June 14, 2011
Redefining the New Workflow
Redefining the New Workflow
BPM: Improving the Way You Process
By Jim Minihan
Etymology is the study of words and their history. For a society to function, words have to have meaning
that can be consistently used to convey our thoughts. Work and flow are two different words that became
the compound word "workflow" with regards to manufacturing activities and the operation of production lines.
In this use, the reference focused on how an item was produced through a series of value-added steps at
various job stations until it was completed. Manufacturers are very focused on gathering data along a
production line so that they always know what the performance is at every point. This is essential to
determining not only cost but knowing where your bottleneck is when it comes time to ramp up output.
When document imaging systems came along, it became necessary to manage the image objects to account for what was being accomplished vis-à-vis the transactions these documents were used to initialize. The marketing machines were cranked up, and workflow as a software application class was the hot item you wanted to be associated with. Suddenly, everything was workflow. The compound word with a long history was becoming meaningless, so much so that the real workflow applications (the ones that accumulated performance metrics) had to flee the term and move on to the now popular "process management" to differentiate themselves from the now-diluted term.
Recently, I have started following a new type of software application that is focused on gathering data about the use of a PC workstation by a person during the course of the workday. While doing so, I started to think, Is this workflow of a different sort? While the creators of these products present them differently, the intent of these applications seems to go beyond simply following the activities of the worker for security purposes and understand what amount of time is expended using which applications available to them. The typical office worker has dozens of applications at their disposal, and some cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars per seat. It is not uncommon for an organization to have as much as 30% of the software seats they have purchased for a given application completely unused...
Read more of Jim's article at
DOCUMENT Media.
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April 08, 2011
AFEI Technology Lunch
It’s just technology – and lunch!
Date: April 19, 2011
Time: 11:30 AM till 1:00 PM
Doing Business in 2011 A.W. (After WikiLeaks)
Featured speaker is FBI IT Security Executive Dan Hill
The US Secret Service last year pointed out that 48% of all security breaches in 2009 were attributed to users who abused their rights to access corporate information (the insider threat). How can we detect this type of behavior before the data is stolen or misused?
Join us for a lunchtime conversation about an approach to reducing this problem that does not target or place restrictions on employees. This is particularly important in situations where the work site is remote – in the field, or in the tele-worker’s home office.
Bring your Windows™ laptop! With a wireless connection you can participate – right then! – in a simple demonstration of Information Assurance and Continuous Validation technology. You’ll see first-hand how better defensive tactics can work for your organization.
Sponsored by Intensity Analytics ( intensityanalytics.com)
Location: NDIA Offices, 2111 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA.
While this event is complimentary, Seating is limited to 50.
Please RSVP via email to Tammy Kicker at tkicker@afei.org
We look forward to your participation!
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January 25, 2011
Meeting the Challenge of Trust in Teleworking
Intensity Analytics Launches New Work Receipting Service
Meeting the Challenge of Trust in Teleworking
Warrenton, Virginia - (January 25, 2011) - Intensity Analytics has launched a new service aimed at helping employers and employees meet the challenge of accountability in the digital workplace.
Remote offices, flextime, and telework arrangements are increasing the number of situations in which managers and employees can’t interact face-to-face. How do managers overcome the concern that "away from my desk" really means "not working"? And how do employees overcome the worry that "out of the office" means "out-of-the-loop?"
Intensity Analytics’ service, workreceipt.com, is based on the everyday, retail practice of providing a customer with a purchase receipt showing the details of a transaction. A WorkReceipt™ is a record of computing effort expended over the course of a day, automatically collected, monitored and validated by a neutral, third party observer to the transaction, delivered via the web to both the employee and the employer. With a WorkReceipt™, both parties can be confident that the record is accurate and authentic.
Managers in commercial and government organizations already have been using Intensity to track labor productivity and right-size software/SaaS spend based on actual usage, and the new WorkReceipt.com platform is for organizations that want to measure computer use virtually instantly, with a few clicks.
