Chris Bucholtz, editor-in-chief of Forecasting Clouds, wrote a review of ValueRight, a social business valuation tool developed by Pathlight Solutions, our sister firm.

Chris wrote,

[ValueRight is] an application that takes a stab at applying the numbers involved in Social CRM – both the expenses and the revenues – to draw a clear picture of the impact Social CRM has.

…

[The] presence of such an application is great news for the Social CRM space; marketing suffered for years without the ability to associate costs and revenues with their efforts. Social CRM is an even trickier nut to crack.

Read the full review here.

You can also follow Chris on Twitter at @bucholz.

Woo hoo! We’re pleased as punched to announce we expanded the ValueRight product family.

Our Pathlight Solutions’ social valuation tools now come in two flavors – ValueRight Social CRM and ValueRight Social Media.

ValueRight benefits

No matter which edition you select, ValueRight will determine the true dollars and sense valuation (and ROI) for your social initiatives.  Use one of the tools and you’ll provide the information executives most want to know, including:

• Cash flow of gains and costs.
• Net present value of gains, costs, and net results across multiple discount rates (also known as cost of capital).
• Return on Investment.

Click to read more ...

Are you trying to get your management team's buy in for your social business initiatives?  Are they asking how your company makes money with social business or at least lowers cost for customer support?

If you want your social business initiative to stand out, then you have to talk dollars and sense.

Now the “sense” part relates to strategy and benefits – and we discussed these in articles 2 and 3 of the eSeries.

The dollars part though, that relates to Valuation.  And yeah, for a lot of folks economics isn't the fun, sexy part of social initiatives -- but it is necessary to get to Go (and Go means the start of success which is fun and sexy).

In today's article, I'm demystifying Valuation. I'll take out the guess work so it's easy to get your arms around it.

This article is now part of The Business of Social Business eBook, available on Pathlight Solutions, our sister site.  Click here to learn more about the eBook.