Witz Education Sees Rapid ROI with New 360 Degree Feedback Software

Witz Education is truly a company on the leading edge. They opened the doors on their leadership training center back when most people hadn’t yet heard the expression.

And today, they’re the only Gold-level Apple Certified training facility in Canada, also offering certified training on Adobe, Autodesk, and Ableton.

“We provide support to help people become better executives, better employees, better managers, better coaches,” says Olga Bodnar, VP Business Relationships. “From the CEO all the way down to front line staff.”

360 reviews critical to program

A critical component of the Witz flagship training program is the 360 degree review. Witz Education starts their training program with a 360 review called the MRPI (Multi-Rater Personality Inventory).

“We’ve been using 360 reviews for a long time here at Witz — well over 20 years,” Olga says. “We conduct it either according to our standard practice or according to client specifications.”

Witz Education used to manage the 360 on paper, until they decided to build their own online application. This suited them for several years until recently, when the costs of the custom system started to skyrocket.

Custom system expensive

“There has been increased security lately at offices around the world, and we’ve been having issues getting through firewalls,” says Olga. “And every time we run into an issue, we have to call up our programmer and ask for more development to fix it.”

It wasn’t just the cost. The system’s limitations were holding them back.

“We didn’t have any reporting options, which limited what we could do with the data,” she says.

“From a customer perspective, the technical issues were starting to reflect badly on our brand. As a training company, we really can’t afford to have any technical issues.”

“We also started to feel vulnerable. If our developer decided to leave, we had no one who could support us.”

Witz Education went looking for a replacement, an out-of-the-box application that could fit their unique needs.

Above all, they wanted to be sure they would be dealing with experts in the field of 360 degree reviews.

“We needed a flexible application that could fit our unique needs,” she says. “We have a different scoring system from most people, and we wanted a software system that could accommodate that.”

“We were really pleased that Explorance was willing to work with us on our specific needs.” 

Olga Bodnar, VP Business Relationships

A truly flexible system

After extensive research of the market, both here and in Europe, Witz Education selected the Blue 360 degree feedback software, a flexible system designed by experts in 360 reviews.

“We were impressed by a lot of things in Blue,” says Olga. “First, it looks really sleek. Second, they had an impressive client list. And then there were details like WCAG compliance for visually impaired or color blind raters. That kind of commitment to the customer experience is phenomenal.”

Explorance, makers of the Blue 360 degree feedback software, went out of their way to satisfy their customer’s requirements.

“We were really pleased that Explorance was willing to work with us on our specific needs. They provided some enhancements so that we could use our rating scales and other configuration options for our wide client base.”

Quick ROI, increased revenue

Once Blue was implemented, it didn’t take long for Witz to earn a return on investment (ROI).

“It took about five months for us to realize a return on our initial investment in Blue,” she says.“When we buy additional blocks of licenses, it takes us about one month to see ROI. And we continue to see added revenue from those investments.”

This spectacular performance is in large part because of the vision of the company, combined with an effective toolset provided by Explorance.

“We started out looking for a replacement for our 360 review application, which we needed to conduct operations,” says Olga. “But the more we learned about Blue, the more we realized what we could do with it. And we’ve actually expanded our own product portfolio as a result.”

Witz Education provides many types of assessments, in various languages to customers around the world.

“We’re now going to market with new products that we had on the back burner for awhile. As we got to know the complete Blue software package, we saw potential opportunities and started offering them to our client base,” she says.

“It is so easy to do. I create my survey in English, and the rater receives it in German, or whatever language we’re targeting.” she says.

Decreasing costs

After a year of use, Blue has helped not just increase revenue for the training center but also decrease costs.

“Blue has been a huge cost saving,” she says. “It used to take me a day and a half to run a project for around ten people. With Blue, it takes me an hour and a half. Productivity has gone up tremendously.”

“Most importantly, our professional reputation has vastly improved. We’ve had about 2000 people who have touched the system now, and out of those, only two, who were based in locations where internet access is less reliable, had trouble accessing the forms.”

“You can’t put a price on that,” says Olga.

Building a true partnership

Witz Education has built a true partnership with Explorance. Whether for sales or technical support, Witz is thrilled with the support they receive. 

“We love and value the relationship we have with Explorance. There’s not a single individual that I’ve contacted that I haven’t been extremely satisfied with,” says Olga.

“Explorance is more than just a provider. I rely on them to keep us informed on new features and capabilities, especially ones we haven’t thought of yet. We’re very excited about the opportunities we see ahead for us.”

“They’ve not only met our needs, they’ve exceeded our expectations,” she concludes.