"The factories of today are computers, and knowledge workers power the factories," said Bethann Rome, co-founder of Intensity. "If a knowledge worker costs say $75K per year for salary, benefits and support, then $120 per year ($10 per month) is a small price to pay to measure what is getting worked on and when. Intensity collects and provides this critical information in a manner that is fully transparent to both the Manager and the Employee. For Managers who seek to enable and validate telecommuting, figure out where to add manpower, and keep an eye on throughput, WorkReceipt.com is ideal."
On December 9, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Telework Enhancement Act (H.R. 1722), aimed at increasing telework in the federal government, with an implementation date of June 7, 2011. Across the U.S. workforce, about 25% of computer work is done remotely, according to Forrester Research.
"We’ve worked with Intensity since its formation and have been impressed with its software," stated Michael Atkins, CEO of Strategic Marketing Ventures, Inc, a software and business process outsourcing company. "By integrating their WorkReceipt into our solutions, we assist clients manage governance, risk management and regulatory compliance."
The new platform at workreceipt.com works like this, say for Acme Industries:
- Manager purchases "n" seats at $10/month — so if for 25 employees, the cost is $250/month on a credit card, charged on a month-to-month basis.
- Manager then guides his/her employees to a password-protected page at workreceipt.com/acme where each relevant employee downloads and installs the featherlite Intensity app in about 30 seconds. The app never sees what users type, their screen content or filenames.
- Anytime: Manager logs-in to his/her Admin account at workreceipt.com to see what his/her employees are doing on their computers right now, or over the past day/week/month.
The Intensity app sees the name of the application(s) running on each computer, what time the application started/ended, and whether one is active in the application (foreground), idle in the application or off. Intensity measures local software such as Excel, networked software such as SAP, and use of the Web (either as a broad category or at the individual URL level).
About Intensity Analytics
Intensity invented the WorkReceipt™, and delivers an industrial strength SaaS architecture combined with a featherlite app for each Windows computer that reveals the totality of computer use in an organization. Founded in August, 2010, the firm is based in Warrenton, Virginia and backed by an experienced team with a track record of software and SaaS success. See intensityanalytics.com and workreceipt.com for more information, or contact Bethann Rome at 540/349-0454, or brome@intensityanalytics.com.
About Strategic Marketing Ventures, Inc.
Strategic Marketing Ventures, Inc. ( www.smvbpo.com) is a global business process outsourcing company that specializes in software. For additional information contact: Michael Atkins 540-349-8888 or matkins@smvbpo.com.
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January 07, 2011
Intensity & Cohorts
What's a cohort?
- an ancient Roman military unit of 300-600 men, constituting one tenth of a legion
- a band of soldiers
- any group or band
- an associate, colleague, or supporter: one of the mayor's cohorts
- a conspirator or accomplice
- a subgroup sharing a common factor in a statistical survey, as age or income level.
The predominant activity of our era, of course, is computer use.
And Intensity has a featherlite desktop app that accumulates data on Windows computers without human effort. Then, as instrumented in a secure web or Excel 2010 dashboard or rolled up to an IT Systems Management platform, it serves Enterprises as they seek to optimize labor and reduce software/SaaS spend. And it serves Market Researchers as they aim to understand computing behavior.
Groups of users in our world are called COHORTS. Admins see reporting on a set of like users: their COHORT. A COHORT could be the Inside Sales Team at Acme Corporation, or a targeted set of users for Market Research such as Males / 40-49 years old for say a large insurer.
Once you enable a COHORT - that is, have each user download the Intensity app or push it to their desktop via IT infrastructure in an enterprise - you're a couple clicks away from then seeing snappy COHORT reporting, both real-time and historical.
You can add/delete COHORT members as needed. And we are enabling COHORT sizes of as few as 5-10 users, up to thousands of users, in the Enterprise & Market Research realms.
