only with anecdotal evidence of Yammer performance. A good analytics package will compile all these KPIs and also allow you to use any period of time to aggregate them (see Figure 1). Number of active employees. These are the employees who have either started a thread or written a reply, and is the most basic KPI for user adoption and engagement. Number of employees who actively start new threads. A subset of the previous KPI, this is important because it shows how many employees are engaged enough to take the initiative and begin a Yammer conversation. Number of employees who actively respond to threads. This is the other half of the equation. These employees have actively responded to other employees posts, and therefore should be considered when you attempt to determine Yammer success. Number of employees who are recently inactive. This will tell you which users were engaged in the prior period, but have not contributed recently. It is important to understand why these individuals have lost trust in Yammer. Number of employees that have never been active. This key KPI tells you how many users have never used Yammer at all. These metrics are essential for Yammer administrators to respond to trends with training, campaigns, and enforcement of best practices is only as good as the actionable insight they have into the Yammer network s performance today. Figure 1: Yammer analytics used to measure user adoption and engagement 5

Identify Top Performing Yammer Groups and Replicate Their Success To understand adoption and engagement is important, but it s only a piece of the puzzle.

Yammer Groups thrive when they have a clear business goal, the right membership, and when members receive proper training.

6 Identify Top Performing Yammer Groups and Replicate Their Success To understand adoption and engagement is important, but it s only a piece of the puzzle. Groups are a critical part of the Yammer experience. These collaborative workspaces break down hierarchical barriers to help users get work done. Yammer Groups thrive when they have a clear business goal, the right membership, and when members receive proper training. By creation of a group enablement and adoption strategy, corporate communication, HR, and information technology (IT) departments can help drive engagement across all of Yammer as users who have a good experience with groups will ultimately be more active on the network (see Figure 2). Figure 2: Identify top-performing Yammer groups 6

7 In every organization there will be groups that use Yammer better than others. The challenge for most administrators is to identify highly engaged groups and replicate their success companywide. With a good third-party analytics package, division heads and community managers can drill into Yammer usage to determine best practices and drive Yammer trust and engagement. With the right package, they can: Pinpoint top performing users and groups to extract best practices Identify outliers and analyze usage patterns Monitor the most popular messages and topics Discover unanswered questions and analyze response times A perfect way to identify successful outliers is to benchmark groups. For example, with a robust third-party analytics solution, you can map the total number of posts for each group against number of replies, and you get a bubble graph that shows you which groups are most vibrant. You should then study those groups to create best practices for your entire Yammer network (see Figure 3). Figure 3: Identify best-performing groups 7

8 These metrics help identify the likelihood of a group s success: Number of posts. What is the total number of posts in this group? Number of replies. Since your community s trust in Yammer will depend on this how many replies to those posts have been posted? The reply rate (percentage of threads with a reply). This metric is extremely helpful to understand if your group is engaged. A group with a low reply rate generally is a good indicator that Yammer communication may be an issue. Minutes to first reply. How quickly people reply is also a critical metric that takes reply rate the next level. If this metric is seconds or minutes, users trust in Yammer s usefulness will grow. Alternatively, you can identify that Yammer is failing to build trust if this KPI is hours or days. There are key indicators as to whether a group is likely to be successful. For example, groups that start with a clear mission, appoint a champion to drive adoption and invite relevant users generally see more organic growth. Moreover, group administrators that move conversation to Yammer, post controversial topics, and nudge users to participate in a conversation will see higher engagement levels. See the checklist on the following page, to help you launch high-performing groups. 8

9 Checklist to start high-performing groups ** Set goals for a project-based group or define the mission of an ongoing group ( Discuss goals and achievements for social media marketing ). ** Identify core and auxiliary group members ( John from marketing and his team would be the most engaged ). ** Develop a campaign to launch the group to identified members ( distribute cupcakes, introduce everyone in the group, and post flyers in the cafeteria ). ** Distribute training materials for new users via Yammer ( What to post on Yammer and which applications to install ). ** Set expectations on what should be regularly posted in the group (meeting minutes, big wins, and relevant news articles). ** Set metrics for the group s success ( reduction of by 20 percent, at least two replies per thread ). ** Launch the campaign and start the group! (coordinate logistics to set a date to launch the group). ** Share success stories. 9

10 Questions to ask successful Yammer groups Once you ve used metrics to identify which of your Yammer groups are the most successful, use the questions below to find out why, and incorporate their answers into your Yammer best practices. 1. Did you have a clear goal when you started the group? What was it? 2. How many people started in the group? 3. How did that change over time? 4. How did you launch your group? 5. How did you train your users? 6. How did you keep users engaged over time? 7. How do you encourage conversation? 10

