Methods and metrics for measuring the success of enterprise social software - What we can learn from practice and vice versa

Abstract

With Enterprise Social Software (ESS) being increasingly used for internal communication and collaboration, an important question is how their success can be measured. In this paper we contribute to answering this question by investigating which methods and metrics organizations are currently applying for measuring ESS success. To do so, we have conducted 26 interviews with persons responsible for the deployment and use of ESS in their company. We found that measuring ESS success in the studied companies mainly focuses on the analysis of usage. We attribute this to the fact that ESS is primarily characterized by an abundance of user-generated content that can be easily analyzed. At the same time, companies still face difficulties in the evaluation of the business value of the platforms. We attribute this to some characteristics of ESS that we will discuss in this paper. Our study is supposed to provide a comprehensive overview of the methods and metrics applied in practice to measure ESS success.