THE SITUATION
Winsborough Limited is a specialised organisational development and consulting business. Part of the services they provide to help businesses raise their performance and effectiveness are various organisational surveys. The business tool that is ‘mission critical’ to Winsborough’s organisational and management surveys is a tool, aptly named Survey Builder, which can create surveys, encompassing several hundred question permutations relating to competencies, values, leadership, stress and resilience, culture, and other measures. Their current software tool was a bespoke application, written three years ago on an older version of Microsoft .NET. Its functionality was limited, a lot of tasks were manual and time consuming and it provided a very basic way of presenting information. Looking forward, Winsborough wanted to be in a better technology position for the future, and sought a partner with expertise in the latest Microsoft .NET 3 technology. Their own ‘survey’ of the market led them to select Intergen.
THE PAIN
Survey Builder, the tool that asks complex management and performance questions, now questioned its own performance. Did it have the functionality to support Winsborough moving forward? The answer was a Microsoft .NET 3 upgrade.
“The software that supports our Survey Builder tool is critical to our business. Functionality had lagged, the application was clunky and time consuming, and a .NET 3 upgrade presented the opportunity not only to improve functionality and ease of use, but to also create much better security avenues and a visual refresh to the tool at the same time.” Helen McLeay, Operations Manager, Winsborough Limited.
Winsborough didn't want a standard partner
Winsborough conducts 360°, climate and various other types of surveys for many high profile private and public organisations. Where Winsborough makes the difference is in how they distinguish themselves from other providers in customising and targeting their surveys and service to match a business’s needs rather than delivering a standard survey offering. The complexity of their surveys and the delivery of meaningful assessments threw a huge challenge on the table for Intergen’s development team.
As the primary user of the survey builder tool, Helen McLeay describes the challenge.
“Intergen won the business based on their proven Microsoft capabilities, but it was their attitude and way of working which impressed us. This was an extremely complex challenge, and I had very specific requests and wanted to be hands on with the development process. And that’s exactly how the .NET 3 upgrade unfolded – working as a team, and with Intergen’s development people literally living and breathing the task to make it happen.”
Let's survey the new functionality
The .NET 3 upgrade has delivered greater security mechanisms. An effective username and password procedure is now in place, providing clients with greater assurance of security.
Surveys are now easier to build, and the cut and dice ability to move around questions and information has led to considerable time savings. An upgrade at the back-end to AJAX allows for pages to make calls back to the server, compared with repetitive manual page selections in the past. A visual reskin has presented a much cleaner ‘look and feel’ to the Survey Builder, with professional, uncluttered layouts.
Improved reporting possibilities have allowed Winsborough to create reports which provide clear, succinct information and analysis for their clients. Helen McLeay comments on how the outcomes are more than just task-oriented.
THE GAIN
Improving the performance of its key Survey Builder tool is a well-targeted outcome that sits very comfortably with a business that specialises in improving performance outcomes for individuals and organisations.
“We have confidence moving forward, and the .NET 3 upgrade has put us in a far stronger position for future development; and we will continue on that path with Intergen.”