If you need to assess a company on its performance, or the effectiveness of its policies or internal controls, the best option is obviously to visit the area of operations and conduct a practical analysis. However, over the past year the entire business world has had to adjust to the coronavirus pandemic and its resulting lockdown restrictions. This has made it extremely challenging to carry out proper analysis and visit a company’s site in order to gather data. Still, we can use the available technology we have to compensate for not being able to visit a physical location for assessment. Read on to find out what they are!
Setting up an assessment using data, video call, interviews
You might not be able to physically visit the premises of your company, but you can still make do with visiting it virtually, via video calls and interviews. For example, if you need to inspect the state and condition of factory equipment, a live or pre-recorded video can serve as an adequate stopgap and help you in making your assessment. Similarly, you can also talk to and gain vital information from the company’s personnel via video interviews, if meeting in person is not a possibility. Moreover, you can also use data such as KPIs and key financial indicators and ratios to get a better idea of the state of the company, without having to actually visit the site.
Using pre-defined data parameters to understand the business
The usefulness of data analysis is going to depend on the industry the company you’re assessing is operating in, as well as the quality and verifiability of the data that you have been provided. Put simply, if you have a large amount of figures that are also accurate, you will be able to gain more insight and provide a better assessment. However, this approach does not tell the whole story of a company, and the findings from data analysis must be collaborated with other methods in order to reveal a more complete and true picture of the company.
Use video calls to see the status of machinery
If you are unable to visit the company’s area of operations to inspect machinery, a video call can serve as a viable alternative. Using a smartphone camera, you can easily inspect each and every angle of a machine just like you would in real life, and best of all, you can also record the video for later use, such as cross-referencing some information about a machine’s condition.
Use both structured and un-structured interviews with all levels within the organization
There’s no denying that interviews are better in person, but online interviews conducted via video calls are also an effective method of gaining some insight into the inner workings of the company you are trying to assess. There are various benefits for the organization when using interviews, and its also important to do them one on one without management interference to get more honest data. Additionally, linking interview data to the raw data collection to validate the soft data with hard data is also crucial.
Please contact us for a chat to see how we can help you assess your organization!
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