Select the help topic below to see information. For information on using the Evalubase Website, you can also see our self-contained PowerPoint walkthrough (4MB download).

Member Login

PURPOSE: To enable access to basic (participant) or advanced (subscriber) level features and Evalubase research.

USAGE:

• Enter your username and password, or select "register as a new user."
• Indicate if you want a cookie to be stored on your PC to remember you the next time you visit Evalubase. This means we’ll remember your username, and all you have to do is remember your password.
• OK, so you forgot your password. Select "Forgot your password" to request your password be sent to your registered email address.
• Contact us via the "Contact" link if you’re totally hosed.

TIPS:

• Only one of yourself may be signed on at the same time. You will be signed-off after 30 minutes of inactivity. Take shorter lunch breaks or drive more slowly getting home from the office.

Registration: Individual Info

PURPOSE: Signup for access to either basic (participant) or advanced (subscriber) level access to Evalubase research. You must register and submit at least one evaluation before accessing any research. Registering and evaluating solutions enables you to view scorecards comparing your experience with solutions against other organizations like yours. As an evaluator you may also register to get paid for short telephone consultations with Evalubase subscribers.

USAGE:

• Enter all fields. Bold fields are required.
• Enter your organization name as commonly used. This will enable evaluations you enter to be associated with your organization, thereby providing a richer set of IT portfolio scorecards for your organization to gauge it’s set of IT assets. Your organization name will be matched on the subsequent registration: enterprise information screen, if your organization is not yet subscribed.
• If you are a consultant, please indicate so. This will allow us to associate each evaluation you submit with the appropriate client of yours (or at least capture basic anonymous information about their industry, size, etc.), rather than your organization.

TIPS:

• Evalubase is fanatical about the privacy of individuals and organization submitting evaluations and subscribing. Only aggregate evaluation data and anonymous evaluation detail from participants and subscribers are made available to site users. And we do not sell or share our registrant list with anyone. See our Terms of Use also regarding our privacy policy for further details.
• Evalubase is just as fanatical about the integrity of our data. Expect that we will use various tricky techniques to validate your identity. Suspicious registrations and their associated evaluations will be deactivated pending our investigation. Please refer to our Terms of Use for information regarding penalties for individuals and organizations attempting to submit spurious information to the Evalubase site.
• It’s best to leave off suffixes like "Inc." or "Co." unless they really help to uniquely identify your enterprise.
• For large conglomerates with portfolio companies in different industries, different locations or with separate IT organizations, you might want to register under your company or business unit name, rather than the parent company name.

Registration: Enterprise Info

PURPOSE: If the enterprise name you entered for your organization was not matched to an existing registered organization, you have the opportunity to search for a match and/or enter or update key information about your enterprise. Linking all individuals within an organization by enterprise name and headquarter city is critical to generating a valuable set of IT portfolio scorecards that can give your enterprise insight into the relative performance of your inventory of IT assets.

USAGE:

• If the enterprise name you entered does not match any existing ones, either other individuals typed it differently or you are the first one from your enterprise to register.
• Type other common spellings of the name to find a match. (See TIPS below)
• If you find a match, validate and update the existing information for your enterprise below. If your enterprise is subscribed, you may only update the key information for your enterprise if you are a designated account leader.
• Key enterprise dimensions (industry, revenue, employee base, and location) are used to aggregate data among affinity groups for scorecards and queries. This data must be entered. See TIPS below regarding the privacy of this information.

TIPS:

• It’s best to leave off suffixes like "Inc." or "Co." unless they really help to uniquely identify your enterprise.
• For large conglomerates with portfolio companies in different industries, different locations or with separate IT organizations, you might want to register under your company name, rather than the parent company name.
• Enterprise information may be updated by anyone registering from that enterprise, unless an enterprise subscribes and assigns an authorized account leader to administer this common information.
• Privately-held companies or government organizations that do not disclose revenue or employee base information, may use approximate or order-of-magnitude values (e.g. 1000, 40,000, 100,000, 500,000, 2,000,000). Again, paid subscribing organizations can restrict the visibility of this information only to those individuals they designate as account leaders. Government organizations should use annual budget in place of "annual revenue."

My Account

PURPOSE: This page gives you information on your account status and the opportunity to update your account information. It also lists and links to any research data queries or snapshots you have saved, and any evaluations you have submitted.

