I come from a world of Analytics and Business Intelligence. A world where we mostly take transactional information generated by various operational systems, and more recently sensors, such that we can try to understand the past, predict the future and then take actions where necessary to affect the future outcome.

In that world we try to understand and predict, through analytics, things such as which employees are likely to leave next, understand which customers are likely to churn as they undertake their journey with the company and understand which customers are likely to abandon their shopping cart. In all these cases we are trying to spot things early such that we can take proactive action to prevent the predicted outcome occurring, where it makes sense to intervene, through the use of analytics.

There is no doubt that Analytics can help you understand what is likely to happen next, and who it might affect, such that you can take proactive action. One question often still remains and that is WHY? The Why is important as it lets you attack issues at the source not just be focused on dealing with the symptom.

1. Why is it that a customer is thinking to churn or has churned?
2. Why is it that an employee is thinking to leave or has left?
3. Why is it that a customer decides to abandon their shopping cart or abandoned it?
4. Why is it that one part of a process seems to run slowly no matter how you optimize it?

Of course sometimes you might spot patterns, via your analytics, which suggest a cause (the why) and you can investigate being wary of things such as correlation does not always equal causation.

Having said that the bottom line is that to answer these questions, with confidence, you need more than just access to quantitative data – you require also qualitative data. You need insights that come from gathering information, or feedback, from people.

How many organizations go about getting that today is varied but most do it in an ad-hoc manner or based on the gut feel of the Hippo (HIghest Paid Persons Opinion) interpreting the outcome with no specific process or standardized approach.

It is my opinion that in order to be useful feedback needs to come with context, “in-time” and continuously. This allows organizations to understand the feedback it in an unambiguous way and take actions immediately which could completely alter the downstream outcome.

This is the aim of Enterprise Feedback Management Systems. With an Enterprise Feedback Management System organizations can be constantly gathering feedback, by being in lockstep with processes as required, providing context to what the transactional information might be telling them along with new insights which can be acted upon immediately.  With insights delivered constantly it becomes a strategic management tool with an operational impact!

Another much needed platform

Most organizations today have a number of different platforms in place to support their various needs. Many have a standard ERP system supporting operational processes, almost everyone has a standard productivity platform supporting things like email, presentations, collaboration etc and increasing most are looking at deploying an end-to-end analytics platform (encompassing data management, analytics and business intelligence). What I have not seen are many organizations thinking as seriously about systems to gather continuous feedback. This is despite the fact that what you learn via such a system might provide you your most valuable competitive weapon and a major new source of actionable insight.

I believe it might be time for organizations to consider a 4th platform. That 4th platform is the Enterprise Feedback Platform offered by Enterprise feedback Management Systems vendors to bring a consistent and more programmatic approach to the triggering, gathering, management and reporting of feedback.

Enterprise Feedback Management Systems

You may not have heard of Enterprise Feedback Management Systems so here are two definitions from Wikipedia and Techopedia.

“Enterprise feedback management (EFM) is a system of processes and software that enables organizations to centrally manage deployment of surveys while dispersing authoring and analysis throughout an organization” – Source Wikipedia

“Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) is an enterprise-wide and centrally panel managed system of processes and survey software that facilitates data collection, authoring, statistical analysis and reporting.” – Source Techopedia

Both of these definitions focus around organizations having a  structured process to collect information, often through the use of surveys, from people and to present those results back. I think in general they evolved more from the market research definitions.

What both fail to mention is that Enterprise Feedback Management brings human intelligence and information to decision making providing the WHY part of the answers to most of your questions on top of the who, when and what which you often get from traditional analytics.  They provide early warning systems of trouble ahead which you can deal with before it spirals out of control and might provide insights that make you sparkle compared to other organizations.

By understanding why, in context and “in-time”, such systems can help organizations make rapid adjustments based on identified root causes not just the downstream symptoms or outcomes which often cost a lot more to handle.

So what?

Taken at the level of just running surveys it looks pretty unspectacular. There are a lot of tools for running surveys. Why then would anyone think about investing in an Enterprise platform for running surveys?

The answer for me lies in if you see feedback as a strategic asset which, with the right platform, can help you make better decisions or if you see it is something you do to appease people. If you see feedback as a strategic asset then you need a robust centralized platform to manage feedback across the organization just as you need the other platforms and you  use in the organization.  This goes beyond running a survey even if that is a large component. If it is a strategic asset then:

1. You need to be able to integrate with all the other major platforms to put the collection of feedback into the workflow of the organization. Operational applications need to be able to trigger feedback requests as part of their process execution to spot issues early and in a timely manner and feedback needs sharing into transactional systems such as call center apps for example.
2. You need to ensure that feedback from all channels related to a customer, employee, partner, product etc is captured in one place consistently and securely. This will allow you to capture experience over time and know when t was provided and what was happening then.
3. You need to have a consistent approach to the creation, delivery and capture of feedback so you can manage, govern and report on it in a standardized manner. Too often today surveys are run in a one off manner and then reported on. From then on people focus on the summary not the details at an individual level.
4. You need to be able to analyse feedback over time to look for trends just like we do in our transactional data today. This includes the ability to handle changes in things like organizational hierarchies which inevitably occur over time and look at data across various surveys grouping up into departments or on a process or a product.
5. You need to be able to embed the gathering of information into business processes in a non-obtrusive manner and have feedback collected on an ongoing basis not just once a year.
6. You need to be able to deliver the information you gather back via the other major platforms and into management dashboards.

These are just a few core points. Of course it is not all about technology. Once you have this platform you need to foster a culture of trust. One where feedback is taken as a constructive data point even when the feedback itself might seem destructive.

You need, in that culture, to have a mechanism to take action and to share what actions have been taken with those who provided input to close the loop. Essentially you need to move to a culture where constructive negative feedback is welcomed as much as positive feedback and where feedback does drive organizational action not organizational anger.

Conclusion

Often we overlook the source of a lot of knowledge. The people who our organizations, processes and colleagues interact with.

Through the use of Enterprise Feedback Management Systems I think companies can dramatically improve their qualitative knowledge and get to the WHY behind the What and the Who. That WHY will provide insights to help organizations attack the root cause of issues quickly and not keep applying the band aid to the end result.

It is for that reason that I think the Enterprise Feedback Management Platform deserves a parity with the BI/Analytics Platforms, ERP Platforms and Productivity Platforms that are core to running your organization today.

What do you think? How is your organization collecting and harvesting feedback today?