When it comes to evaluating how successful your organization is, you always have sales and supply chain data right when you want it. Modern businesses collect insane amounts of data every minute of every day, and it comes in from everywhere: smart chips in the field, online marketing tools, customer relationship management software, and more. Thanks to technology, that information is always up-to-the-minute and readily available.

You might also take a look at customer perception and employee data. The way people feel about their job or your product has a massive—often invisible—impact on your bottom line. However, this information comes in slowly and isn’t tied in with your other data. The problem is: how do you incorporate it into your big picture? It’s easy to get a record of customer or employee satisfaction, but unless that data can be combined with quality and sales information, you can’t actually see exactly how those feelings are helping or hurting your organization.

Because of the difficulty in quantifying that information, it’s hard to tie thoughts and feelings back to new initiatives in a way that helps draw meaningful conclusions. Most companies rely on other methods to fill the gap, with conversions and sales as their only solid performance indicators. But while all that great data is coming in and being put to work, survey results are analyzed once, then vanish in a spreadsheet on someone’s hard drive never to be seen again.

It’s this kind of ineffectiveness that gives ‘feelings’ a bad rep. Why put tons of time, effort, and money into an employee or customer survey when the results don’t have that big an impact? It’s a fair question, but the problem isn’t that feelings don’t matter: it’s that the tools you’re using don’t make it easy to put information about feelings to work for everyone.

Surveys don’t have to be all about research and feedback management. They can also contribute to operational excellence and initiatives focused on continuous improvement. If you’re still collecting survey data but not seeing it have an impact on your operations, it’s time to try a better survey platform.

Consolidated survey software is the key to the comparisons you’ve never been able to make. Your HR department collects employee engagement information, while your smart chips collect product quality data. Marketing gathers customer satisfaction information and your CRM tools report on sales data. Information about these individual areas is valuable on its own, but by using one survey platform capable of integrating with your other systems, you can tie customer and employee data directly back to sales and product information. The end result is a more complete picture of what’s going on across your organization.

Feelings don’t have to be a mystery box. With the right tools, your surveys can make the jump from NPS to KPI and give you the insights you need to make truly impactful changes.

Unlock insights with Key Survey. Check out our whitepaper to learn one way survey software can save you money and make your employees happier, more successful, and more engaged than ever.

by Rachael Smith
@Key Survey