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December 10, 2010
Intensity Analytics Offers Teleworkers and
Telework Managers a Power Tool
The Day After President Obama Signs the Telework Enhancement Act, the New Intensity Offering Goes Live
Warrenton, VA (December 10, 2010) – Intensity Analytics Corporation has added telework reporting capabilities to its Desktop Analytics offering.
President Obama on December 9, 2010 signed into law a bill aimed at increasing telework in the federal government.
Under the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act (H.R. 1722), agencies will have 180 days to establish a policy on working outside the office, identify eligible employees and inform them of the option. The law also requires agencies to name an official to manage telework programs, and incorporate the policy into plans for continuing essential services during natural disasters or other emergencies.
Intensity Analytics offers a featherlite app (Intensity™) that accumulates data on the use of Windows computers without human effort – giving both workers and managers a way of both seeing how much effort they have invested in getting their work done. This two-sided view builds trust within the organization.
“The irony of commuting today is you might drive 10, 20, 50 miles or more only to log into the web at the other end, and access SaaS platforms to do your job,” said Bethann Rome, co-founder of Intensity. “The Intensity app tells managers what a user does when, while never seeing screen content or anything that’s typed. So if a user is using a cloud-application like salesforce.com, management can see the number of active hours per day or per week. And the same is true if the worker is using a local program like Excel, or a networked program such as Oracle. Moreover, the Intensity app provides a layer of security for remote workers, continuously monitoring to authenticate the identity of the user.”
For prospective telecommuters who hope to inspire management to allow working remotely, the app can be downloaded for free from www.tickstream.com (password = telework). The app produces a single-user report that can function as a Telework Receipt™. The idea is that the prospective teleworker can show management their at-home productivity, to help inspire a green light for telework.
About Intensity Analytics
Intensity invented the TickStream™, and delivers an industrial strength SaaS architecture combined with a featherlite app for each Windows computer that reveals the totality of computer use in an organization. Founded in August, 2010, the firm is based in Warrenton, Virginia and backed by an experienced team with a track record of software and SaaS success. See www.intensityanalytics.com and www.twitter.com/tickstream for more information, or contact Bethann Rome at 540/349-0454, or brome@intensityanalytics.com
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November 19, 2010
The Totality of Computer Use
Of course, the number of visits to a given website such as Wikipedia.org is well-known. But what do homogenous groups of people actually do — what apps do they use — on their computers, throughout the day and night, on- and off-web? And with what relative bouncing around among tasks? About that — LITTLE is known.
According to comScore, in the U.S. alone there are 210 million Internet-connected computers at places of work and in homes. Some 90% of these use the Windows operating system.
Think about it— if you work eight hours per day and spend half this time at your computer, and then spend another 10 hours per week on your home computer, that’s 30 hours per week or about 1,500 hours per year. It’s a significant percentage of your waking hours.
And in 2010, computer usage is poised to surpass time spent watching TV in terms of just the ONLINE (web usage) component, not to mention the “using local or networked apps” component [SOURCE: Forrester Research]:
According to a June 2009 report by Houston-based The Media Audit ( www.themediaaudit.com), in the past three years, the average U.S. adult has nearly doubled daily use of the Internet from 2.1 hours per day online in 2006, compared to 3.8 hours in 2008, and a projected 5 hours per day in 2010. As a result, the Internet now represents 32.5% of the typical "media day" for all U.S. adults when compared to daily exposure to newspaper, radio, TV and outdoor advertising.
Remember, this is time spent just on the web, and doesn’t speak to the totality of computer usage, which is what Intensity tracks.
Intensity is focused on making computer usage more transparent and more efficient:
- Transparency means that marketers aiming at the home computer user, as an example, know what target customers do when and how on their PCs or laptops.
Remember, Intensity measures the totality of computer usage, not just web use. While the Intensity SaaS platform will be used to create a large, monolithic panel (the “Big Panel”), it can also be used to rapidly create narrowcast or Micro-Panels of as few as a hundred (100) users. So, a company that yearns to understand its target market better can enable a panel with a few mouseclicks, then sit back and watch the data roll in.
