Part 30 (2/2)
TechQual+ (techqualorg)is a good example of a survey tool; it was created by ia Most of the questions are preset in TechQual+, causing soths Since the questions are standardized, you can compare your results to others who chose to use this tool There are other third-party survey organizations (HDI, for exae benefit of TechQual+ is that it is free
HDI
The HDI Customer Satisfaction Index is a survey service HDI does everything for you: they survey your customers, tabulate your results, and provide you with reports in multiple formats They also provide comparisons to others (for example, by industry or all other customers) HDI is only one example; there are other third-party survey services that offer this service I suggest you price shop and look for ones that already have a large custo is an interesting business niche
SurveyMonkey
I confess-I like SurveyMonkey; partly because it's free (if you use it sparingly; though, if you want to use it on a larger scale, the costs are very reasonable), but mostly because of its simplicity With SurveyMonkey, you build the survey; then you provide a link to the survey to your customers SurveyMonkey also offers simple analysis tools, but I usually download the results into Excel and do ence Tools
Many ”IT solution” companies now include dashboards and scorecards in their service packages This is a clear indicator of the need for metrics and the power of software to help deliver thees may include thethe data byproducts froen, etc)
The major difference I've found between these tools and the stand-alone tools is in the scope If you don't need (or can't afford) a large-scale solution set, you can get a lot out of the tools specifically designed for(or already own) a large-scale IT solution, you may want to look into its capabilities to also provide metrics assistance
ASE 10
An exaanizational i scorecards, dashboards, and yco based on coies, but seeh flexibility to ith the n I haven't used this tool, but it has been recoue whose opinion I trust
The issue for noring the cost, these tools offer more capability thanon your metrics journey
Other Tools
Other tools may not fit the definition of a metric tool at all, but be very helpful to your metric efforts The two examples I offer are at different ends of a scope/size spectruer scale process improvement tool which has useful applications to a metrics effort Powerpivot is a tool which works with (and ”in”) Excel
QPR
QPR (QPRcom) is an exae that I can't tell you about it all QPR is used mostly by companies outside of the United States; but I believe it willsplash on our shores soon Rather than a simple, lower cost, lie, enterprise-level solution
QPR's web-based solutions can be selected based upon your need If you need to build an understanding of your processes, one of its tools, ”Process analyzer,” assists in developing business process diagra file input structure If you need to share your database of business processes, ”ProcessDesigner” provides that solution Mostrequirements can be satisfied with the ”Metrics” solution If you need to integrate business process reporting and metrics, a coratedsystem
The cost will reflect its expansive power I include it as an exah-end tool, and because it does so eher costs are no surprise I especially like that such a nice enterprise-level solution includes specific tools for metrics
PowerPivot
Unlike most of the tools, PowerPivot isn't an analytical tool at all It allows you to use Excel to be more like its brother, Microsoft Access-a database tool Although most metrics are number-based efforts, there are many times when it would be useful to have a relational view of the data A relational database would be the perfect tool if it had the ability to do mathematical and statistical analysis on the data PowerPivot prora with its first release and I a forward to the release of the improved 20 version