FAQ

You’ve found the right place! VIA·Business diagnostic assessments act as your “Consultant in a Box” to evaluate your business and provide a targeted report with recommendation to improve your most vulnerable processes.

You’ve found the right place! VIA·Business diagnostic assessments act as your “Consultant in a Box” to evaluate your business and provide a 22-page targeted report with recommendation to improve your most vulnerable processes.

Yes you can! You can assess the maturities of 32 critical business processes in one affordable diagnostic. You’ve found the right place! This site has VIA·Business assessments–online business diagnostics you can run yourself. It is a virtual consultant … an advisor in a box.

You’ve found the right place! This site has an online business diagnostic called VIA·Business assessment that you can run yourself. It is a virtual consultant … an advisor in a box.

You’ve found the right place! This site has an online business diagnostic you can run yourself. It is a virtual consultant … an advisor in a box.

We can’t speak for all on-line assistance, but at this site, you have access to a world-class diagnostic VIA·Business to evaluate the maturities of 32 critical business processes. You also get a 22-page written report that includes prescriptive recommendations for improving your most vulnerable processes.

We can’t speak for all on-line assistance, but at this site, you have access to a world-class diagnostic VIA·Business to evaluate the maturities of 32 critical business processes. It costs $199. You also get a 22-page written report that includes prescriptive recommendations for improving your most vulnerable processes.

You can pay a business consultant to spend some time getting to know you and your business. Expect a top notch consultant to be able to evaluate your business condition and provide a plan for how they would contract with you to improve what they believe is missing. Approx. time and cost to diagnose changes needed: 25 to 40 hours at $100 to $250 per hour + travel and expenses. Time and cost to implement changes varies, but would likely be at least the cost of diagnosis.

You can apply for agency help at a federally- or state-funded Business Development Center (incubator, accelerator, where, if you are selected, you will work with counselors or mentors (that may also be helping 30+ other companies). They will, based upon their availability and levels of expertise, spend a bit of time getting to know you, guide you in the directions they believe you need to go, and work towards “successfully graduating” you out of their program. Approx. time and cost to diagnose and implement: 10 to 160 hours spread out over several months at as low as $0 per hour.

Take a quality on-line assessment like VIA·Business by Vector Reports at this site with your business leader and other key decision makers. Read the resultant 22-page report that prescribes recommendations for you to implement immediately. Approx. time and cost to diagnose changes needed: 30 min. to 3 hours depending upon how many internal experts you use to perform the assessment + $199.00 for the assessment and report. Time and cost to implement changes varies, but could likely be minimal if you put those recommendations into action using internal help. Otherwise the recommendations could be handed to an outside consultant who would charge by the hour, but could then hit the ground running.

For existing small businesses the VIA·Business assessment is right for you.

For those teams (or businesses) who are pursuing SBIR/STTR government funding in a time-limited agency process the VIA·ITAB assessment indicates your preparedness (or lack thereof) to respond with a cogent, aligned, responsive application.

For those individuals that are new to business, are just starting out, or the earliest of entrepreneurs, the VIA·Readiness assessment can indicate your preparedness for the journey ahead.

For those individuals that are new to business, are just starting out, or the earliest of entrepreneurs, the VIA·Readiness assessment can indicate your preparedness for the journey ahead.

That depends upon your role, ability and resources available to you. Roles could be a consultant, an agency counselor, or a business owner, etc. But the goal is shared—to help improve your vulnerable business processes.

Your report will contain detailed recommendations (What, How, Why) and a general change guidance.

But, really, what you need to do is confirm the results, discover what you didn’t know, learn what to do about it, and the decide a path forward; either on your own, with agency help, or guidance from a mentor/counselor It helps you focus on the right things in the right order.

As in any purchase decision the result should deliver value. For small businesses, there is nothing we know of that is faster, more accurate, and less expensive to obtain good business improvement guidance than this virtual consultant design.

As for those who are pursuing SBIR/STTR government funding there is actually (as of this writing) nothing on the market that helps you pre-evaluate your readiness to apply that is faster, better or cheaper than this assessment.

And for those individuals that are new to business, are just starting out, or the earliest of entrepreneurs, this “community neutral” approach to learn and develop what you need to do to begin is also easy to use, quick and helpful.

The Main Report (or full report) contains the assessment results and recommendation–typically designed for the process holder or change agent:

1. A full-page Capabilities Maturity Plot and instructions for how to interpret it.
2. Bar graphs of all 32 process ratings.
3. Three or four targeted recommendations and instructions for how to interpret them.
4. Closing advice and next-step suggestions.

The Notes Report is a short document that provides:

1. Bar graphs of all 32 process ratings
2. A printout of any evidentiary notes that were entered during the assessment rating.

The Executive Report is a high-level overview that provides only the Plot and how to interpret it.

The Heat Map Report tool lets eligible users display and compare assessment rating results from multiple assessments to gain new meaning and value-adding insights.

From the Vector Reports website, only assessors and owners can View, Print or Download and Save a copy of their customized report. While an assessor or owner is free to show their report to whomever they choose, these actions are not facilitated within the website and are beyond the monitoring responsibility of Vector Reports. Reports are made available on the website only to eligible entities and only for two years. Owners and assessors are encouraged to download and save a .pdf copy of their reports as soon as practical.

Each report is designed to get you to information quickly. Yet, not every individual may want to see all the information.

The Main report contains everything about the results of the assessment so detailed actions can be taken.

The Summary report simply highlights without going into detail.

The Notes report associates each rated process with the evidentiary notes taken during the assessment that might help during an audit or serve as evidence to justify why a specific level was selected.

The Heat Map report might be used by administrators who may be looking for trends or issues across many assessments. Depending upon your role, we’ve made an effort to quickly get information to you.

Vector Reports offers its VIA Heat Map reporting service at no charge to specific Owners and Assessors who have access to more than one assessment. These eligible users can quickly produce their own proprietary aggregated report to visually display meta information to simultaneously compare rating results from multiple assessments. To gain new meaning and make better decisions, simply use the sorting features to arrange the data. The resulting color patterns reveal value-adding insights otherwise obscured by volumes of numbers or data that may overwhelm the message hidden within them.

In a condensed one-page display, a VIA·Business Heat Map reveals the results of the ratings in up to 8 different assessments. It shows the rating scores for each process within each included assessment, the average process scores across all selected assessments, the average assessment scores for all 32 processes, and the most vulnerable capability for each assessment by quadrant number (QI, QII, QIII or QIV.)

For step-by-step information on creating a Heat Map report, see the “How To …” section on Heat Maps.

For more details on how to think about constructing a Heat Map, see that section in the “Success Guide.”

The cost depends upon which assessment is being taken. Please find the Purchase Information button on each VIA services assessment that will take you to the Vector Reports price information page. From there you will see price(s) and should you elect to purchase one, the [Proceed] button will take you to the Stripe payments processing page where you can securely buy assessments with your credit card.

Yes, but not automatically through our website. Please contact us at our email with your request. Email is shown below.

It is natural and expected for people in organizations to resist change. Sometimes they are simply comfortable with the status quo. Other times changes can seem like a loss of status or an adjustment to their own personal identity. But almost all sources of resistance come from work culture dynamics. In the course of developing this assessment we have come upon a wonderful resource on Work Culture and we can recommend it to you. Find it at WorkCulture.biz where they sell a book on this subject.