Supervisor: Martin Böhringer, Student: Alrik Degenkolb

Background: The ROI of IT systems always is hard to calculate. However, the ROI argument is vitally important for the diffusion of new software. Especially Social Software with its ‘soft’ use cases like ‘knowledge management’, ‘information management’ or ‘corporate culture’ has a strong need for ROI measurements.

Content: The thesis consists of 3 parts: (1) evaluates the basics of software ROI, (2) discusses general possibilities of applying ROI approaches from (1) to Social Software and (3) consists of an example calculation for a real-world microblogging case.

Introductory Links:

• Return on Investment von
  ERP-Investitionen (populärwissenschaftliche Einführung in das Thema Software-ROI, deutsch)
• http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_Investment
• Existing microblogging research by Martin

The thesis can be written either in German or English.