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A Brief History

A fire department board was looking for a way to evaluate the job performance of their officers. So they put together a committee and developed a set of questions.

For years they had tried to create their own paper and pencil survey program. The respondents did not feel that their identity would remain anonymous and were hesitant to take the survey.

The board put together a committee with representatives of different ranks and developed a set of questions. They were unsuccessful in automating the process. They then came to us and asked if we could write a program that can do the job and assure anonymity for the respondents.

Originally we developed a set of survey codes that had to be randomly hand-picked from a container. Those codes were used to enter the evaluation program. A time limit of 30 days was set for everyone to take the survey.  Our program was set up on the department's server and respondents were able to take the survey at any time, day or night.  The feed back from our program was very positive. We developed a report that averaged the scores across the questions, per question and for the entire survey. Unanswered questions were not used in the calculations of the average score.

We felt we could do better with the anonymity. So, we created an onboard code selector which required a secret word to automatically generate a survey entry code for each individual.  We felt that, if they forgot what their code was, there needed to be a way for them to recover the code. So, we created a module that, when the respondents re-entered their secret word, their code would automatically be revealed to them. This helped to ensure their anonymity and allow for a more honest and un-intimidated response.

After completion of the initial survey, we received only one request for changes. That request was to increase the font size in the final report so that it would be easily read when projected to a large screen.

At this point, we realized that we had a viable program that could be customized to fit most any organization, whether it were a special district such as a fire or police department or a large corporation.  The next step was to develop a more general program to fit public and private entities. Testing was extensive. Numerous "bugs" were found and corrected. Each step took us closer and closer to the complete program. Finally, we felt that we had developed a program that is secure, adaptable and sound.

The result of this endeavor was to produce a generic program for smaller groups or businesses and to provide several other programs with great flexibility as far as questions and number of users. Realizing that not everyone would want to ask the same questions, we built a question editor that is available in our larger programs.

Our programs are designed to run in Microsoft Windows Operating Environments. Realizing that not every computer will have the proper software to run our program, we've included a "run time" module which can be quickly, safely and easily installed if necessary.

We are currently receiving requests for the ability to evaluate multiple positions within the same survey and we are adapting our programs as these requests come in. We are able to keep our costs down because of the basic structure of our programs and the flexibility of the data engine we've developed for this process.

Now, our programs are easily downloaded from our website, seamlessly installed on most any business computer and quick to setup, compile and produce results.