- Efficiency means getting more work done with the same computer-enabled users, or getting the same amount of work done with fewer users. It’s worth noting, too, that Intensity tracks what happens on a computer whether it’s manned, or not. These days, there are many millions of computers that crunch silently away at tasks sans a direct user.
Consider a company or division with 100 employees earning average salaries of $50K per year each, and assume the relevant “factory” is the aggregate computer usage of these employees. A 3% improvement in processing computer tasks would save $150K per year, or three FTEs, or allow the production of 3% more widgets at the prevailing price and gross margin.
At its core, Intensity is an information (data) gathering engine. Intensity’s accumulated data makes up what we call the TickStream™ – a record of activities, processes, clicks and pauses, both on-and off-the-web, as they happen in time (the “Tick’”). The interval from one tick to the next, and the next, is the TickStream™. This data is gathered with no human “data-entry” effort.
Analysis of the TickStream™ refines data into actionable intelligence, or knowledge. It’s fundamentally a broader way to look at what a user does on his PC or laptop (competitors tend to just look at web use, known as the “clickstream”) and a deeper way to look at what a user does on his PC or laptop, all through the lens of what we call Cohorts.
More on Cohorts in our next post here.
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October 22, 2010
Cost Allocation with Intensity
It was hard enough to allocate computing costs pre-Intensity - workers spent an indeterminate amount of time on computing tasks, and this represented an opaque amount of software and other IT costs.
With our featherlite app for Windows computers you can track the use of programs, machines and staff. Installed on PCs and laptops, the Intensity app faithfully sends encoded (READ: Triple DES encryption) information about resource utilization to a central reporting server. There, widespread operational data is consolidated into actionable insight.
Interested in allocating costs based on relative consumption? Wanting to optimize your investment in IT infrastructure? Aiming to understand the knowledge worker labor cost pre- and post-cloud? Check into using Intensity. With a few clicks you place our app on 2-n Windows computers, and then sit back and watch the (revealing) web-based reports roll in.
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October 08, 2010
The Great Migration
The "Path of the Pronghorn" (a pronghorn looks like an antelope) in Wyoming is the migration route for the fastest land animals in North America. It's also the longest journey of any animal in the continental United States, and is filled with threats. The Wildlife Conservation Society just announced they will observe the pronghorn on its annual 90-mile trek to evaluate the dynamics of their population, as well as obstacles the animals face as they travel to and from their summering areas.
Similarly, one of the greatest migrations in technology history is ongoing now, from local and networked software to SaaS and the cloud.
Commercial and government organizations alike are using Intensity to understand and optimize this colossal trip. By deploying the featherlite Intensity app on Windows computer pre-, during and post- the inevitable migration from mostly local/networked software to SaaS/cloud, management can understand just what their employees use, how often and how much. For example, does an organization with 100 Oracle CRM seats need the equivalent post-migration ... or perhaps far fewer? With Intensity the grand opportunity to save money as a function of this migration can be realized, and maximized.
Gird your organization for the Great Migration from software on your side to software on the outside.
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September 17, 2010
Welcome, Anthropologists!
Anthropology is the study of humanity, and our Intensity app on multiple computers and the resulting report can help you understand just how a group of users at your company, or a group of your customers behaves.
Think about it -- for most of us, keyboarding and mouse-clicking on our PCs or laptops is the predominant activity of our waking hours, at work and at home.
With the featherlite Intensity app on 2-n computers, you can be staring at a secure web dashboard that helps you understand what your users do when and how.
Say you own a big wholesale flowers/plants company, selling to nurseries. You have thousands of buyers, and your target market is even bigger. With Intensity, you can ask a sample set of your users to share their computing habits while completely maintaining their anonymity. The app never sees what they type or screen content. But the TickStream data (on and off-web use) is aggregated and displayed for you in your very own report, on the web.
