It is not your usual tech startup with a crew in their 20s. The founders of Ask Your Team are knocking on a half century and have solid careers behind them.
Four months ago its cloud-based business analysis survey was launched and this week CEO Chris O'Reilly was in Sydney following up referrals from happy New Zealand clients.
The survey asks business staff questions based on 13 Organisational Success Factors and identifies problems.
Mr O'Reilly said there was nothing like it on the market.
"What is out there at the moment tends to be annual one-off engagement surveys, which simply ask how do you feel about things here," he said.
"A year later they might retest to see if there is progress.
"We worked very closely with the University of Waikato for 18 months and they developed our 13 critical Organisational Success Factors. We have identified the most powerful assertions that lead into those 13 areas.
"There are 65 assertions and staff say how well they think the organisation is performing on each.
"The leaders of the organisation are asked the same assertions twice. One where they think the organisation is now and one that is aspirational, where they want to be.
"The Ask Your Team system measures the gap between where the leaders say the company is at and what staff are saying. The smaller the gap the better the alignment. The wider the gap the more there is a disconnect.
"It is all about trying to improve the organisation and the fundamental premise is people doing the job know best how things are going. The people with the best ideas on how to improve things are the people doing the job.
"For people to be motivated and engaged they need to see they have a real say in the organisation.
"Most organisations measure things like sales or turnover - the hard metrics - but these measure the things that lead to those outputs and are normally very subjective. It offers incredibly powerful insights into an organisation."
Chairman Chris Tremain calls it "a collaborative leadership model".
Results could be sliced and diced to identify departments of the company with a particular problem.
"The survey finds the weak links but it also identifies strengths. In some cases we have seen that the staff think the organisation is in better shape than management do, so it is pushing the management team to go say, maybe we are not dreaming big enough. It is quite unique in that regard."
It is the brainchild of former PWC partner Andrew Bayly, who found the length of time it took to work out how he could help clients "frustrating".
"I used to spend a lot of time trying to get to the root cause of problems," he said.
"Another thing I used to get really frustrated with, as a trusted business adviser, was that clients would come in and tell you they were going to do a rebranding. And you would say, for example: Why are we working on that? Leadership is the biggest problem, communications is the biggest problem - so why are you wasting valuable resources on that?
"What happens generally in businesses is somebody comes along and sells you something. You think it is a good idea at the time but you don't actually have anything to back up that decision.
After retiring from PWC he said he thought hard about using technology "to speed all that stuff up".
It is sold through agents, primarily accountants/business advisers.
Unlike the traditional business-adviser model, where a consultant held on to company research as a tool for the consultant to use, Ask Your Team data stayed with the company.
"All I ever wanted to do with this was empower a client. It is all their knowledge, all their IP sitting there for the business and they should be able to tap into it."
Instead of less work for advisers it has meant more, with simple colour coding of results making problems-to-be-solved obvious.
"Consultants used to say, I have got all the information on your company. I'll charge you for it and here are some recommendations which are invariably going to be more work for me.
"This product gives you the data. You do the analysis you own the report, you choose what you want to do with it."
Ironically it has created more demand for advisers, Mr Tremain said.
"By giving the data to the clients they come back to the consultant they saw in the first place, saying we have some gaps, how can you help us with that. They are asked to come back into the business."
Mr Bayly has worked on the business for five years, bouncing ideas off friends and colleagues.
"If you get some good people around you they come up with some other good ideas you can use. Before you know it you have a good product and other people buy into the dream and you are off sailing. I can't say it's my idea any more. It is a collaboration.
"When I started talking to Chris [O'Reilly] about this I didn't know his commerce degree was in surveys and research."
He met web developer Marcus Smith on Omahu Rd three years ago during the government election campaign.
"We were waving a sign on a traffic island, supporting National."
Mr Tremain, who has been involved with the business more than one year, said while it works well for small businesses "for large organisations the technology gives you the power to harness the input and ideas of literally thousands of staff and have results available instantaneously".
"There is no going to a third party and waiting two months for the results.
"For larger companies it works brilliantly because you are able to tap into everyone very quick.
"Some of the smaller Hawke's Bay companies ran it with very good results. Often leaders may not know what questions to ask and also Kiwis can have a habit of not wanting to rock the boat and tell people what they really feel. Because this is totally anonymous people are able to provide the leaders with the insights to focus prioritised business."
The lengthy lead-in time for the business was enabled by "sweat equity"and investment, Mr Bayly said.
"I have a mortgage on my house I didn't use to have.
"My vision was I wanted good people in the business who owned part of the dream.
"There are a couple of people that are new and I'd like to see that they have a share."
For companies from 16 to 100 people Ask Your Team costs $130 per person. From 501 to 1000 it costs $55 per person.
The annual fee allows unlimited retesting.
The business has 11 employees, including recently appointed business development managers. One is based in Auckland and the other in Hawke's Bay.
Through personal contacts the company counts Fastway, Mainfreight, Mission Estate, Hays Recruitment Experts Worldwide, Swandri and Port of Lyttleton as clients.
Ultimately the business model was selling through business advisers, management consultants "and innovative accountants that want to offer complete business services", Mr O'Reilly said.
While not yet breaking even he is expecting repeat business.
"Because of the retesting model the system can be integrated into annual performance KPIs."
Mr Bayly said it was "disruptive"technology.
"This could change the whole way business advice is given."
Finding the weaknesses and strengths
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.