In business, government and everyday life, decisions involving multiple criteria are the most difficult to make and yet they are the most crucial. Determining each criterion's importance relative to the others requires expert judgement (for an example click here).
And yet there is often no robust methodology to do this in a systematic, transparent and repeatable way. Similarly, if you've ever set up a points (or scoring) systems, you'll know there's no easy way of getting the right point values... Until now!
What is Point*Wizard?
Point*Wizard (patents pending) is a new and user-friendly computer program that helps decision-makers to:
- create additive points (or scoring) systems, as used for ranking large numbers of alternatives or individuals (e.g. 100s, 1000s or millions)
- rank a smaller group of alternatives or individuals that are known to decision-makers.
Possible applications of Point*Wizard include:
- diagnosing and prioritising patients and managing waiting lists (for a brochure featuring this example click here)
- short-listing job applicants and appraising employees (for a brochure featuring this example click here)
- Conjoint (Tradeoff) Analysis
- appraising investment projects
- strategic planning
- selecting immigrants
- admitting students to restricted courses, e.g. Medical School
- allocating student scholarships
- assessing funding applications
- performing environmental assessments
- identifying new product ideas for commercialisation
- choosing the best site for a building or house or model of car to buy, etc.
Point*Wizard is most applicable in decision situations where statistical methods, such as regression, are inappropriate or impossible - i.e. where the subjective judgements or expert knowledge of decision-makers must be relied on.
What is extraordinary about Point*Wizard is that it lets the decision-maker determine the relative importance of the criteria that are relevant to her/his decision in a cognitively simple and intuitive way. The end result is that her preferences are represented exactly, leading to better decision-making.
Point*Wizard is available as a subscription system that can be accessed by secure logins via the Internet. For optimal performance, PC users need to run Internet Explorer 5.0 or above, Netscape 6 or above, or Mozilla 0.9; and Mac users need to run Safari, Mozilla or FireFox.
Point*Wizard's principals are available for onsite consulting and training to assist users get the most out of the software.