The Web-based performance management system, ReviewSNAP™, announces the addition of several new modules. These additional features will help organizations make their performance review process even more effective and productive.
One of the new modules is a comments suggestion tool designed to offer competency-specific suggestions to managers as they complete a review. David Arringdale, President of ReviewSNAP™ parent company Applied Training Systems says their research indicates that managers often get hung up on what to write in support of their ratings. “We have learned that a high percentage of managers doing reviews would feel much more comfortable in the process if they had a better idea about what to write to back up their specific ratings. When preparing a review, our system allows the reviewer to pull up a list of supporting comments related to various ratings levels for the competencies in question. They can then choose one or more of the comments to insert into the comments and suggestions area for that competency group. The system will then automatically insert the comments. Of course, they can be modified as desired. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and managers are finding the process of reviewing employees less frustrating and more rewarding.”
Research also indicated that many users of the system wanted a solution that allows its subscribers to go entirely paperless with their performance management process. To that end, the company has added an e-signature feature that provides managers and employees the opportunity to apply an electronic verification or signature to the review. This capability virtually eliminates the need to store paper copies of reviews.
Some other important additions to the ReviewSNAP™ performance review system are:
• The ability to add a logo to make the system appear specific to the organization.
• Allow for the import of competencies that organizations may already have in place.
• The ability to define a probationary review period in addition to other defined review periods.
• An export feature that allows for exporting statistics to an Excel spreadsheet.
A key ReviewSNAP goal is to offer the most robust on-demand performance management solution at an affordable price. Arringdale added, “We are completely in tune with the current economic situation and our pricing levels have always been and will continue to be the lowest available. This will allow even the smallest organization the ability to automate their performance review process and make it far more effective and fruitful for all involved.”
Automating the review process can significantly reduce HR and managerial staff time. Streamlining this process can cut an organization’s expenses, ensure more timely
reviews, and improve morale and productivity which should help enhance the bottom line.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Don't Just Talk About Customer Service
There is so much lip service being paid to customer service these days with very little actually being done about it that it is almost laughable. How many organizations do you see promoting themselves as leaders in customer service or just generally bragging about how well they serve their customers? The truth is most organizations are not coming close to delivering even average customer service, let alone outstanding customer service which is what they should be striving for.
Just talking about customer service and telling your employees that they are to provide outstanding customer service is not going to affect the level of service to your customers enough to make any sort of positive difference. While some short-term buying decisions are based on price, over the long-haul customers will often base their decisions about who to buy from as much on the quality of service they receive as price. In fact, it appears that the relationship between business failure and poor customer service is dramatic. Conversely, those organizations that understand how to deliver outstanding customer service can often times overcome competitive pricing strategies by their competitors and still maintain strong gross profit margins.
Outstanding customer service is generally viewed as an added value by customers. Why? Because it is so rarely encountered that it leaves an impression when they do experience it.
Look closely at the level of customer service being delivered by your organization. It's not the perception of you and your employees that count. Rather, it is the perception of your customers that matters. Ask them how they feel about the quality of your customer service. Remember that you won't hear from many disgruntled customers. They just go away.
Do your employees really understand how to deliver outstanding customer service? Do they really understand what is expected of them? Does the company understand how to achieve outstanding customer service? Outstanding customer service stands out. It can truly help you differentiate your organization from your competition. To achieve it takes constant care and nurturing. It must be measured. Outstanding customer service needs to become a "trademark" of your company.
Hiring customer-oriented employees is the starting point for delivering outstanding customer service. Some employees will have a difficult time being customer-oriented because of their personality. Putting people with poor basic people skills in a position to deal with customers is a common mistake in the business world. Think about your own buying experiences and the people you encounter. How many really deliver outstanding service?
Look at your customer service quality objectively. Does it need work? How much work? Develop a plan for correcting deficiencies. Make outstanding customer service a part of your culture. It will pay dividends.
Just talking about customer service and telling your employees that they are to provide outstanding customer service is not going to affect the level of service to your customers enough to make any sort of positive difference. While some short-term buying decisions are based on price, over the long-haul customers will often base their decisions about who to buy from as much on the quality of service they receive as price. In fact, it appears that the relationship between business failure and poor customer service is dramatic. Conversely, those organizations that understand how to deliver outstanding customer service can often times overcome competitive pricing strategies by their competitors and still maintain strong gross profit margins.
Outstanding customer service is generally viewed as an added value by customers. Why? Because it is so rarely encountered that it leaves an impression when they do experience it.
Look closely at the level of customer service being delivered by your organization. It's not the perception of you and your employees that count. Rather, it is the perception of your customers that matters. Ask them how they feel about the quality of your customer service. Remember that you won't hear from many disgruntled customers. They just go away.
