03 - UX Value

[former_member204767]

Note: This is a repost of a blog I wrote earlier for our Experience SAP site.

Why invest in UX?  Leaning on the basic principles of investment, I would say you should invest in UX to get a worthwhile return.  At SAP we therefore hold the view, validated by our experience of working with many of our customers, that improving UX offers the opportunity to realise business value.

To make this concrete we have developed a balanced scorecard approach to integrate business value into a holistic view that best represent the full value of improved UX.  We define the two axis as (1) Value quantified in monetary terms to value that is qualitative in
nature; and (2) Value for the organisation as a whole to value that attaches to an individual user.

Based on this, we have identified 4 specific quadrants of business value:

1. User Satisfaction (Qualitative + Individual)

The level of satisfaction of an end user is a strong determinator of their likely behaviour in terms of system use.  Due to this principle, it is imperative to monitor and manage the level of user satisfaction to reduce the risk that the value of your UX investment erodes due to user resistance and non-compliance.  Further, we see a strong correlation between the level of user adoption and user satisfaction.

2. Enterprise Value (Qualitative + Organisations)

This quadrant is a collection of a number of different measures and principles that collectively help to express the qualitative business value to the organisation.  For example, the ability to follow your IT strategy for business applications in relation to the value of an ERP / Integrated system and ‘best-of-breed’ applications; the ability to minimise application licence shelf-ware; the ability to track the effectiveness of maintaining data quality; and the value of your brand to attract new talent or when providing access to external parties.

3. User Productivity (Quantitative + Individual)

An individual end users’ productivity is affected by the combination of user interface, application functionality, business & system process, data & information as supported by the underlying infrastructure.  Some examples include the time element of searching in SAP, the ability to collaborate immediately and seamlessly, and the effectiveness of workflow.

4. Cost Reduction (Quantitative + Organisation)

We leverage the principles of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to gain business value through improving the UX related elements that make up the direct and indirect total cost of ownership.  For example the cost of training connected to the time and resources required;
the amount of support connected to UX pain points; The cost of data cleansing due to data quality erosion that results from UX pain points such a complex screens, and the ability to respond in due time to UX pain points.

It is clear that there are many examples of how it is possible to gain business value by improving UX and for this very reason we believe that UX improvement can be based on a business case.