Feedback and Response Repository (FARR)
The Leadership Trust® approached O3 about a custom application after they were absolutely thrilled over their new website. The problem facing the Trust was a common problem across many offices across America: they had paper forms flowing all over the place which consumed time to reign in, validate, and sort. So many, in fact, that the Trust was thinking of hiring an additional staffer to help handle the process.
The process before O3
The Trust holds a monthly leadership and self awareness development course called the Personalized Leadership Development Program™. The course garners around 10 to 15 participants each month. These participants fill out a registration form in Microsoft Word format. This form is transmitted via email between the participant and the Trust staff. The Trust also sends a participant guide, also in Word format, as well as 3 pre-course assignments in, yep you guessed it, Word format. Between the participant and the Trust, there are 5 Word documents changing hands via e-mail. Multiply that by 5 and you get at least 50 to 60 e-mails per session.
That doesn’t sound so bad. But it gets worse.
Each participant provides information about people with whom he or she has worked closely with to get feedback that is instrumental throughout the course. Usually, 10 or 12 people are identified as respondents. The Trust transmits a feedback form via email to each of these 12 respondents per participant. That brings our Word document counter up to 100 to 120 plus the 50 to 60 from before: a whopping 180 Word document emails. You can probably already see the massive Outlook e-mail folder system used to keep track of all of these.
Then throw in the additional problem of spam boxes catching some Trust emails at times and the Trust’s spam box catching participant and respondent emails at other times and you have a bit of a logistical problem.
You can see the need for an additional staffer to handle… e-mail.
This way to the promised land!
The Trust now has a fully functional custom application managing each of these forms and the transmission of the forms between parties.
Instead of a Word document registration form, the Trust now clicks a button and an e-mail is automatically generated to a participant with a secured link to the registration form.
The participant fills out this form and creates a username and password. He or she can then log on and identify their respondents right inside the online system.
The Trust then can click a button to activate pre-work assignments and send secured links to the feedback forms to each of the participant’s respondents. The respondents fill out the form online and submit it without ever having to open an e-mail. A handy notification is sent to the Trust when a respondent has completed the feedback.
Now the entire pre-work for the course is stored online as well as all respondent feedback information.
Thus, FARR (Feedback and Response Repository) was christened and released.
Their return on investment was clearly evident: for less than the amount of hiring an additional person, the Trust now has an application that will be more efficient and more secure.
A few screenshots (click to enlarge)
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