USAGE:

• View account status to learn whether you are a participant (i.e. you have submitted an evaluation within the past 30 days) or a subscriber (i.e. you organization has paid for complete access to research in one or more of our designated markets).
• You account status also shows how many individuals are currently registered from your organization (using the same organization name and headquarter city). Remember that evaluations from the same organization are aggregated into scorecards by solution, solution type, vendor and market.
• If your organization is a paying subscriber, your account status also shows who the account leaders from your organization are. These are the individuals authorized to purchase blocks of additional consultations and update the key information for your enterprise (e.g. industry, location, size, etc.)
• From the account status section, you may choose to update your registration information (e.g. enter a subscriber code provided to you by your account leader) or change your password.
• My queries section lists the queries and alerts you have saved from the chart vendor and solution ratings feature. You may select one to execute it, modify it, email it, etc.
• My snapshots section lists the queries you have saved "as-is" from the chart vendor and solution ratings feature. The represent research data at a particular point in time. You may select one to view it, modify it, email it, etc.
• My evaluations lists the evaluations you have personally submitted. If an evaluation is less than 30 days old, you may edit it. Also indicated is the overall rating (average of solution and vendor rating scores on a 0-100 scale) that you gave the solution next to the overall rating from all evaluators.
• Click the column headings in My Queries, My Snapshots, and My Evaluations to sort ascending and descending by that column.

TIPS:

• If your organization is not yet subscribed, you may want to check periodically to see if others from your organization have registered under a different spelling of your organization’s name (or simply contact us). You can do this by selecting to update your registration info, then changing your "enterprise name" slightly to initiate a search. You might try using one of the other spellings and seeing how many are registered (from your My Account page).
• Note that Evalubase administrators will periodically make an attempt to link individuals from the same organization who have spelt it differently.
• Be sure to complete your evaluation before the 30 day period expires. Evaluations you submit with more detail are bound to result in more paid telephone consulting opportunities for you with Evalubase subscribers.
• If you change employers, you should simply re-register. Account leaders should let Evalubase know when subscribing individuals leaves their organization so we can remove their account.

Evaluate

PURPOSE: To submit feedback on an IT solution for which you are familiar. Submitting an evaluation is required for basic "participant level" access to Evalubase data. As an Evaluator, you also get paid $100 each time an Evalubase subscriber wants to speak with you and you conduct a one-hour (maximum) consultation call with them.

USAGE:

• Evaluations forms are 9 sections and should take from 10-20 minutes to complete.
• Answer questions as truthfully and completely as you can.
• Again, evaluations are completely anonymous. Users (including those from your organization) will not see your name or the name of your enterprise. Even when viewing actual evaluations, users will not see your enterprise data (e.g. size, revenues, industry, etc.)
• Step 1 – solution: Complete basic information about the solution you will be evaluating. Select I Agree to confirm your honest intentions and continue.
• Step 2 – rating: Indicate (on a scale of 1-5) your impressions of the solution, then the provider.
• Step 3 – feedback: Here’s where you can really stick it to the vendor…er…we mean provide deep insights into your experience with the solution, and directly influence product direction in this market.
• Step 4 – selection: Tell us about the alternatives you considered, the solution you’re replacing, your upgrade/replacement plans and whether, in hindsight, you think your organization made the right choice.
• Step 5 – criteria: What factors were most/least important in deciding upon this solution?
• Step 6 – timeline: How long did it take to select the solution, get it in-house, get some value from it and generate ROI? ("Way too long" isn’t an acceptable answer, but we feel your pain.)
• Step 7 – project: What kinds of projects has the solution used on, how has the user base grown, and how many of the solutions bells-and-whistles are you avoiding?
• Step 8 – investment: There are a lot of ways to talk about the cost of a solution. Round numbers are fine.
• Step 9 – implementation: For one of the implementations you were involved with, give us the rundown and tips on the solution’s installation, customization, integration and deployment.

TIPS:

• If you really don’t know the answer, that’s OK. Estimate where reasonable and use your best judgment.
• You have up to 30 days to complete an evaluation. During that time the data is active, but the evaluation remains "open." So feel free to consult with others about questions you can’t answer yourself.
• WARNING: Incomplete answers may result in blank rows on your IT portfolio scorecards.
• Evaluators with evaluations that are most complete are more likely to receive subscriber consultation requests, scoring you $100 a pop.
• Yes, the questions are geared more toward hardware and software technologies than service offerings. Either leave blank or attempt to answer as best you can when evaluating a service offering or provider (e.g. consultant, conference).
• Take care to avoid mentioning things in your written comments that might identify you or your organization. (Ooops.)

Vendor Ratings (public)
Vendor and Solution Ratings (members)

PURPOSE: Query aggregate evaluation data, generating charts of overall vendor ratings (for non-subscribers), or all numerical evaluation data collected (for paying subscribers). You can save queries or the charts as-is, you can setup alerts to be notified whenever queried data is updated, and you can email query links to other individuals.