11 Discover Unanswered Questions in Yammer and Increase User Trust Companies that had a high degree of trust were 60% more likely to retain their key employees than those who reported a disengaged workforce. What s the one key factor that determines whether your company s use of Yammer is successful? Trust. A survey conducted by the Human Capital Institute found that the most successful companies share a common characteristic: high levels of employee trust and engagement. In fact, companies that had a high degree of trust saw that 69 percent of workers felt safe to communicate their ideas and opinions, and 61 percent of workers felt that their organization effectively rewarded them for their work. 9 From an HR perspective, these companies were 60 percent more likely to retain their key employees than those who reported a disengaged workforce. 10 Just as trust is a key factor to determine organizational health and alignment, it also predicts whether Yammer users will actually use Yammer. When users ask questions in Yammer and don t receive timely responses, they quickly lose trust that Yammer is a forum suited for effective business collaboration. 9 Is Employee Trust the MVP of Human Capital?, by Megan Van Vlack, Human Capital Institute, August 1, Ibid. 11

Figure 4: Actionable Yammer analytics With actionable Yammer analytics, Yammer admins can track: Total number of unanswered questions on Yammer. A one-sided conversation isn t much use to anybody.

12 The biggest challenge to improve reply rates is a basic one: how do you discover questions that haven t yet been answered? To scroll manually through hundreds of groups or thousands of posts is extremely cumbersome, and in many cases simply not feasible. This is where actionable Yammer analytics can help (see Figure 4). Figure 4: Actionable Yammer analytics With actionable Yammer analytics, Yammer admins can track: Total number of unanswered questions on Yammer. A one-sided conversation isn t much use to anybody. Keep tabs on this to get an idea of how much trust users have in Yammer. Number of users who have asked a question without a response. Those that have not gotten a response are likely to lose trust in Yammer, which affects the chance that they will come back. Average reply time by group. The quicker the responses, the faster users will develop trust in Yammer. Administrators can drill into lists of unanswered questions, and bring in subject matter experts from across the organization to drive conversation. Additionally, administrators can identify users who may experience diminished trust in Yammer and can help alleviate some of their concerns through coaching on better ways to phrase questions, or better groups to participate in. 12

13 Lastly, as administrators begin to be proactive on Yammer, they can monitor the average reply rate over time to gauge their success for adoption and engagement. Find Top Yammer Influencers and Champions What about recognition of the individuals behind your community s success? It s time to answer these two essential questions: Who are your top contributors on Yammer? These are the users who post the most often, and answer the most questions. Who are the most influential users on Yammer? Not to be confused with frequent contributors, influential users are the ones who, when they contribute, inspire people to listen, respond, and take action. HR can look at the most influencial users on Yammer to spot trends before they become epidemics. It is not an easy task to identify these two populations of users and the functionality to do so doesn t exist in Yammer s internal analytics. Even if you vigilantly monitor your network and export the data to process in Excel, it may not even be possible to identify top contributors and influential users if you don t know precisely what to look for. When users number in the tens of thousands, the obstacles you face are even more daunting. Given these challenges, is it really worth the effort? Most definitely, yes. Power users are an integral part of Yammer adoption growth and engagement. Yammer administrators who can accurately identify these individuals can work closely with them to roll out campaigns, recruit others into the community, and organically drive excitement in the organization. The ability to identify top contributors and top influencers on Yammer users is also valuable for corporate communications and HR departments. For example, when corporate communications needs to launch an internal campaign, they can rely on top contributors to quickly disseminate information across the organization. Conversely, HR can look at the most influential users on Yammer to spot trends before they become epidemics. 7 Ibid. 8 The Total Economic Impact of Yammer, Michelle S. Bishop, April 2011, Forrester Research. 13

Consider if one of the most influential Yammer users is highly critical or negative about the organization: HR can work directly with the individual to solve the problem.