The report shows what the sample set is doing right now, and their history. And with what we call our CATEGORIZER, you can roll software and/or websites up into categories. Say you're interested in the extent to which your target customers use accounting software or SaaSes, because you want to make it easier for them to log their flowers/plants purchases. You can say that QuickBooks, Great Plains, Rightnow.com (a SaaS), etc. are a category called "CUSTOMER ACCOUNTING." Then, once you see how/when they do accounting, you can drill down to find an integration partner(s). You get the idea.
Know thy users by knowing what they're doing on their computers day in and day out.
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September 03, 2010
Snacking vs. Dining
Intensity has a featherlite app that tracks the totality of usage on Windows computers, on- and off-web. The app never sees what users type; we do no keystroke logging. We do measure ?intensity??mouse moves and the number of keystrokes, all per unit time. We call this the TickStream.
As such, for 2-n computers, Intensity helps market researchers address a not-small problem: Snacking or Dining?
Most software programs and SaaS platforms are designed for focused use with a focused duration measured in hours, what we call dining. But that's not the modern condition. We are seeing that users bounce around among multiple local software programs (and networked software, in the workplace) and websites. Even as I type this blog entry in Microsoft Word, I'm listening to iTunes while occasionally tweeting @tickstream and peering into our Salesforce.com account.
Increasingly users are consuming software or websites snack-style, in short bursts measured in minutes, while multi-tasking with other computer diversions, be they work or non-work related.
You may know that Enterprises are using Intensity to track what we call "Predominant Use." As in: We pay our Customer Service Reps to predominantly work (foreground activity) in Oracle CRM 9 am to 5 pm, Monday-Friday, with a break for lunch, and we get a web-based Intensity report to "trust but verify."
The report has both real-time and historical data.
Similarly, software and SaaS makers are using Intensity to peer in on a sample set of users to see precisely how their platform is consumed by these users. Specifically, once they put the Intensity app on 2-n computers with user consent, we deliver a secure web-based report that shows PRECISELY when their platform is consumed, for how long each time, and with what level of distractedness (i.e., simultaneous activity of other software or websites).
Contact us to begin learning JUST how your users consume your software or SaaS. The results will be a powerful guide to how you promote your offering, and develop future iterations.
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August 20, 2010
Getting RoI out of TCO
Here's a great post speaking to TCO - the Total Cost of Ownership of computers: Comparing and Selecting Solutions.
There are two major aspects to the cost of computing once the Windows PC or laptop is purchased - labor, and software/SaaS/database spend. Examples: Software is Oracle CRM or Microsoft Word (networked or local). SaaS is, emblematically, Salesforce.com. And paid databases are Lexis-Nexis and the like.
Quick math can yield a sense of the RoI that can come from implementing the Desktop Analytics solution that is Intensity.
Say you pay the average computer worker $4K/month. And say your spend on software/SaaS/databases per computer is the typical $300/month.
If Intensity gets you a 10% productivity gain, that's $400 per month per employee (10% of $4,000). And if Intensity helps you identify over-licensing on software/SaaS/databases to the tune of 20%, that's another $60/month (20% of $300), for a GRAND TOTAL of $460 per employee per month.
So you have just 100 employees? This is a positive effect of $46K per month, or $552K. Hello, half a million dollars per year.
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August 05, 2010
Warrenton, Virginia Firm Launches: Intensity Analytics Corporation
Firm Offers a Featherlite App for Windows Computers and Accompanying Back-End SaaS for Tracking the Totality of Computer Use to Help Enterprises Find New Efficiencies
Warrenton, VA (August 5, 2010) – Intensity Analytics Corporation (Intensity) has launched, with a focus on Desktop Analytics. The Intensity executive team also founded Imaging Acceptance Corp. (IAC), formerly of Warrenton, Virginia, and now part of Anacomp.
The firm offers a featherlite app that accumulates data on Windows computers without human effort. Then, as instrumented in a secure web dashboard, it serves organizations in these profit-strapped times to find productivity improvements, continually validate computer usage, and optimize their software/SaaS/database spending.
