TMS Profiles

Customer: Team Management Systems

Executive Summary

• Team Management Systems (TMS) is a worldwide leader in the development and delivery of instruments for personal, team and organisational development.
• In partnership with the research team at TMS, Codify has developed and continues to maintain the online feedback Profile processing system for Team Management Systems worldwide.
• This system provides presentation-quality printed Profile feedback in up to 5 languages through online feedback delivery which is personalised to both the end-user and facilitator requirements.
• The system is localised to support the international network of TMS accredited facilitators.  Complex non-Latin character sets are a critical component of this comprehensive multi-language system that includes interactive administration and reporting in up to 8 languages, exclusive norm features, customisable content and corporate branding.

Business Scenario

Profile questionnaires and Profile feedback reports are at the core of TMS.  The production of Profile reports has for over 20 years been accomplished by manual processes that utilise off-line software to generate the final printed copy.

Team Management Systems asked Codify to partner with them to develop a solution that would completely automate the delivery of Profile feedback and provide an exciting move forward in the TMS product technology base.

Customer Profile

Team Management Systems (TMS) was established in 1985 and is recognised as the foremost integrated system of work-based, research-proven assessments and feedback instruments worldwide.

At its core, Team Management Systems offers individuals and organisations research-proven assessments that reveal critical dynamics to enable the development of high-performance in the workplace.

Development Team

The project was undertaken by Codify in conjunction with the research and development arm of TMS.

Solution

Team Management Systems has developed a range of instruments both multi-rater and single-rater in format.  The scoring of completed profile questionnaires is conducted through complex algorithms before producing comprehensive feedback reports. 

The requirement was for a system that had the capability of both accommodating the current suite of instruments as well as to evolve with upcoming developments both in new products and translations. This, in turn, also had to be married with complex business logic surrounding distribution and security requirements, international privacy and confidentiality laws, and the ethical guidelines of the organisation and its network.

The solution was to develop a .NET application with a modular architecture where Profiles can be created and added to the overall solution without requiring expensive infrastructural work. Care was taken throughout development to ensure that every previously manual process that could be automated, was automated. The final system is completely turn-key and does not require manual handling of customer Profile data.

Presentation is key

With over 20 years in the industry, a well-established record for quality of presentation was firmly in place for Team Management Systems feedback Profiles.  This required that any online delivery meet these same standards without creating usability issues for individuals in the over 160 countries that currently use their products.

The generation of these reports presented several challenges:

• The final Profile reports contain very complex composited graphs and other imagery that is unique to each recipient.
• Some locales have very specific internationalisation requirements with regard to how text flows and where text breaks on pages.
• The reporting format was Adobe Portable Document Format. 
• Codify developed a flexible GDI compositing engine and interfaced this engine to a third party PDF generation library. The custom engine combined with very carefully optimised images has enabled the system to produce electronic reports that, when printed, far exceed the quality and fidelity of the previously manually-generated reports.

Success Stories

With Codify's help, Team Management Systems has completely automated the delivery of feedback Profiles.  This new distribution channel has been not just opened up but embraced by the international network of accredited facilitators.