Outsourcing Issues That Make or Break Your 360 Survey

You are minutes away from a critical deadline. After days of work and only a few clicks away from success - your computer system freezes. Recovery and damage control grab your focus. Eventually, you get everything back but you’ve missed the deadline. Stress is high and frustration palpable because a system you depend on momentarily failed.

When systems work properly, they are hardly noticed. When they break, it can be catastrophic. It’s the same with multi-rater feedback. A 360 vendor provides a critical data collection and reporting system that can determine the success or failure of your 360 efforts. If the vendor’s process is flexible, user friendly and convenient, it’s hardly noticed. You get credit for the success. If the vendor runs into trouble, the whole process can be brought in question. Choosing the right vendor can mean the difference between the success and failure of your 360 efforts.

Most 360 vendors claim a depth of experience - so how do you select the best fit for your organization? Flexibility, control and real cost are concrete tests you can use to determine which vendor can truly meet your needs.

Flexibility

Flexibility does not mean a process with extraneous bells and whistles. Flexibility means delivering a process that fits your organization’s culture, communication style and timeline. Flexibility includes data gathering features, report design and delivery, customer support and online tools - all of which give you instant information and genuine process control.

Complications pop up in most 360 surveys. People change jobs, lose emails, invite the wrong raters, want to change their answers and sometimes can’t use their web browser. A slow or ambiguous response from the vendor taints your user’s experience. When the vendor’s reaction is fast, simple and effective, the complication becomes a non-event.

A bad user experience creates frustration, which can turn to skepticism. Technical problems, complicated data entry, time consuming instructions or lack of help for participants may cause people to question everything – including the value of the feedback or even the leadership’s commitment to improvement.

A positive user experience has a halo effect on the organization’s change effort. A simple, responsive process communicates commitment to getting feedback and implies that the organization’s leadership is willing to listen and thus, willing to change. A good 360-feedback process increases the credibility of the organization and its leaders in the eyes of employees.

The quality of the user experience impacts participation. Some vendors force their clients into a ‘one size fits all’ process, which may include:

• unnecessary steps, causing the process to feel inconvenient.
• unfamiliar terminology, creating a confusing experience.
• long instructions, making the process tedious.

Consider respondents without web access. Paper surveys are a common alternative but data collection becomes very slow. The headache of distributing, tracking, and collecting paper surveys is painful. Some vendors integrate web and phone data collection. This solution provides simple, easy access to everyone, without sacrificing speed.

Flexibility in report design and delivery is also critical. Being able to quickly pull meaning from reports creates a natural momentum toward change. When action items leap off the page, people know how to move forward. Great reports provide a complete analysis and presentation of feedback, and must reflect your organization’s culture, language and communication style. In today’s demanding world, if executives have to slog through an unclear report to extract what to do next, the report becomes an obstacle to learning rather than a road map to improvement. The value of the feedback is lost.

Reports should enhance your brand identity, not the vendor’s. Your logo, colors and corporate identity should be preeminent. 360 feedback is one of many leadership initiatives being used to achieve the organization’s mission and goals. The look, feel and language of the reports need to communicate your leadership’s commitment to change and alignment with the other organizational initiatives. The vendor’s process should be flexible enough to produce any design your organization develops.

Control

Retaining a vendor to collect and report feedback should not mean relinquishing control of the process or ownership of your data to your vendor.

Your organization needs control of your data. You have paid a vendor to collect and report it. Your data belongs to you - not the vendor. One major telecommunications corporation worked with a vendor for two years before choosing to include historical data in its reports. The corporation was stunned to discover that the vendor not only charged for pulling, analyzing and loading the historical data, but also charged an extra fee every time the data was used. The vendor claimed ownership of the data and charged the corporation every time the data was used. The corporation was at the mercy of the vendor and couldn’t switch vendors without paying high fees or losing their historical data.

Ownership of your data not only gives you control of what happens with the data, it gives you the ability to switch vendors if you become dissatisfied. Some vendors will insist that they own your data if they collect it. Be aware of this critical distinction. If your vendor ‘owns’ your data, accessing your data or changing vendors may be difficult. Review the fine print of the contract and make sure you understand the implications of data ownership before you sign.

Some vendors have developed excellent contracting skills. Once they make the sale, they focus on the strength of the contract instead of the quality of service. Negotiate for short-term contracts and include the ability to cancel the contract if you are not satisfied with the service.

Your internal survey administrator, the project leader in your organization, needs control of the process. Your administrator should be able to:

• choose which tasks s/he wants to do and which tasks the vendor should do.
• have access to online admin tools that provide information needed to monitor progress and answer executives’ questions quickly. Senior executives usually have lots of questions.
• use the online admin tools to make changes without having to call the vendor.

The vendor’s customer service translates into your administrator’s control when issues are resolved quickly and solutions work the first time. Your survey administrator should have a single point of contact with your vendor. If your administrator calls the vendor to resolve an issue or request an action, you want immediate attention. Imagine the stress and frustration if your administrator calls the vendor, gets transferred from department to department, then after finally reaching the right person, can’t be guaranteed a timetable to resolve the issue in question. Administrators need timely support they can count on.

Cost

The organizational cost of doing a 360 extends far beyond just the financial cost. Collecting and reporting 360 feedback is much like hiring a professional to manage your investments. Wise investments reap great rewards. Flawed or poorly managed investments cause pain. The costs of a faulty 360 process can be high, such as lost credibility, wasted resources, distraction, and poor results. Your focus is diverted to resolving problems instead of using the feedback to drive change. When the feedback process runs smoothly, the organizational resources needed to support the process are minimal.

Choosing the right vendor from a financial perspective involves more than selecting the lowest price bid. Many vendors use an ‘all inclusive’ report price. Examine what’s included in that report price. The longer the list of chargeable items, the more likely you are to be blind-sided with extra charges you did not expect.

Take the time to pose ‘what if’ scenarios to potential vendors. See if their pricing model is flexible enough to handle problems that may arise without increasing the price. You should be able to set a budget based on the number of people who will receive feedback, and stay within that budget. If you are charged each time for unexpected events (individual invitations, reminder emails, etc.), your budget is in trouble.

Selecting the Right Vendor for Your Organization

Outsourcing the 360 feedback process assures participants that their feedback will remain anonymous. Outsourcing unburdens your organization and lets your leadership focus on using the feedback to drive change. Vendors whose core business is gathering and reporting 360 feedback can provide a process that is proven. Once you’ve found the process you like, talk to the vendor’s customers. Ask about flexibility, control and cost -- then examine whether they build their relationships based on the quality of their service or the strength of the contract.

Like the computer you use every day, your 360 vendor can be the difference between success and frustration. The right vendor will bring you the benefit of years of experience, and ensure that your experience is positive, creating a feedback process that drives change and keeps your project under budget. Take the time to do your research, experience potential vendors’ demos, look at their reports and scrutinize their pricing models. The right vendor will be a long-term partner in the success of your organizational improvement.