Investigative Analysis Part 1: Quantifying the Market Value of an Organization’s Intangible Asset Known as ‘Knowledge’

OK, so I’ve decided to conduct another multi-part study similar to what I did last year.

This time, I will be analyzing and attempting the quantify an organization’s intangible assets. Specifically, the following:

• knowledge, brands, reputations, and unique business processes

So, starting with knowledge:  Firstly, the chart is a little outdated but I will source the last two years and updated the graph later in the series.  Regardless, it is interesting none-the-less. And since I am the Queen advocate for measuring what matters and managing what you can measure, then consider the following my attempt to drink my own cool-aid – the following chart  depicts revenue growth over a 7 year period ending in 2008 – Those of you, my dear readers, who are also fellow Business Intelligence practitioners, should be able to attest at first glance to this statistical representation of Content Management Systems (CMS) and Portals YoY Revenue growth.

In fact, many of us have been asked to integrate BI dashboards and reports into existing corporate portals, like Microsoft SharePoint or into the native portals bundled with most Enterprise grade BI products like MicroStrategy or SAP/Business Objects, right? Many of us have been tasked with drafting data dictionaries, data governance documentation, source protected project and code repositories; ie – knowledge capture areas. But even in my vast knowledge (no pun intended), I was unaware that the growth spurt specific to CMS’ was as dramatic as this, depicted below and sourced from Prentice Hall

In fact, between 2001 and 2008, CMS’ revenue growth went from ~$2.5B to ~$22B, with the greatest spurt beginning in 2003 and skyrocketing up from there.

 

Conversely, the portal revenue growth was substantially less. This was a surprise. I must have heard the words SharePoint and Implementation more than any other between 2007 – 2009, whereas the sticker shock that came with an enterprise grade CMS sent many a C-level into the land of Nod, never to return until the proven VALUE cloud could ride them home against the nasty cop known as COST.

Aah – Ha moment, folks. Portal products were far less costly than the typical Documentum or IBM CMS.’

In fact, Jupiter’s recent report on CMS’ stated

“In some cases, an organization will deploy several seemingly redundant systems. In our sampling of about 800 companies that use content management packages, we discovered that almost 15 percent had implemented more than one CMS, often from competing vendors. That’s astounding, especially when you consider that an organization that deploys two content management systems can rack up more than $1 million in licensing fees and as much as $300,000 in yearly maintenance costs. Buying a second CMS should certainly raise a red flag for any CIO or CFO about to approve a purchase order.”

That’s 120 companies from the Jupiter study spending $1M in licensing, or $120M baseline. Extend that to all organizations leveraging CMS technology and therein lies the curious case of the revenue growth spurt.

To that, I say, Kiss My Intangible Assets! Knowledge is power, except when parked in someone’s head – Now, when will someone invent the physical drainage system for exactly said knowledge with or without permission of said holder? This gatekeepers need to go, and are often the dinosaurs fearing the newbie college grads and worst of all, CHANGE.

In part 2, we will discuss another fave of mine: Brand You!