comQuest Benefits
Providing back-up on how an organisation is performing on sustainable reporting is typically outside of the ability of today’s reporting systems. This is because information comes in a variety of formats (text, documents, comments, tables, as well as a range of numeric values), the majority of which is unlikely to exist in current systems.
For these reasons, most organisations will put together a bespoke system using either a spreadsheet or a word-processed document. These too have their challenges which comQuest overcomes by:
| Capability | Spreadsheet Issues | comQuest Advantage |
|---|---|---|
| Data Collection:
Collecting the right information from the right people. |
You have a choice: you can either create a single template and hope that only those responsible for the right sections fill them in, or you create multiple documents that are specific to individual departments with all the subsequent time and effort that will require in maintenance and then bringing information back together for reporting purposes. | comQuest allows questions to be targeted at specific departments and users. The system then automatically makes sure that only those who should, see and report on those questions. All answers are stored in a central database which can then report across the organisations without having to manually combine data . |
| Submissions:
Making sure data is submitted in time. |
When a document is sent out to multiple people, there is no way to find out how far it has been completed, or any way apart from calling them, in which you enforce a deadline for its return. | comQuest constantly monitors who needs to submit data by which questions. The in-built alerting capabilities automatically remind users as to what is required so they can’t forget or omit data. |
| Version Control:
Ensuring everyone is using the right set of questions |
Document contents can be easily changed after they have been submitted leading to integrity problems. Similarly, users can use ‘older’ versions – how do you know that the version they used is the right one, apart from a laborious, manual intensive checking? | All questions and answers are stored in a central database – there is only one version. If changes are made to questions then they are automatically available to users. Once data has been approved, it is automatically locked against change which ensures what you can see is what they submitted. This is also backed up by the extensive audit trail that monitors what has been submitted, by who and when. |
| Content Control:
Controlling who sends what information at what time. |
It’s easy for someone to submit a partially completed form. This then requires more time and effort to check each form for completeness and to then ask users to submit any missing data, which can easily lead to deadlines being missed. | comQuest constantly monitors the status of submissions by question. As well as on-line alerting to users if questions are not completed, it will also perform basic validation on answers and ensure that only completed submissions can be approved. |
| Reporting:
Getting information out quickly and in the right format. |
Because of the diverse range of data, consolidation of submissions is a nightmare. These personal productivity tools were not designed to aggregate data – to do so requires complex macros, cell links between multiple documents, which in turn provide an error-prone maintenance headache. | comQuest includes a set of standard reports that access data as soon as it is entered. These preserve the formatting of questions and can combine data across users and organisational departments. |
| Analysis:
Turning data into information to support decisions |
Because of the large amount of text in answers, consolidating data across time and organisation structure is difficult. Turning this into scorecards becomes a laborious manual exercise, where data is copied from the original questions and do not necessarily reflect the latest results. | comQuest comes with a powerful ad-hioc reporting and analysis system that works directly from submitted questions. This allows data to be consolidated (including text) and that drive scorecards and other graphics but without any loss of integrity. These can be used to update analyses that exist in Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. |
