• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Theoris Vision Software

Theoris Vision Software provides a dashboard and reporting solution that includes charts, graphs, scorecards, maps, and ad-hoc reports. Everything is driven from the dashboards. I like that I can create my own visual and reporting content pretty easily. From what I've seen, the real power of this application lies in the unique ability it has to map to various data sources and files, instead of the traditional approach of pulling everything together into a spreadsheet or database.

Vision is not a metric design tool per se, but it is a powerful tool for visualizing your measures. It also allows others (stakeholders) to access your metrics on their own. I especially like the ability to set up hierarchies in the data, which in turn allows viewers to drill down into their data further. This capability is further expanded to allow the creation of ad-hoc reports at different levels of information. This can be a bad thing—depending on the level of maturity of your audience—but for the most part, it's pretty slick. Overall, this is really an impressive tool for displaying metrics and starting those critical conversations. Currently, Vision is mostly focused on the health industry, but the competition had better watch out as Vision branches into other industries. A really nice tool which I've added to my wish list.

iDashboards

iDashboards is exactly what you'd imagine by its name: an excellent tool for creating and displaying dashboards—or compilations of Key Process Indicators (what I'd call measures). With iDashboards, you could use your measures to create a view of your metric for a given question.

I like both Vision and iDashboards for this purpose. The question for me then becomes cost and ease of use. If you are thinking of obtaining a tool for displaying your data in this manner, I'd encourage you to spend time demo-ing both products. This one is also on my wish list—and I'll be happy with either as a surprise for Christmas.

Tableau

Tableau is not an add-in, but it works well with Excel. You can easily import data into Tableau from Excel or other common tools. Tableau's power is in the ability to quickly and easily try different graphical representations (visualizations) of your data. I know some people who love it and use it before they do any thorough analysis. I haven't found it works for me, but I do see the potential value (I have a copy, but haven't been able to put it to a lot of use).

Survey Tools

The following three survey tools each offer different benefits. In order, the first provides some useful analysis of what's important to your customers as well as how well you provide those services. The second is a third-party service (not really a tool in the true sense) and makes the survey work easy. The last is a favorite of mine as it allows you to create what you need, customizing your surveys to fit your requirements (and the cost is attractive).

TechQual+

TechQual+ (www.techqual.org)is a good example of a survey tool; it was created by my friend Timothy Chester, the CIO at the University of Georgia. Most of the questions are preset in TechQual+, causing some limitations; but these are also its strengths. 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 example), but a large 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 customer base in your industry. Customer satisfaction surveying is an interesting business niche.

SurveyMonkey

I confess—I like SurveyMonkey;