Now that you have learned the techniques of user engagement, it is time to think about how successful they are by measuring them with some tangible parameters. In the past, we never tried measuring the business value of systems such as intranet and email, but we require them on a daily basis to support our business. In this chapter, we will explore the ways in which we can demonstrate the business value of Yammer and measure user engagement.
During my professional life as a Yammer community manager, I was asked to demonstrate the business value of Yammer by determining whether we were really discussing business-related or non-business-related matters on Yammer. I took a sample of a thousand messages, and with the help of two colleagues I identified and separated business and non-business matters, concluding that more than 70 percent of the discussions happening on Yammer were business related.
Introduction to Measuring Business Value
Measure engagement, collaboration, and innovation
Three-solution structure
People talking on the network is an important first step, but not knowing what they are talking about makes it difficult to understand the value .
Knowing what people are talking about is insightful, but not knowing the outcomes of the conversations makes it challenging to understand the value.
Business value comes from capturing and understanding the outcomes of conversations (Figure 6-3).
Demonstrate business value
Network Maturity and Business Value
Business value can be demonstrated if there is a certain level of engagement on your Yammer network. Therefore, it is necessary to have a plan containing a list of engagements to be executed. Connections in the network grow exponentially with the number of users on the network. It is important to have enough active and engaged people on your Yammer network before focusing on business value.
Start with a defined business purpose/use case.
Focus on delivering business value.
Celebrate success to inspire others to initiate their own use cases.
The initial focus should be on getting people on the network and talking (Adoption).
Next, get people talking about specific business areas/topics (Engagement).
Only then will you be in a position to begin delivering business value (Embedded).
Different types of Yammer users
Quantitative Measures of Network Health
Number of members
Number of posts
Number of likes
Number of groups
Quantitative statistics are useful for illustrating that your network is active and growing. For example, a growing upward trend in the number of posts published by users indicates that your network is quite active and healthy and that employees are finding it useful.
Available Quantitative Measurements
Analytics Dashboard: available for Office 365 admin console, where you can view user behavior such as posters, readers, and likers
Data Export: available for verified Yammer admins and Office 365 admins. Data export contains data such as Yammer messages, groups, users, files, and hash topics. Data can be processed to produce customized reports.
Third-Party Applications: available under Office 365 apps directory and can be integrated with your Yammer network for online reports
Quantitative vs. Qualitative Measures
When describing quantitative measures , we are primarily focusing on statistics obtained from the Yammer Analytics Dashboard and data export.
We also encourage capturing qualitative success stories at regular intervals. This is a great way to identify and celebrate the business value that your Yammer network is delivering.
- Though quantitative statistics can be obtained easily, without understanding the qualitative aspects they will not demonstrate the business value of your Yammer network .
For example, most of you would prefer 20 people discussing business-related matters on your Yammer network rather than having 100 people just discussing non-business stuff.
To demonstrate business value, the primary focus of mature networks should be to identify qualitative outcomes in conversations and realize how they have delivered business value.
- So, what techniques can you apply in your Yammer networks?
If your organization has a clear vision of how to use Yammer and how it will help you achieve your organizational goals, then it is easier to demonstrate the business value of Yammer.
To measure performance, focus on the metrics that the business is already using. Clearly define how Yammer is going to support the success of the organization.
- Launch surveys before and after going live with the Yammer network:
To get maximum participation, surveys can be linked to annual employee engagement surveys, which will reveal exciting insights into employee engagement.
Add #benefit or #yamwin hash topics to conversations that have demonstrated business value.
Conclusion after Comparison
Below table of conclusion
Quantitative | Qualitative |
|---|---|
Quick & easy to capture and good for showing network health | More difficult to capture but better for demonstrating business value |
Depicts quantitative measures are focused on network health and qualitative measures are focused on network maturity.
Why Collaboration in Networks?
Sources: McKinsey & Co. Collaboration Study, Capgemini Digital Advantage
Let’s look at the Swoop Analytics Global Benchmark Report 2017 to see how we can we can measure the success of our Yammer network.
Phase 1: Measuring Social Media
Measuring collaboration. Source: Swoop Analytics Global Benchmark Report 2017.