Do your employees really understand how to deliver outstanding customer service? Do they really understand what is expected of them? Does the company understand how to achieve outstanding customer service? Outstanding customer service stands out. It can truly help you differentiate your organization from your competition. To achieve it takes constant care and nurturing. It must be measured. Outstanding customer service needs to become a "trademark" of your company.
Hiring customer-oriented employees is the starting point for delivering outstanding customer service. Some employees will have a difficult time being customer-oriented because of their personality. Putting people with poor basic people skills in a position to deal with customers is a common mistake in the business world. Think about your own buying experiences and the people you encounter. How many really deliver outstanding service?
Look at your customer service quality objectively. Does it need work? How much work? Develop a plan for correcting deficiencies. Make outstanding customer service a part of your culture. It will pay dividends.
Friday, November 7, 2008
ReviewSNAP Compensation Recommendation Tool
Yesterday ReviewSNAP added a compensation recommendation tool to our powerful performance management system. You will now have the capability of entering compensation increase suggestions for both your managers and your employees based on your company's criteria. For example, if your company offers a 5% pay increase for managers who receive an overall rating between 4.00 and 5.00 on their performance reviews then our system will make that recommendation whenever a managers overall rating falls between 4.00 and 5.00. No more looking it up on a chart or doing any calculations. The system will give you the recommendation within the overall development plan.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Struggle Between Efficiency and Effectiveness
Business books, magazines and newsletters are full of recommendations about becoming more efficient. They talk at length about the importance of the bottom line and incremental gains from reengineering and total quality efforts. And they talk about how technology can provide a real boost in efficiency.
But with all this talk about efficiency, are we losing something in terms of being effective? To distinguish between effectiveness and efficiency, a brief definition should help. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. Efficiency is doing things right. These simple definitions point to a clear distinction that has major implications for businesses of all sizes. The implications arise from the difficulty in balancing both efficiency and effectiveness.
With the pressure to constantly be as efficient as possible, an organization can get caught up in focusing too much on reducing process time and/or the number of employees and not enough on what makes sense for the organization. For example, suppose a distribution company decides that it is taking too long to process orders because there is an additional review step in place to ensure that the order is accurate. But often times, orders get backed up slightly for shipping because the people doing the additional accuracy check on outgoing orders fall behind. So the decision is made to eliminate this additional step and at the same time save some money by eliminating two positions. This is done in the name of efficiency because orders will go out faster which has some real merit. But the result of eliminating this additional step is a significant increase in incorrect orders being shipped. The impact of this is additional time dealing with more customer complaints, additional picking and restocking time, additional costs of returned shipments and, above all, customer ill will.
This example illustrates how doing the right thing is often overshadowed by doing things right. What employees often view as being efficient can many times impact the company negatively. This is why it is important for management to create an environment where employees are encouraged to look for ways to become more efficient, but do so without degrading the level of customer service and quality.
Bringing a balance between efficiency and effectiveness is one of the critical jobs of any owner or manager. In the above example, the company might have been realizing a competitive advantage because it was shipping orders with a higher degree of accuracy than its competitors. When it decided to save some money by streamlining a process and eliminating some positions, it lost that competitive advantage. And in terms of saving money, any savings realized from the streamlining were in all likelihood given back several times over.
It is important for businesses to constantly look for ways to do things right....to become more efficient. But it is equally important that decisions along those lines be made by asking questions about the impact on quality, customer service and employee morale. Bad decisions relative to efficiency can very often have a negative effect on all three of these variables.
With regard to technology and efficiency, does the addition of new technology to any process have a positive impact on these variables? Business processes and what's good for the customer should drive the implementation of technology. Technology should not dictate how a process gets defined. Start with the customer and work backwards. Define the process based on the best way to serve the customer and the best way to accomplish tasks. Once the business process is defined, match the technology to the process. When technology is allowed to drive the business, things tend to get forced to fit and the customer, productivity and employee morale with often suffer.
We can safely say that balancing efficiency and effectiveness is not easy. But it is important for organizations to stay focused on the long-term impact of all decisions. Yes, short-term performance is important, but if it takes precedence over long-term viability it could lead to a decline in performance over time.
But with all this talk about efficiency, are we losing something in terms of being effective? To distinguish between effectiveness and efficiency, a brief definition should help. Effectiveness is doing the right thing. Efficiency is doing things right. These simple definitions point to a clear distinction that has major implications for businesses of all sizes. The implications arise from the difficulty in balancing both efficiency and effectiveness.
