System And Method To Measure, Aggregate And Analyze Exact Effort And Time Productivity

• US 20110302003A1
• Filed: 06/02/2011
• Published: 12/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/04/2010
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Sapience Analytics Private Limited
• Original Assignee: Sapience Analytics Private Limited
• Inventors: Shirish, Deodhar Swati, Sharan, Bhatia Madhukar, Prabhakar, Deodhar Shirish
• Application Number:
  US13/151,889
• Publication Number:
  US 20110302003A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7.38
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0639 Performance analysis of employees; Performance analysis of enterprise or organisation operations
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/105 Human resources

Abstract

A system and method for measuring exact effort spent on work related activities within an organization. The system includes at least one desktop agent cooperating with at least one server, the or each said desktop agent includes collecting means for online events including user inputs, active applications, and related application artifacts; a desktop time map unit aggregating said online events into time slots pertaining to applications and artifacts on said desktop; a user remote time map unit assessing an offline duration at said desktop; a rules and pattern matching engine; a user time analyzer mapping said online and offline time utilization to activity and purpose responsive to output of said rules and pattern matching engine; and a private time selector regulated by said user time analyzer. Server aggregates individual effort data, and adapts it into an n-dimensional effort data cube, thereby facilitating views into different aspects of organization effort.

Claims

1. A system for exact effort and time productivity measurement, said system comprising:

at least one desktop agent cooperating with at least one server, said desktop agent adapted to generate exact effort data, the or each said desktop agent comprising;

a) collecting means for collecting online events including user inputs, active applications, and application artifacts;

b) a desktop time map unit aggregating said online events into time slots pertaining to applications and artifacts on said desktop;

c) a user remote time map unit assessing an offline duration at said desktop;

d) a rules and pattern matching engine;

e) a user time analyzer for mapping said online and offline time utilization to activity and purpose responsive to output of said rules and pattern matching engine; and

f) a private time selector regulated by said user time analyzer.

2. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server is adapted to collect the effort data from desktop agents periodically, and the server is further adapted to aggregate and roll it up as per the organization hierarchy defined at the server to provide aggregate effort data, that is then adapted into an n-dimensional effort data cube for generating effort related information selected from a group consisting of analytics, organizational trends, reports, goal compliance, alerts and rewards notifications responsive to said exact effort data.

3. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the server is adapted to collect the effort data from desktop agents periodically, and aggregate and roll it up as per the organization hierarchy defined at the server to provide aggregate effort data adapted into an n-dimensional effort data cube for generating effort related information selected from a group consisting of analytics, organizational trends, reports, goal compliance, alerts and rewards notifications responsive to said exact effort data, and wherein said n-dimensional effort data cube facilitates views at each level of the organization hierarchy across multiple dimensions such as purpose, activity, applications, projects, employee levels, employee roles, and locations, and wherein said data cube facilitates ability to drill down via said organization hierarchy to generate discrete effort data.

4. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the or each said server comprises:

a desktop agent interface configured to collect effort data from each user;

a list of valid users and organization tree mapping users to one or more organization units;

access rights module to maintain and enforce access to effort data for each user and manager;

activity and purpose multi-level master list comprising a subset of activities and purposes at various organizational levels;

a time map unit to maintain time map for each user by merging time maps sourced from one or more user desktops combined with offline time map for the user obtained from third party location and call tracking servers;

an organization effort aggregation and analytics engine for retrieving said effort data from said desktop agent interface;

an organization settings and rules engine for getting and tracking rules related to mapping of time to activity and purpose for individual and aggregate data, rolled up via organization hierarchy and drilled down via organization hierarchy;

collection module to communicate with one or more desktop agents of each valid user to download assigned purpose and activity list, organization mapping rules, settings, merged time map; and

a web based user interface to enable an internet browser usage for viewing organizational trends, reports, alerts, goals and administrative functions.

5. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said collecting means includes an operating system collector adapted to run in the background of said desktop while collecting events related to user inputs, status of current active application window, and artifacts related to said application.

6. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said collecting means includes an operating system collector interfacing with the computing system'"'"'s operating system.

7. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said user remote time map unit is adapted to get third party servers input on logged in user'"'"'s offline time map as sourced from at least one of swipe card and other location servers, an EPABX server, a mobile server, and a Blackberry server.

8. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said user time analyzer is adapted to let the user review and edit time utilization in relation to said activity and said purpose.

9. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein said desktop agent is selected from a group consisting of a laptop, an electronic notebook, and a personal digital assistant.

10. A system as claimed in claim 1, further comprising:

a user interface enabling said user to review time utilization and mapping to said activity and said purpose for current and previous days; and

a server interface enabling uploading of;

assigned activity and purpose;

common rules; and

a remote time map for said user.

11. A system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the private time selector is adapted to enable individual override for personal time.

12. A method for exact effort and time productivity measurement comprising the following steps:

tracking the currently active user application running on a desktop agent if multiple applications are opened in said desktop agent;

tracking artifacts associated with said active user application to mark an online time;

marking an offline time if no activity is detected for a predetermined time in said active user current application;

comparing engagements, meeting requests, appointments, calls and visits of said user with duration of said offline time for tracking an accurate offline time effort;

mapping offline and online time to activities and purposes;

generating rules and pattern for enabling;

collective effort tracking;

restricted effort data access;

hierarchical effort control; and

industry vertical effort tracking;

enabling a private time selection that allows said user to separate out personal work from official work within a span of working hours;

collecting the effort data, and aggregating and rolling it up as per the organization hierarchy;

adapting the aggregate effort data into an n-dimensional effort data cube for generating effort related information selected from a group consisting of analytics, organizational trends, reports, goal compliance, alerts and rewards notifications responsive to said exact effort data; and

facilitating views at each level of the organization hierarchy across multiple dimensions such as purpose, activity, applications, projects, employee levels, employee roles, and locations, including the ability to drill down via said organization hierarchy to generate discrete effort data.

13. A method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the step of tracking artifacts includes the step of tracking files, folders, and web-links used for current activity and the amount of time spent on it.

14. A method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the step of marking an offline time includes the step of determining an inactivity time while no keyboard, keypad, touchpad and mouse movement of said desktop agent is detected, and wherein said user is not proximate to said desktop agent.

15. A method as claimed in claim 12, wherein the step of comparing engagements further comprises the step of providing connectors to one or more calendaring tools selected from a group consisting of Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Google meeting, and third party location and call tracking servers, for identifying pre-scheduled appointments like calls and meetings and subsequently mapping said pre-scheduled appointments to said activity and said purpose.

16. A method as claimed in claim 12 comprising step of enabling said user to change mapping for said application and said artifact corresponding to said activity and purpose, unless said mapping is locked.

17. A method as claimed in claim 12, further comprising configuring a list of valid users and organization tree for assigning to one or more organization units;

configuring an access rights module to maintain and enforce access to effort data for each user and manager;

configuring an activity and purpose multi-level master list including a subset of activities and purposes at various organization levels;

enabling a communication between a collection module and one or more desktop agents of each valid user for downloading assigned purpose and activity list, organization mapping rules settings, and merged time map.

18. A method as claimed in claim 12, further comprising:

facilitating an employee to review and manually override specific effort data as private time data and assigning privacy settings to enable restrictive viewing of the data, wherein employee id of the employee overriding said effort data is encrypted before transmitting the reviewed effort data marked as private time data.