Assessing talent globally, by SaaS

If there is one thing that SaaS can bring to specialist applications and service vendors is the potential for a global market, even in very specialised market sectors. Take, for example, the service offered by a small, Connecticutt-based business, Questionmark.

The company specialises in measuring knowledge, skills and attitudes for certification, regulatory compliance, successful learning outcomes, performance improvement and talent management. Its OnDemand assessment management system enables collaborative, multilingual authoring; multiple delivery options including mobile devices; and comprehensive analytics that give stakeholders valuable, actionable data.

Now it has added a capability that is, to be sure, of primary interest to US-based users, but may also be relevant to a wider world, and certainly gives a pointer to what can be made available with SaaS delivery. This is compatibility with Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS).

The new Version 2014.1 also includes a Job Task Analysis (JTA) question type for identifying the essential tasks of a job and the skills, knowledge and ability required to succeed at it. A JTA Summary Report provides the total percentage and number of participants that have selected each task, dimension, and choice in a JTA question. It also provides a JTA Dimension by Demographic Report, which groups results by task, dimension and demographic data.

This release produces three new JTA-related OData feeds for Questionmark's API for Analytics. This API, based on the OData protocol, gives users secure access to assessment results data and the ability to provide access to results via custom dashboards or to analyse results using business intelligence applications.

The company’s flexible APIs support major industry standards ensure interoperability with a variety of enterprise systems. OnDemand offers 99.9+ percent uptime, has 24/7 support, and a runs on a secure, Cybertrust-certified, SSAE 16 audited datacentre.

JTA surveys are often used to construct and validate certification programs, to ensure that the questions on certification tests are relevant to the job.

A new Results Export Report makes it possible to export the results from an assessment to a comma-separated ASCII file for use in a spreadsheet or statistics package.

Questionmark OnDemand enables organisations to rapidly deploy their online testing and assessment programs either on a small scale or globally. OnDemand customers use Questionmark’s assessment authoring, delivery and analytical technologies in a secure, reliable environment in which they can deploy assessments rapidly and grow their implementation as needed.