Quantum² Resources : Case Studies : Quantifying the Value of Your Information Center by Rewarding Your Customers

Quantifying the Value of Your Information Center by Rewarding Your Customers

We all know how important it is to demonstrate the value of your information center to your organization, but what if your customers could help you do this? At Air Products, the Information & Library Services (ILS) department has created the Gold Nugget award program that not only rewards our customers for their effective use of information, but also quantifies the value of the information center to the Corporation using standards that everyone recognizes.

The Process

It begins with a request for feedback from our customers. In our experience, it’s best to ask for user feedback about three months after the results of an information project have been delivered. Any earlier, and you’ll likely get just a “Thanks, it was helpful” sort of response; much later and the link between what was delivered and the outcome becomes less distinct in the customer’s memory. When requesting feedback, we ask customers to describe the outcome -- be it good or bad, rather than comment on the appropriateness or timeliness of the information we provided. We ask for specifics, such as “time saved”, or whether or not a bid/contract has been won, for example.

Once we learn of a positive outcome, we attempt to link it to a critical success factor. There are several success factors, including: “increase sales”, “reduce costs”, “make it easier to do business with our company”, and “promote teamwork”, among others. Developed by a former CEO, the factors are recognized throughout the Corporation as a standard measurement of success. We then ask the customer to quantify the success. Examples include: estimated value of a new contract, forecast of sales of a new product offering, savings achieved due to elimination of re-work, or adoption of a best practice to improve safety practices. Of course, it is always easy to reward an effort that results in new sales. It is more challenging to uncover less obvious examples. In one case, we recognized a researcher who used data provided by ILS in his analysis that led to a make-or-buy decision which ultimately saved the Corporation millions of dollars.

The next step is to create a nomination, usually by the ILS staff member most closely connected with the customer’s project. The nomination includes: a description of what was requested, what ILS delivered, the customer’s feedback describing the value of the assistance provided by ILS, and the quantifiable outcome according to at least one critical success factor.

The Award

An ILS sponsor enters each nomination into a web form, which is then published to a protected site on our Intranet, accessible only to members of the ILS department. Our ILS Gold Nuggets Award team meets quarterly to review the nominations. To impart a cachet of exclusivity to the awards, the bar is set high. Indeed, since the award program’s inception in 1997, several hundred nominations have resulted in fewer than 60 awards. Most nominations are re-classified as “Job Well Done”, and the customer receives a letter thanking them for their feedback along with a giveaway item bearing the ILS logo. For nominations reclassified as “Follow Up”, the ILS sponsor is responsible for checking back periodically on project’s status. Some projects, such as new product development, have taken three years from market assessment to product offering, but an award is possible because the link between the initial assistance provided and the eventual outcome has been documented as a nomination.

The Value

For those nominations that receive a “Yes” vote by a majority of the team, an award ceremony is planned that acknowledges both the customer and the ILS team members who assisted. The customer receives a physical award (a piece of “fool’s gold” encased in a 5”x5” Lucite® wedge) that contains the ILS logo and the words “Awarded for the effective use of information that created direct business value for Air Products.” The award itself was created by and purchased in bulk from the same firm our company uses for other recognition/anniversary awards. The award recipient also receives a gift certificate redeemable at local restaurants, or towards purchases from our preferred book supplier, while the ILS sponsor receives a framed certificate documenting his or her part in the project. To maximize the publicity, we try to present the award at a meeting of the customer’s peers, and invite their supervisor to the event. A digital image of the ceremony accompanies a short write up published at the Gold Nuggets Award site on our ILS Home Page. Our Corporate Communications department eagerly seeks out opportunities to publicize stories of personal and team achievements, and publicizes the results of each Gold Nugget award ceremony in a corporate-wide daily news bulletin. Thus, we not only reward our customers for reaching their goals, but provide direct evidence of how ILS directly contributes to their success. By rewarding our customers’ effective use of information, we reap the benefits. The ILS Gold Nugget Awards help us quantify our value to the Corporation in a very public way, according to universally recognized standards.