USAGE:

• Select the market(s), solution type(s), vendor(s), or solution(s) to be included in your query.
• Then select which ratings data or other evaluation data you want to chart. You may select up to 10 total ratings, or a single item from other data.
• Then select either the button to chart current data, or to see data plotted over time (line chart).
• Select Print to open the chart in a new window, displaying all selection criteria. (Note: Evaluator Filters are currently disabled.)
• To email a chart link, enter the email information and select Email.
• Scroll down to email or save the result. Saved queries will immediately be listed on your My Account page.
• Scroll down further to adjust the query parameters or begin a new query.
• Use the Clear Selections and Clear Ratings buttons to start from scratch. Or Ctrl-click to de-select individual items.

TIPS:

• Hover the mouse over parts of the chart to read complete label text.
• Selecting too many items to query can cause labels to be truncated. Sorry, we’re working on it.
• Open multiple browser windows to generate and toggle between charts to compare them.

Intelligence Summaries (public)
Intelligence Reports (members)

PURPOSE: Search and select market intelligence reports (Evalubriefs) to read or print. Market intelligence reports are topical analyses written by Evalubase’s team of enlisted IT market experts.

USAGE:

• Either type a key word or expression in the Search box and press Go, or browse reports by market, solution type and/or vendors discussed and press Display Reports.
• Select a report to be opened by your Acrobat (.pdf) reader.
• Non-subscribers may only view the Evalubrief summary but cannot access the full report.

TIPS:

• If you would like to speak to the author of an Evalubrief, select the user/expert consultation item from the left menu to arrange a time with him or her.

Scorecards

PURPOSE: Select and view IT portfolio scorecards™ that benchmark your (or your organization’s) ratings and experience with IT solutions, vendors or classes of solutions versus other organizations like yours. These scorecards can be used to identify areas for improvement, for vendor consolidation, for identifying solution overlap, for negotiating with vendors, or merely for maintaining a rated inventory of your organization’s IT assets.

USAGE:

• Select the area or level of scorecard(s) you would like listed.
• From the list, select a scorecard for either a market, solution type, vendor or solution.
• Compare the values/ratings in the My Enterprise column versus peer groups and the top rated solution.
• The "Top Solution" is the solution with the (highest, most, best, lowest, least, etc.) value or rating as indicated by the legend in the rightmost column.
• Print, save (as XML), or Email the scorecard using the buttons at the bottom of the page.
• Subscribers may view scorecards for their entire organization, non-subscribers may only view scorecards related to solutions they have evaluated themselves. This is to protect the privacy of your organization’s information
• Hold scorecards at a distance to see who on your team has the best vision.

TIPS:

• Scorecards are only available only for IT solutions you have evaluated. For each solution evaluated you receive a scorecard for that solution, that vendor, that solution type and that market.
• You cannot view scorecards for solutions, vendors, solution types or markets for which you have not submitted an evaluation.
• Incomplete data in your evaluation may result in complete rows of your scorecard being blank.
• If your rating/value for a metric is one standard deviation above or below the corresponding rating/value for a peer group, the peer group data will be highlighted as red or green, respectively.
• If no data for a cell exists, the Evalubase system will attempt to derive data by iteratively expanding the selection criteria for that cell. Derived data will be indicated in italics.
• The number of divisions within each peer groups (e.g. industry, geography, etc.) may be modified over time by Evalubase, causing data within these columns to change.

Request Consultation or Custom Analysis

PURPOSE: Request a one-hour telephone or consultation or short email exchange with a market expert, an evaluator or a data analyst.

USAGE:

• Indicate with whom you would like to consult. Select "evaluator" to speak with an IT professional who has evaluated the solution or type of solution you specify. Select "market expert" to speak with one or our elite team of IT market experts about a particular solution, class of solutions, market trends, or project issues. Or, select "data analyst" to speak with one of our statisticians about your interest in slicing and dicing our data in a way that may not be available via our online charting facility.
• In order to service your needs as quickly as possible, you may be contacted by one or more evaluators or experts. Feel free to determine which one best suits your needs and schedule a time with him or her. If you schedule a consultation with more than one, this may result in Evalubase decrementing your available consultations multiple times.
• After the evaluator, expert or analyst alerts a designated Evalubase administrator that the consultation has been conducted, we contact you to confirm.
• If you have no consultations remaining in your account, we will notify you by email that you should first submit a request to purchase additional consultations to your account leader (the authorized individual at your organization). You may find out who your account leader(s) is/are by accessing your my account page.

TIPS:

• The more detail you offer about your situation, the individuals who will be on the call, and your issues, the better prepared the evaluator, market expert or data analyst can be when he or she consults with you.
• Evaluators will typically be able to offer more technical details about the solution and their implementation. Market experts will typically be able to offer greater insights into the competitive market place surrounding the solution, vendor performance, trends and futures, and how to be successful from a project perspective.
• Link to this page while on the viewing an evaluation or reading a market intelligence report to pre-select a particular evaluator or market analyst.
• You may complete separate consultation request forms to speak with multiple evaluators or market analysts. This can provide your organization greater insights into a solution, market trends, or project success factors.