Business Tools You Need to Run Your Evaluation Consultancy
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Starting a company is daunting. Where do you even begin? When my business partner, Shelby Corley and I started Three Hive Consulting we had A LOT of questions.
We knew (and still believe) that evaluation is a means for driving organizational impact, so starting an evaluation consultancy seemed obvious. What wasn’t as obvious was the HOW. How do we market ourselves? How do we determine our pricing structure? How do we find people to help do the work?
Often it is some of those smaller, more operational type decisions that we’d get stuck on. How do we track our time? How do we track accounts receivable and payable? How do we <insert business process>?
This article will save you the hours of research and provide you with a list of tools that help us run our evaluation consultancy.
1. Communication platform: Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams was a game-changer for us. Prior to using Teams, we were sending multiple emails a day to communicate with each other, struggling with versioning control on documents and spending way too much time trying to find where documents were located.
Now that we use Teams, we set up a team site for each evaluation project that organizes all the documentation and communication for that project in one spot. Our communication and workflows for each project are much more streamlined. Now we only use email for external communication.
Plus, more and more of our clients are using Teams and establishing us as guest users on their Teams site, which again means more streamlined external communication with them.
2. Time Tracking: Harvest
Let’s be honest: time tracking is a necessary evil as a consultant. I have to say that Harvest has made it a whole lot less evil. Prior to Harvest we used Excel, which was fine but not ideal.
What I like about Harvest is that I can have a timer on my desktop or even my phone that I can easily open to start tracking. It even lets you know when you may have forgotten your timer and nudges you to adjust it accordingly. The user interface when you log into the actual website is really helpful as well. There is one dashboard that shows us all our projects, our budget, what we’ve spent (billable amount and costs), and how much is left. We can also add contractors as users so all the project costs are tracked in one place.
We also use Harvest to invoice which makes invoicing easier for projects that are billed by the hour. Lastly, Harvest also integrates with our accounting software, which again streamlines processes.
3. Accounting platform: QuickBooks Online Online (QBO)
Prior to switching to QBO we were living in the accounting dark ages (think printing off receipts and other financial documentation and physically delivering that in an envelope to our accountant).
This antiquated process meant not only were we living in the dark ages in terms of process, but also just in the dark. We did not have timely insights into our finances to help guide our business decisions.
After switching to QBO it was like a light was turned on and we could finally see! Now we have a shared online platform where both business partners and our accountant can login to quickly and accurately assess what money is coming in and what money is going out and we can easily track what that looks like over time. We can even forward emails with receipts to QBO for automatic processing to lessen the bookkeeping workload.
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4. Scheduling: Calendly
As evaluators, we are often scheduling meetings or interviews. I’ve eaten up a lot of time in the past emailing back and forth on potential meeting dates and times that would work to meet. Many companies will hire assistants or scheduling coordinators just to take on these tasks.
Calendly has saved us a tremendous amount of time and money by automating the scheduling and booking process. It makes scheduling interviews or focus groups so much easier for participants, too. Calendly connects with your calendar and is an add-in to your email. The email add-in means while you are trying to schedule a meeting you can just click on the Calendly button in your email and it will insert your availability (you also have the option to modify your availability if your calendar shows blocks that are inaccurate).
When you send the email to the recipient, they can then select the time and date that works and it will automatically schedule the meeting in both calendars. If you link to Microsoft Teams it will also insert the link that people need to use to join the meeting. Voila! No more emailing back and forth about who is available when.
5. Password Management: Zoho Vault
Managing passwords is the bane of my existence. Managing passwords in a company with multiple individuals gets even more complicated. In fact, all of the tools I have talked about in this article require passwords!
Thankfully Zoho offers a product called Zoho Vault that has helped make the password management process easier. With Zoho Vault, you sign-in to a “vault” that stores all your passwords for the various products. You can add people in your company as users and then select which ‘secrets’ (aka passwords) each person has access to and their access permission level to that secret.
6. Data Analysis: Excel, R, and ATLAS t.i.
Evaluation means we collect and work with a lot of data – both quantitative and qualitative. We still mainly use Excel for a lot of our analysis. You can run a lot of basic statistical analyses in Excel and also do some pretty incredible data viz in it. The best part with Excel is you don’t have to pay reoccurring fees to use it and everyone pretty much has it so you can also share reports made in Excel. For more complicated stats we use R, which is free!
We also use Excel for some basic qualitative analysis. For any project where we need to manage and analyze larger amounts of qualitative data we use ATLAS.ti. ATLAS.ti has recently introduced a web-based platform that we expect will see continued rollout of the features we’re used to in the desktop version.
7. Project Management: Excel and Microsoft To Do
We are still trying to figure out what project management tools will work best across Three Hive. We have tried a few like Harvest Forecast, but haven’t landed on one that fits quite right.
In the meantime, we use Microsoft To Do, which integrates with Microsoft Office 365 applications (i.e., Microsoft Teams), to plan and assign tasks. I’m told Microsoft Power Automate is also a useful tool that integrates with Office 365 that automates businesses processes and workflows, but we haven’t explored that yet.
8. Virtual Facilitation: Mentimeter, Mural, and Microsoft WhiteboardMural
In addition to being communicators, accountants, administrators, project managers, and analysts, evaluators also need to be good facilitators – my office is full of markers and sticky notes.
When the pandemic happened, I needed to figure out how to facilitate virtual whiteboard sessions. I’ve tried out Mural and really like it, but again once your free trial runs out you are stuck with yet another monthly charge.
Microsoft Whiteboard is a function that integrates with Microsoft Teams. I haven’t used it too much yet, but am keen to learn more. Another tool I have been using while facilitating to help engage with the audience is Mentimeter. If you need to wake people up, try a quick poll using Mentimeter to re-engage them.
If you are just starting your evaluation consultancy and are a team of one you may not need some of these tools; Excel may be all you need. However, if your evaluation consultancy grows, you will find that your needs will too.
A growing evaluation consultancy means more people; more people means more processes and systems; more processes and systems means more tools to support people to do their best work. As Kevin Fishner of HashiCorp put it in this article:
“A company is a collection of both its people and its systems. People can come and go over the years, but the systems they put in place and gradually refine over time become part of the company – and companies ultimately compete based on if those systems are strong or not.”