14 Consider if one of the most influential Yammer users is highly critical or negative about the organization: HR can work directly with the individual to solve the problem. Yammer itself has great advice for how to cope with negative users. Yammer administrators who want to identify top contributors and influencers manually would have to group several characteristics (posts, replies, praises, etc.) and create an algorithm that weights them across all users. Then they d have to assign those weights, and look across the overall organization and can score each individual. To do this frequently, without tedious amounts of processing, you need an analytics software solution (see Figure 5). Figure 5: Top contributors and influencers A robust Yammer analytics solution will provide out-of-the-box functionality that enables community managers to track and measure individual Yammer contributions. With such a solution, you should be able to rank your organizations top contributors and influencers; drive corporate campaigns by boosting engagement with key individuals; and customize contributors and influencer scores based on relevance / importance. 14

15 Use Yammer to Measure Employee Morale and Sentiment 70 percent of U.S. workers are disengaged, which costs the United States as much as $550 billion annually. Employee morale is extremely important for productivity, retention, and recruitment. Most disengaged employees tend to be the ones with the lowest morale, and it costs businesses billions of dollars. A report from Gallup stated that 70 percent of employees are disengaged a fact that drains US businesses of $450 billion to $550 billion per year. But here s the kicker: companies with engaged employees (who tend to be happier) could be 21 percent more productive, reduce turnover by 65 percent, and earn up to 22 percent more than their competitors. 11 To accurately measure sentiment is an extremely complex challenge. For administrators, it s impossible to manually extract every message and score sentiment and emotion. It could take weeks or even months to aggregate the scores and gain insights into your organization. Luckily, there are text and sentiment software solutions that make this task much more manageable. With such solutions, the thousands of messages generated on Yammer every day can be easily analyzed. Yammer can then serve as a proxy for you to gauge employee morale and sentiment (see Figure 6). 15

Figure 6: Analyze sentiment in your Yammer network. If you do find an issue with your employee morale, some programs that may help include: Increase communication.

Recognize those employees who are making the biggest contributions to the business. Bestow unexpected rewards.

16 Figure 6: Analyze sentiment in your Yammer network. If you do find an issue with your employee morale, some programs that may help include: Increase communication. Encourage use of Yammer through campaigns, best practices, and training can help here. Establish recognition programs. Recognize those employees who are making the biggest contributions to the business. Bestow unexpected rewards. Give spontaneous rewards for engagement and morale, as the surprise aspect keeps employees on their toes. Award monetary rewards for exceptional performance. Always a good idea. Schedule team-building events. These can range from group cooking classes to off-campus retreats. Organized daily scrum-style meetings. Get the team excited about what they can do with Yammer. 16

17 Conclusion: GoodData Yammer Analytics Does It All If you d like to unlock the full potential of your investment in Yammer and achieve the 365 percent ROI potential deploy GoodData Yammer Analytics. GoodData Yammer Analytics is an out-of-the-box solution to help administrators better understand a company s Yammer usage and maximize collaboration. For overall employee engagement, you can use GoodData Yammer Analytics to: Determine if your Yammer implementation is used effectively Measure overall Yammer activity Track Yammer adoption through growth patterns Benchmark message activity and engagement trends Using GoodData Yammer Analytics, division heads and community managers can drill into Yammer usage to determine best practices and drive Yammer trust and engagement. GoodData helps them: Pinpoint top-performing users and groups to extract best practices Identify outliers and analyze usage patterns Monitor the most popular messages and topics Discover unanswered questions and analyze response times When it comes time to identify influencers and champions, GoodData Yammer Analytics provides an out-of-the-box tool that enables community managers to track and measure individual Yammer contributions. With GoodData, you can: Rank your organizations top contributors and influencers Drive corporate campaigns by engagement with key individuals Customize contributors and influencer scores based on relevance / importance Don t depend on anecdotal assessments to determine if your Yammer implementation works. Deploy GoodData Yammer Analytics to apply a rigorous methodology that help you create best practices, take action, and drive success. It s quick and easy to deploy GoodData can get you up and running in just days something that no other BI solution can claim.

About GoodData GoodData offers business leaders Sales, Marketing Demand, Social, Service, Chatter, Yammer and Box analytics apps that allow you to quickly and easily get to the heart of your business

7 percent adoption rate, GoodData leads the charge at helping businesses embrace the changing technological and customer landscapes.

18 About GoodData GoodData offers business leaders Sales, Marketing Demand, Social, Service, Chatter, Yammer and Box analytics apps that allow you to quickly and easily get to the heart of your business challenges and manage by the metrics. With more than 20,000 customers, 90,0000 active users, and an 84.7 percent adoption rate, GoodData leads the charge at helping businesses embrace the changing technological and customer landscapes. The GoodData platform can aggregate endless diverse data sources, including Salesforce, NetSuite, Marketo and Excel to deliver real-time dashboards and powerful ad hoc reporting. It can handle both the increasing volume and velocity of data, and keeps up with the latest innovation through continuous enhancements that don t disrupt the user experience. Finally, the GoodData platform does all this in a collaborative context, and with support for any mobile device. Learn more at

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