How Do I Insure Participation

There are an enormous number of potential application areas for Profit Profiler and some participants will have concerns about the purpose to which the information being collected will be used. To address these concerns:

1.  It is recommended that you emphasize that no individuals workload is being reviewed and analyzed in the project. By it very nature activity sampling requires that data to be collected from a representative cross section of a population. Indeed it is highly unlikely that enough observations will be collected on any individual to make statistically valid conclusions on their activities.
   
   Profit Profiler also has an option whereby users can sign on anonymously by having multiple participants use the same sign on ID. This will limit the participation information on the daily status reports but will reduce your costs as your user setup fee will be minimized.
   
   

2. Explain clearly the business purpose to which the data is to be put e.g. to identify the time and cost spent supporting specific customers or products. Emphasize that Profit Profiler is going to measure and quantify the effort spent on specific processes and monitor progress and changes are implemented.
   
   Time and again we have found that the business objective can often be presented as a clear win-win opportunity if you seek participants input. In many cases the participants may be aware of issues but may not have the data available to quantify their concerns. Appropriately configured project prompts may highlight their issues and the ability to have users enter notes in activity logging are key features. 
   
   

3. Share the results via the report packages. Profit Profiler projects typically produce results very quickly compared to many other management initiatives. If the participants, or their representatives, are involved in the review of the results and involved in the decision making process their cooperation is more likely.
   
   

4. To support your Profit Profiler project you will be provided with a batch of static cling stickers which you can distribute to your projects participants. 

    

   

    

   The stickers are designed to be visual reminders to users not to forget that they are key contributors to the success of the Profit Profiler project.  

    

   Profit Profiler is designed to be unobtrusive – so much so that user can easily forget its there. For example in sampling projects users may be requested to make entries only two or three times an hour. In logging projects the user can be busy and forget to record the start or end of their activities by calling up the Profit Profiler screen.

    

   These small static cling stickers can be applied directly to the users monitor, phone, desk - wherever they choose as a visual reminder to them to complete their activity transactions.  If applied to a monitor they are often placed over a spot on the screen where they may click to complete a transaction – say over the Save button.

    

   The stickers are easily removable and can be reused indefinitely.