A key target area for Intensity is telecommuting initiatives. The Intensity app can be placed on the computers of telecommuters, such that management can then see a “Predominant Use” report in a secure web dashboard, showing live and historical data.
“Many government and commercial organizations want to support telecommuting, as long as they can ‘trust but verify,’” said Bethann Rome, co-founder of Intensity. “The beauty of our Predominant Use report is that for an aggregate group, and individual users, it shows by day-part what application or website is being used. So of course an employee can still check the weather on the web or work in Microsoft Word as needed, but if management seeks use of an Oracle CRM application as the core employee computer activity, it shows up on the report as the employee’s major foreground activity, as relevant.”
The Intensity app tracks the totality of computer use, both activity on the web, and of local or networked software— what Intensity calls the TickStream™. It never sees what users type, or any content on any screens. Management receives real-time reporting in a secure web dashboard, showing activities of the team, and individual users.
The TickStream™ data typically is stored in the Intensity data center, but some customers choose to store the data on premises, using a rackable NT appliance running SQL Server.
About Intensity Analytics
Intensity invented the TickStream™, and delivers an industrial strength SaaS architecture combined with a featherlite app for each Windows computer that reveals the totality of computer use in an organization. Founded in August, 2010, the firm is based in Warrenton, Virginia and backed by an experienced team with a track record of software and SaaS success. The company is privately funded. See intensityanalytics.com and twitter.com/tickstream for more information, or contact Bethann Rome at 540/349-0454, or brome@intensityanalytics.com.
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July 30, 2010
Desktop Analytics
Desktop Analytics is not new; it first gained traction in the Call Center space.
Desktop Analytics is about tracking the totality of computer use -- not just where a user goes on the web, but what local and networked software is accessed.
Tracking web use is called the clickstream. It tends to be very "websites-in." That is, with reasonable fidelity users' web clicks are counted, and thus it is known, for example, that CNN.com gets about 27 million unique users per month. Small sites tend to be undercounted, but the clickstream has been (at least grudgingly) accepted now for years.
Now players such as Intensity are looking beyond the clickstream -- to what we call the TickStream -- and moving Desktop Analytics beyond the Call Center space to any/all Enterprises, and into Market Research.
The TickStream is very "users-out." That is, with fidelity it tells you what a cohort of users does on and off the web per unit time. For an Enterprise, this tends to be about finding efficiencies, validating usage, and scrutinizing software/SaaS/database spend (READ: find what's under-utilized to save money).
For Market Research, it's about understanding the predominant activity of our era -- gazing into a computer screen. Imagine the value to a marketer of knowing what target customers do in order by daypart on their PCs and laptops, locally and on the web -- and with what relative simultaneity.
Intensity not only has a featherlite app for Windows computers that delivers steadfast Desktop Analytics, but a featherlite approach for managers at the Enterprise or in Market Research. At the secure admin dashboard we surface to managers, cohort activity can be seen in aggregate and by individual.
Web usage by the cohort can be seen broadly (that is, a label indicating just "on web"), or at the URL-level. Active use of software running on local computers (e.g., Microsoft Word) or the network (Oracle CRM) can be viewed. If your telecommuting Customer Service Reps are supposed to be primarily using Oracle CRM 8 am - 5 pm with one hour for lunch, this is easily confirmed. Trust, but verify.
You can see when computers are on and in use, on but idle, or off.
Ask us about our canned reports called PREDOMINANT USE and RANKED USE. With Intensity, you can have a Desktop Analytics dashboard set-up that faithfully reflects your team's or sample set's usage in a matter of just hours.
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July 23, 2010
Telecommuting Effectiveness
The House of Representatives passed HR 1722 this month, which creates government-wide regulations for teleworking and instructs each federal agency to come up with policies to promote telecommuting. The Senate has passed similar legislation.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said there were about 103,000 employees teleworking at least once a month in 2008, up slightly from the previous year but down from 140,000 in 2004.
