The best possible 360 feedback in the least possible time

How much should you pay for 360 Software?

You can find our own prices here or otherwise read on below for tips on what you should be paying for your 360 feedback software;

1) Paper and spreadsheet based

The costs here are mostly in the development and administration time, together with some marginal print, postage and stationery expenses. A rule of thumb for setting up a simple Excel based spreadsheet able to generate a few charts to print to a pdf would most probably be in the order of a couple of days work for a reasonably competent Excel user. How you cost this depends on your internal cost structures, but I would suggest that a minimum of £200 would most probably be appropriate.

However the real cost is in the extended administration with this kind of system. We estimate that conservatively it would take about 3 man hours per report, to include all set up, user contact, postage, data input and report preparation, processing and distribution. Since this solution will mostly be in the province of very small organisations then, with a very conservative absorbed cost of £15 per hour, a single report would cost an organisation in the region of £40 to £60 per report. In larger organisation the costs will almost certainly be greater.

2) Shrink Wrap Systems

We have seen complete 360 feedback software packages from as little as £350 to over £10,000. The main differences between the top and bottom end tend to be around scaleability and feature set. Some shrink comes with a "kicker" in that although the software may be cheap you have to pay for each report or administrator seat on the system. This form of package appears to be less popular today than previously. In addition to the label price of the 360 feedback software watch out for maintenance and support costs, together with any associated training costs.

These can vary from a few hundred pounds to many thousands. If you are a small organisation then the cost of re-training a second person would be a wise contingency. Shrink wrap software should reduce the administration time per report including any set up or preparation time, to anything from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on the degree of sophistication of the 360 feedback software, number of participants and the level of interaction with the participants.

Since this would generally be the province of medium to larger organisations I would suggest an absorbed benchmark of about £25 per hour. Thus giving an ongoing cost per report of somewhere between £5 and £13 excluding any training, seat or original purchase costs. if these are included and we take a nominal usage of say 250 reports a year, then the actual cost may be anywhere between £10 to £30 per report.

3) Online Systems

There a plethora of payment packages for online systems. All tend to offer significant discount for higher volume usage. Variations include such terms as cost per questionnaire (about 10 questionnaires for one report), per report, we have even seen cost per keystrokes entered, there are also additional set up costs or special report costs can also be a burden as well as licence models either on time or usage.

In general however a user should expect to pay around £50 per report for a full managed service (including all set up and additional costs) for low to medium volume reports. Very low volumes (1 to 15) can vary enormously, but it would not be unusual to pay around the £100 mark at this level of usage. DIY online services should attract a discount of about 50% from this level, so a benchmark figure for a DIY service would be about £25 per report at this level, but don't forget to add your own internal costs of administration.

The market is very broad and very competitive, so once you have decided that a particular supplier suits your profile then you should comfortably be able to negotiate a discount from any advertised pricing (from those honest suppliers that actually do tell you their prices). Our simple rule of thumb is that if a supplier will not advertise their prices on thier web site, walk away In order to compare 360 Feedback suppliers always consider the total cost of acquisition, including internal costs of administration and non recurring set up and purchase costs. Always aim to arrive at a total cost per delivered report.