It seems like a majority of companies don't conduct an ROI Analysis on certain programs because of time. I've heard that it is time consuming, however, that made me think..."Is there a rapid approach for conducting an ROI analysis?" We now have rapid development approaches to eLearning, etc., why not for ROI? I think a lot more companies would conduct ROI research if it was easier and not near as time consuming.

Thoughts? Ideas? Has anyone ever conducted an ROI analysis rapidly?

I wrote an article for CLO Magazine that might be helpful. It is called:

Guerrilla ROI: Building a High-Impact Project Portfolio

http://www.clomedia.com/columnists/2007/May/1831/index.php

The article provides some practical ways to determine the business value of learning projects and discusses the problem of just how do we "Determine the ROI of Doing ROI"? If it looks like something you can use, contact me and we can discuss.

Thanks Mark! This is good stuff! I'll send you a PM.

"Rapid ROI" may or may not be the evaluative $ tool your organization needs to have or wants. $ evaluations will depend on strategic goals and competitive conditions.
Talk to the $ folks(finance/acct) in your organization also do this BEFORE you start
anything.

Nero

First, ROI analysis is time consuming when it is reactive. As in....you do training (let's say...leadership skills) and then someone says "what's the ROI on that?". Then you're forced to go back and measure how much better people got, to what degree that was influenced by their new skills/aptitude/competence, etc.

Instead, if you start with a front-end analysis, you don't provide a solution (say....leadership skills training) unless it's clear that the initiative is the key to improvement organizationally (as in...turnover costs the firm $400k a year and the primary cause to the turnover is poor leadership, leadership that provides no shared vision or outward perspective). Then, when you deliver the training, establishing ROI is much faster and easier. And the training is also much more focused (because your cause analysis identified what specific leadership skills are holding the company back).

The other suggestion I'd have is to look at what is referred to as ROE (Return on Expectations). Developed by Toni Hodges-DeToncq, she covered it in detail in her book "Linking Learning and Performance." Great technique, in my experience it has a lot of credibility internally even though it's not as rigorous as a formal ROI process. And it's also rapid and effective when you're in a reactive mode (ie: no front-end analysis).