The 2008 figure represents about 5% of the total federal work force of nearly 2 million, or 8.7% of those eligible for teleworking.
The legislation directs the OPM to issue regulations on teleworking and requires that agencies come up with policies permitting teleworking for up to 20% of the hours worked over two weeks.
The Obama administration has set a goal of having 150,000 teleworkers by 2011, and would like to see 500,000 teleworkers by 2014.
Our Intensity app and the industrial-strength SaaS behind it work both sides of the telecommuting coin. Say you want to telecommute, and show your boss you can be equally effective— or even MORE effective— working from home. Thus you download the free, featherlite Intensity app from www.tickstream.com, and show your boss your Story of You™ report each day, which will show precisely what you do predominantly for each two-hour period (we call this PU, or Predominant Use).
PU doesn’t mean you never pause to check the weather online, or check your kid’s homework status on the school website. It does mean that if your job is to work inside say Salesforce.com, or your employer’s networked in-house CRM, this is your major or predominant activity in terms of active foreground use on your Windows computer or laptop.
So sharing your Story of You™ report for each Monday-Friday for the period 8 am – 5 pm is like a “Telecommuting Receipt.” Your boss can see the unimpeachable record of your computer time— what you do when.
On the organization side, the Intensity app can be pushed to any/all computers, and managers can then make use of our Predominant Use report, which is delivered in a secure web portal.
The TickStream data can be stored on our side (“the cloud”), or in a rackable NT appliance at the organization’s data center.
Then (as an example), with a mouseclick a manager can take a look at his ten Customer Service Reps at day’s end, to see the predominant computer use across the team, and drill down to view individual users.
Of course, many tens of thousands of employees across the USA can avoid being strapped into a metal box and driving 25 and 35 miles a day to a place that involves sitting before a laptop or PC when it could be done at home. The only challenge is faithfully measuring the actual work output, which likely would only go up if up to an hour or two on America’s car-choked highways can be cut out.
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July 16, 2010
How Big a Sample Set?
You can project the behavior of your entire target market off a surprisingly small panel (what we call a “Micro-Panel”) of users equipped with the Intensity application, whereby what we call the TickStream™ is measured.
This is exactly what political pollsters do -- they ask a group of people a list of questions and based on the results, they draw conclusions about the population as a whole with those often heard disclaimers of "plus-or-minus 5%."
If you’re simply looking at one large group of people as a whole, the process of determining a random sample is very straightforward. You will need to know how many people are in the entire group (your target market) and how accurate you want your results to be, which is called "Statistical Confidence."
For example, if you aim for 90% confidence with an error of 4%, you are saying that if you were to conduct the same survey 100 times, the results would be within +/- 4% of the first time you ran the survey 90 times out of 100.
If you are not sure what sort of error you can tolerate and what level of confidence you need, a good rule of thumb is to aim for 95% confidence with a 5% error level.
Say that you serve 10,000 doctors in total, and regarding researching their computer activity, you’re willing to tolerate an error rate of plus-or-minus 5%.
Further, you want to know what Micro-Panel size you need to be 90%, 95% or 99% confident in your results.
Thus, your panel size needs to be as follows, per confidence level:
- 90% confidence: You need 265 doctors to download and install the Intensity app.
- 95% confidence: You need 370 doctors to download and install the Intensity app.
- 99% confidence: You need 622 doctors to download and install the Intensity app.
Say you could only live with +/- 3% as your error rate— then for 95% confidence, you’d need a far bigger panel than 370 doctors, one totaling 964 doctors.
Here are the needed sample sizes, then, for target markets (“populations”) of from 10,000 to 100 million users, at the plus-or-minus 5% error rate level. By sample size, we mean how many users you need to get to download and install the Intensity app on their Windows PC or laptop, to form your Micro-Panel. You’ll see that as you get to very large populations, the needed sample set size does not change much, if at all.
| Population Size | 90%
confident | 95%
confident | 99%
confident |
| 10,000 | 265 | 370 | 622 |
| 100,000 | 272 | 383 | 659 |
| 1,000,000 | 272 | 384 | 663 |
| 10,000,000 | 272 | 384 | 664 |
| 100,000,000 | 272 | 384 | 664 |
What if your market were all 300 million Americans, and you could only stomach a 3% error rate?