With the pressure to constantly be as efficient as possible, an organization can get caught up in focusing too much on reducing process time and/or the number of employees and not enough on what makes sense for the organization. For example, suppose a distribution company decides that it is taking too long to process orders because there is an additional review step in place to ensure that the order is accurate. But often times, orders get backed up slightly for shipping because the people doing the additional accuracy check on outgoing orders fall behind. So the decision is made to eliminate this additional step and at the same time save some money by eliminating two positions. This is done in the name of efficiency because orders will go out faster which has some real merit. But the result of eliminating this additional step is a significant increase in incorrect orders being shipped. The impact of this is additional time dealing with more customer complaints, additional picking and restocking time, additional costs of returned shipments and, above all, customer ill will.
This example illustrates how doing the right thing is often overshadowed by doing things right. What employees often view as being efficient can many times impact the company negatively. This is why it is important for management to create an environment where employees are encouraged to look for ways to become more efficient, but do so without degrading the level of customer service and quality.
Bringing a balance between efficiency and effectiveness is one of the critical jobs of any owner or manager. In the above example, the company might have been realizing a competitive advantage because it was shipping orders with a higher degree of accuracy than its competitors. When it decided to save some money by streamlining a process and eliminating some positions, it lost that competitive advantage. And in terms of saving money, any savings realized from the streamlining were in all likelihood given back several times over.
It is important for businesses to constantly look for ways to do things right....to become more efficient. But it is equally important that decisions along those lines be made by asking questions about the impact on quality, customer service and employee morale. Bad decisions relative to efficiency can very often have a negative effect on all three of these variables.
With regard to technology and efficiency, does the addition of new technology to any process have a positive impact on these variables? Business processes and what's good for the customer should drive the implementation of technology. Technology should not dictate how a process gets defined. Start with the customer and work backwards. Define the process based on the best way to serve the customer and the best way to accomplish tasks. Once the business process is defined, match the technology to the process. When technology is allowed to drive the business, things tend to get forced to fit and the customer, productivity and employee morale with often suffer.
We can safely say that balancing efficiency and effectiveness is not easy. But it is important for organizations to stay focused on the long-term impact of all decisions. Yes, short-term performance is important, but if it takes precedence over long-term viability it could lead to a decline in performance over time.
Monday, November 3, 2008
ReviewSNAP Price Increase - Lock In Now
ReviewSNAP™ has recently launched several enhancements and modules to our Web-based performance management system. These include:
•eSignature to help you make your performance review process completely paperless.
•Comment suggestions to help managers/reviewers find just the right verbiage to support ratings.
•Employee import feature that allows you to import your existing employee information to the system.
•Logo upload that lets you personalize the system and review templates to your specific organization.
Also, we will soon be launching our compensation recommendation tool. This enhancement will allow you to create recommended percentage increases for employees’ compensation based on overall ratings. This feature can be turned on or off at your discretion.
As you may know, ReviewSNAP360™, a complete 360 degree feedback module will be bundled with the current performance review solution. It will afford your organization the opportunity to gather important feedback from superiors, peers, and subordinates on employee levels including managers, team leaders, group supervisors, and other staff levels of your choice.
Our goal is to offer the most powerful and flexible system possible at the most affordable prices. Due to the recent enhancements and the imminent release of ReviewSNAP360™, annual subscription rates will be going up.
Since you are currently or have been a free trial member we are offering you the opportunity to subscribe to ReviewSNAP at the current subscription rates until 11/15/2008. If you do subscribe to ReviewSNAP prior to the 15th and don't exceed your initial employee limit, you will be locked in at that price for annual renewals.
Although our prices will be changing they will still remain the most affordable on the market and you will have access to the most powerful version of ReviewSNAP yet.
•eSignature to help you make your performance review process completely paperless.
•Comment suggestions to help managers/reviewers find just the right verbiage to support ratings.
•Employee import feature that allows you to import your existing employee information to the system.
•Logo upload that lets you personalize the system and review templates to your specific organization.
Also, we will soon be launching our compensation recommendation tool. This enhancement will allow you to create recommended percentage increases for employees’ compensation based on overall ratings. This feature can be turned on or off at your discretion.
As you may know, ReviewSNAP360™, a complete 360 degree feedback module will be bundled with the current performance review solution. It will afford your organization the opportunity to gather important feedback from superiors, peers, and subordinates on employee levels including managers, team leaders, group supervisors, and other staff levels of your choice.
Our goal is to offer the most powerful and flexible system possible at the most affordable prices. Due to the recent enhancements and the imminent release of ReviewSNAP360™, annual subscription rates will be going up.
Since you are currently or have been a free trial member we are offering you the opportunity to subscribe to ReviewSNAP at the current subscription rates until 11/15/2008. If you do subscribe to ReviewSNAP prior to the 15th and don't exceed your initial employee limit, you will be locked in at that price for annual renewals.
Although our prices will be changing they will still remain the most affordable on the market and you will have access to the most powerful version of ReviewSNAP yet.
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