Social Media phase benchmark—Steps 1 and 2
Phase 2: Measuring Social Networking
Social Networking: Connect
Help people make sense of need for change
Connect people, processes, and teams
Creating digital leadership—champions
Benefits
Save on search time
Deeper engagement
Social Networking: Share
Align the organization
Fill in the information gaps
Start working out loud
Benefits
Better alignment
Prevent duplicated work
Improve productivity
Reduce coordination costs
Reuse intellectual property
Accelerate learning
Social Networking phase benchmark—Steps 3 and 4
Phase 3: Measuring Job Fulfillment
Job Fulfillment: Solve
Integrate everyday work for everyday value
Create a culture of continuous improvement
Embed working out loud across the organization
Benefits
Improved quality
Improved agility
Avoid rework
Improved productivity
Job Fulfillment: Innovate
Let employees meet customer needs
Learn and adapt using insights
Create the right incentives through purpose, leadership, and trust
Benefits
Increased revenue
Greater stakeholder value
Reduced risk
Job Fulfillment phase benchmark—Steps 5 and 6
Analyzing Collaboration Behaviors
Posters: posts messages
Lurkers or Readers or Observers: reads or lurks around content but does not post messages
Likers: likes messages only
Unengaged Users: does not access Yammer despite having a Yammer account
Dependent on email notification: subscribed to email notifications only
Collaboration behavior framework
Observers are classified as those who interacted on the platform less than once every two weeks .
Givers: a set of people who like to give more than they receive
Takers or Receivers: a set of people who like to take more and give less and thus put their own interests ahead of others
Matchers: a set of people who keep balance between give and take
Grant identifies Givers as a set of users operating in organizations with a “giving culture”; these are believed to be the strongest performers. Matchers maintain a balance between give and take and help to create a giving culture and downgrade Takers.
In our case, the scope of the Give–Receive measure includes the contributions made, such as posts , replies, likes and so on, as well as the responses received, such as replies received, likes received, etc. We classify those participants who maintain a balance between giving and receiving as Engagers. It is believed that these users are the heart of any network as they keep the balance between talking and listening on the network. Engagers are Matchers, as stated earlier.
We classify Catalyst users as those who generate the most replies, likes, etc. with the least amount of engagement. Bloggers or tweeters are catalysts who generate the maximum response through the least engagement. You need to have such roles on a network so as to create a huge level of engagement with minimal involvement by getting more participation from other users. Catalysts are Receivers, as stated earlier.
Finally, we classify users who fall into the Giver side; these users are known for maximum participation on the network. They contribute by posting new conversations or adding to existing conversations by means of replies, likes, etc. They do not necessarily create huge engagements with their contributions, but they are like caregivers who always prefer to contribute. We call such users Broadcasters when posting new items or Responders if they contribute to existing items.
Different personas
Sentiment Analysis with Yammer
The Microsoft Cognitive Services offerings are broken down into the following categories: Vision, Speech, Language, Knowledge, and Search. How could a business make use of the Language, Knowledge, and Search offerings in the context of conversational platforms like Yammer and Teams?
Using text analytics to identify emotion and sentiment across large repositories of conversational text could provide strong insights into culture and behaviors across whole organizations. Knowledge-acquisition bots could respond to questions posed online by prompting responses from those who previously demonstrated the capability to answer effectively, or the bots could potentially source the answer from previous similar questions.
In this way, the problem-solving capabilities of whole organizations and beyond could be dramatically improved in an efficient and timely manner.
A Window into Your Organization’s Culture
While most AI deployments focus on helping with tactical challenges, we wanted to explore how something like AI and Yammer might provide a window into an overall organizational culture. Yammer may not be the most used application in the Office 365 suite, but our prior research showed it hosts the most enterprise-wide conversations and therefore is a good place from which to explore enterprise culture.
Online Behavioral Personas
Online Behavioral Personas | Cultural Signatures |
|---|---|
| Catalysts spark reactions online. Sentiment analysis told us they: • Showed the most positive and most negative sentiments • Made the longest posts on average • Whatever the sentiment, Catalysts contribute “energy” to the organization and contribute to a positive culture. |
| Engagers connect networks by balancing their contributions with the reactions they receive. Sentiment analysis told us they are: • Middle of the road for emotion—positive and negative sentiments • Their messages are on average second in length to the Catalyst • Sentiment analysis reinforces the Engager as those special individuals who can balance competing demands and their emotions at the same time. They can be the “engine room” for an organization in getting things done. |
| Responders sustain networks by ensuring that participants are welcomed and supported. Sentiment analysis showed us they: • Showed the most emotion , largely positive • Were the most succinct in their responses • Shared their positivity more broadly • Responders are good for an organization’s culture by spreading positivity. |
| Broadcasters are concerned with sending a message, without much concern for engaging in conversation. Sentiment analysis showed us that they are: • Largely emotionless in their delivery • Were second to Responders on their breadth of audience • Culturally, Broadcasters add little positivity to an organizational culture. Too many can even be destructive. |
| Observers are those who infrequently join conversations. They may be either simply reading conversations or avoiding them altogether. The Observer pattern was the most common though. Sentiment analysis told us that they are: • Mostly negative in their sentiment • The least engaged with others • Had the narrowest reach • Observers are often the “silent majority” hidden in an organization. Observers need to be transformed to more positive behavioral personas if a positive cultural change is desired. |
Yammer Group Insights
In this section, we will explore the existing Yammer feature called Group Insights, which provides Yammer analytics. This feature is available to all Yammer users to measure the success of their Yammer engagement.
