The ROI of the Everyday: From Sunday Papers to People Cloud

Growing up, my family had a ritual around the Sunday paper. When I was young, my interest was in the large comics section. As I got a little older, it was where my brothers and I could find movie reviews and showtimes, sales on the latest electronics and information about upcoming concerts. All this while my father could catch up on the news and my mother flip through the vast coupons on offer.

Thinking about it today, the Sunday paper provided a lot of value. Economically, the savings from the coupons alone probably paid for the paper itself, and ads around sales did the same for those items we saved for—I distinctly remember purchasing my first portable cassette player based on an ad I saw in the paper. There was also the added value of the information we learned on local and global news, trends and events. Lastly there was the value of the family time; time spent together gathered around getting ink on our fingers.

I don’t believe my parents ever thought about the returns on their newspaper subscription, but that Sunday ritual was something I know they enjoyed. But value—both economic and otherwise—can be found in everyday things we do, even in what we might consider the mundane things we take for granted.

When we think about economic value in business, my mind immediately goes to return on investment (ROI) calculations around capital investments in heavy machinery or equipment, roughly calculated as the net profit (gain or loss) from an investment divided by the cost of the investment (times 100 to get a percentage). It’s a way to calculate economic value and justify spend, often used for bigger investments. But it’s important to recognize the same exercise can be done with the more everyday expenditures, as well.

In a recent Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) of isolved People Cloud™ study, which was conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by isolved, it was found that People Cloud generated an ROI of 330% over a three-year period based on a composite analysis of five representative isolved customers interviewed for the study. The returns were realized in some clearly understandable ways, like in the productivity of human resources (HR) teams and more efficient onboarding— and in some less obvious areas, like improved employee retention and improved employee productivity. Let’s break some of the numbers down a bit.

Productivity gains for HR and payroll staff who use People Cloud as a primary function of their job is easy to understand. Afterall, they spend significant parts of their days in the system, looking up employee information, reviewing and approving transactions and analyzing people data. Prior to People Cloud, many customers used either highly manual systems or an environment with disparate systems that make navigating screens, much less navigating analytics, very difficult.

But somewhat surprisingly, the TEI study also found that all employees enjoyed significant growth in productivity, specifically citing employee access to benefits, learning and time submission as key drivers. In fact, the study showed a 9% improvement in overall employee productivity by the end of the third year after implementing People Cloud.

Automated onboarding through People Cloud also helps new hires become productive quicker and leads to hiring managers spending less time on the administrative tasks surrounding onboarding. Again, these are to be expected. A somewhat unexpected outcome, however, was improved employee retention.

With more accurate time collection and payroll, along with the use of People Cloud self-service tools to answer their own questions, communicate with their peers and take training, employees are more engaged. The study showed that People Cloud helped the composite organization reduce turnover by 6% by year three.

Returning to the 330% ROI figure, then, we can think of this as the quantifiable value—like the coupons in the Sunday paper, where for every dollar spent, you got $3.30 back. Beyond that level of value, there are unquantified benefits stemming from the scalability of People Cloud, including isolved’s superior customer service and the elimination of redundant systems.

Think of these as the knowledge gained through the Sunday paper. And the boost in employee engagement? That’s obviously the value of the family time, which is priceless—all without getting newspaper ink on anyone’s hands