Then your Micro-Panel needs to be 756 to 1,843 users, as follows:
- 90% confidence: You need 756 users to download and install the Intensity app.
- 95% confidence: You need 1,067 users to download and install the Intensity app.
- 99% confidence: You need 1,843 users to download and install the Intensity app.
Here’s a calculator on the web that makes determining your sample size very easy. http://www.tinyurl.com/sampleset
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July 09, 2010
You’re Overspending on Software/SaaS/Databases
Intensity has a free, featherlite app that accumulates data on Windows computers without human effort. Then, as instrumented in a secure web dashboard, it serves companies in their objectives of increasing revenue, reducing costs and finding new aspects of competitive advantage.
Our app measures what we call the TickStream-- all computer activity, both on- and off-web, including local or networked applications, whether they are commercial or homegrown. The TickStream is about not only measuring what a user is doing when, but the extent to which he/she is also doing other computing tasks at the same time. We call this Simultaneity & Fragmentation.
The Intensity Ranked Use Report is a canned report with the purpose of helping organizations clip their software, SaaS and database license costs.
It’s a rare organization that is paying the right amount for software, SaaS platforms and databases that is actually needed and currently used by employees. It’s typical that organizations are over-paying by thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars per year, and the implementation of the featherlite Intensity app on Windows computers, and a monthly review of what we call the “Ranked Use” report is a fast route to material savings.
Think about where your company might be on the continuum below, whereby deployment of the
Intensity Ranked Use Report might find savings per employee of just $10/month up to $100/month.
For just 50 employees, this is a savings of $6,000 to $60,000 per year. For 500 employees, the savings could be measured in millions of dollars per year--
| Software / SaaS / database costs |
Overpaying by $10/mo per employee |
Overpaying by$50/mo per employee |
Overpaying by$100/mo per employee |
| 50 employees |
$6,000 |
$30,000 |
$60,000 |
| 500 employees |
$60,000 |
$300,000 |
$600,000 |
| 5,000 employees |
$600,000 |
$3,000,000 |
$6,000,000 |
The Intensity Ranked Use Report not only helps find savings you can achieve fast by right-sizing seat counts for software, SaaS platforms and paid databases, but it also gives management a very powerful tool to use in negotiating with salespeople from software, SaaS and database vendors.
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July 02, 2010
What’s the PU?
PU in Intensity Analytics terminology is Predominant Use. Our app tracks the totality of what a user does on his/her computer, both local or networked
software, and the web.
It never sees what anyone types, or any screen content.
The featherlite Intensity app is free, and our customers pay for web-based reports. A popular report is Predominant Usage, which shows per two-hour
time period what a group or individual is predominantly doing in foreground on the PC/laptop.
Say you want inside sales people working in Salesforce.com-- Intensity can confirm this. Sure, they can also pop out of salesforce.com to check the
weather at weather.com, or listen to iTunes in background, or access the company accounting software as needed, but the “PU” report shows what they do
most per 2-hour period— that’s what you pay ‘em for.
A good sample of Intensity for PU is assessing telecommuting. Imagine a company that is aiming to allow telecommuters, to be greener and to keep
employees out of the soul-sucking traffic jams across the nation, but management worries about their relative productivity while working from their
homes.
First, they measure the PU of these employees at the office, relating to use of the company CRM (an Oracle app). They find that the average employee
predominantly is active in the CRM for 6.8 hours per workday.
Then, they measure the group in a telecommuting mode, and find the CRM usage is at 7.5 hours— and no long commutes/fewer hydrocarbons pumped into the
atmosphere.
That is the power of Intensity’s PU. You know: Trust, but Verify.
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