Everyone Is a Community Manager
More and more, employees are taking on the role of community manager for individual groups on their company’s enterprise social network. Sometimes, a company doesn’t have a global community manager, or maybe there are so many groups that it’s become a challenge for one person to provide reporting across every group company-wide. Today, many of these group admins are realizing that they need to personally track their group activity in some way in order to determine if their engagement efforts are paying off. They’re taking responsibility for their online discussions as an integral part of their day-to-day work efforts.
In a much-anticipated move to support these group admins, Yammer has just introduced Group Insights—a simple, effective set of analytics that give lightweight details about activity. Group admins can now have a look into the metrics for the groups they manage to get a feel for how much their members are posting, reading, and liking the items posted in their group.
Group Actions insights
Insights for the last 7 days, 28 days, or 12 months
Know how many members and non-members are active in the group
Observe predominant activity—posting, reading, or liking messages—of group members and non-members
Get a glimpse of how key metrics—for example, number of active people, number of posted messages—have changed since the previous period
Group Insights also shows you how activities are trending over time. The visualized trends show the contributions to the activity of the group to help you track engagement with content from campaigns or initiatives hosted on Yammer, report back to leaders, and optimize efforts.
Active People Summary
Yammer provides rolling metrics for the last 7 days, last 28 days, or the last 12 months. The Active People Summary breaks down the number of people who posted messages, the number of people who read messages, and the number of people who liked messages—for both members and non-members of a group. This breakdown helps admins see if they have engaged members or if they are attracting a lot of non-members to the group. This is important because it helps admins understand the global reach of their content beyond the group’s virtual walls—if a particular piece resonates, the group admin can take this information and open a strategic discussion with other areas of the business.
Posted, Read, and Liked Messages
Again, broken down into members versus non-members, the Posted, Read, and Liked Messages information will show this activity within your group for the chosen time period. Keep in mind that if a person posts multiple times within the time frame, each post is counted (so, these numbers are not a reflection of unique user activity). This is important because it serves as a general health check on your group: are people sharing and reacting? Are people reading but not reacting? Look for trends that indicate a healthy balance of consuming and reacting and intervene when needed to support more engaging content if needed.
Downloading a Report
In addition to Groups Insights, Office 365 admins have access to the Yammer Activity Report. This downloadable report will provide data for every day for the last 24 months. This is great news for those who prefer to aggregate and crunch their own data on a strictly month-by-month basis (instead of “last 28 days”), or who might want to exclude weekends or holidays from their graphs.
With this report, you can understand the level of engagement of your organization with Yammer by looking at the number of unique users using Yammer to post, like, or read messages and the amount of activity generated across the organization.
Unfortunately, you must be a global administrator in Office 365, an Exchange, SharePoint, or Skype for Business administrator, or a reports reader to see the Yammer Activity Report under Office 365 Reports. Getting such rights is very challenging as you would be exposed to the highest level of admin actions that could impact the entire organization.
Yammer Activity Report
Yammer Activity Report for 90 days
The Yammer Activity Report shows trends over the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, or 180 days. However, if you click into a day in the report, the table will show data for up to 28 days from the current date and not the date the report was generated.
Summary
In this chapter, we have learned both qualitative and quantitative ways of demonstrating the business value of Yammer. Furthermore, we looked at setting up benchmarks by using the 2017 Swoop Global Benchmark Report for effective measurement. Finally, we saw the Group Insights and Yammer Activity Report, available to all users and Office 365 admins, respectively.
After learning about user engagements and how to measure them, the time has come to move on to the next chapter to find how to integrate Yammer into existing platforms to widen the scope of engagement.