Noetix is a business intelligence software offering from Noetix.
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OrgMapper
Score 9.1 out of 10
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OrgMapper is an online diagnostic tool that analyzes and visualizes the human networks employees use to collaborate, communicate and exchange information over in order to do their daily jobs. It produces lists of key employees and network maps to identify communication and collaboration patterns, uncovering embedded organizational issues.
If you desire to 'empower' employees to create or edit their own reports, Noetix is a great tool, though I am not particularly an 'empowerment' person. In my experience most people have enough work of their own, so to tell them they now have to create their own reports can cause problems. If someone is available, like I am, to create the reports based on user requirements, then the report can be shared with the user and they can make changes as needed. I have several users who use the same report over and over for slightly different applications, and they are happy to make the small alterations, but creating whole new reports can seem like a daunting task. I tell my users I don't want them to become frustrated. If they want to try on their own, fine, but don't waste more than half an hour, and if you start to get frustrated, stop and IM me. Ninety-nine times out of 100 I already have a report that will give them exactly what they need. I've done extensive training, and find it's quite easy for users to pick up
OrgMapper is especially useful in mapping the soft-relationships within teams and organizations: communication, cooperation, knowledge sharing, and information flows.
Noetix makes reporting easy. Users can combine vtables (the Noetix term for its views), add or delete columns, add filters or parameters, sort, add totals to columns, all from an easy to use interface. It comes with a very large number of already written reports for all areas of Oracle reporting, but it also allows for custom vtables to be written, for Oracle or any database, to expand the number of available reports.
Noetix has an Excel add-in that is marvelous. It eliminates the need to run a report in the web application and export to Excel. The add-in can run very large reports, up to a million lines. Once a report is run in Excel, it can be saved, and then refreshed whenever needed. It's a really good tool.
Noetix is flexible. Joins can be added to existing Noetix vtables and also to custom vtables, to give users a large amount of data configurations to choose from. It also allows users to create calculated fields to any report.
Noetix is easy to administer. Users can be added or removed and grouped by the level of permission. Although, in our case, it validates against Oracle, the level of security is dictated by Noetix.
OrgMapper uses appropriate questions to understand the different aspects of networks in organizations. These questions are conceptually sound and appropriate and diverse. They are easy to understand.
There is a direct path from the survey to the visualization of data in network maps. Though having an official report is of great value, I rely on the ability of OrgMapper to translate raw data obtained via survey into actual maps potentially in real-time if needed.
I appreciate the use of modules like Knowledge Mapper or Team Mapper which pull together questions to respond to particular issues in organizations. This makes marketing easier and facilitates the decision making process on the part of clients.
I have found the technical support for OrgMapper to be helpful. I appreciate that the Maven 7 people like many of us users are all on a learning curve with regard to the translation of network science into practical usage. Thus, ongoing communication back and forth between we users and Maven 7 is helpful and important. I appreciate the inquisitive approach taken my Maven 7 and their dedication to resolve technical issues that arise.
I like the fact that the output is standard, but I would like to be able to move columns around on the output screen, rather than having to go back to the editing screen, move the columns, then rerun the report.
Drag and drop of columns would be nice on the edit screen. Currently if you add a column to a report, it automatically goes to the bottom. Relocation of the column has to be done a line at a time. I would prefer to be able to grab the field I want from those available, and drop it into the report where I want it.
When adding a filter (or parameter), the available fields automatically come up in alphabetical order, but on the columns screen, they don't. They come up in the order they actually are in the query. That means, when creating custom vtables, to have the fields in alphabetical order, one must put them that way. It would be nice if Noetix put the fields in alphabetical order for the user.
Emailing out the survey to respondents can be a complex undertaking. Helping them gain access via their password can also take effort. The survey respondents must be entered by hand. I did not have a great deal of trouble doing this with 30 people. Questions are clear and understandable. However, if the context of the question differs from the normal way the question is used, this may present some difficulty to the respondents to understand and make sense of the question. Support here is important. It is extremely easy to select questions based on the identification of a focused challenge. Translation of the raw data to the visual map is done by the software and this is of great benefit and makes the product quite useful to me. Filters and the ability to manipulate the maps are also helpful though there is a learning curve to this.
I believe Noetix is much easier to use than either Crystal Reports or InfoMaker. When I worked with InfoMaker I used to say it took 5 minutes to get the data and 5 hours (and sometimes days) to make it look good. The same can be true for Crystal Reports. Noetix has a standard format, and most people export to Excel anyway. Who prints reports? So formatting is not all that important.
For our clients Orgmapper/the Network Approach has the potential to become a foundational approach to organisational transformation. It is early days as we are working in partnership with our clients to develop the best approach based on our explorations to date.
In some instances including Orgmapper in our offering has actually slowed the lead conversion process down - which has been good from the perspective that we are working larger propositions, over the longer term. So for Better Change - Orgmapper provides a significant uplift and complimentary capability to our core capabilities.
