Results from 2015 Software Surveys

February 9, 2016 in Wood Products - #software

By Steve Tem

This past year Weyerhaeuser’s software Product Managers sent out surveys to our customers for Forte 5.0, Javelin 5.3, and Stellar 5.0. Surveys are a valuable input to our software team, providing us with informative feedback on our applications and the support we provide for those applications. Nearly 1,200 users responded to these surveys in 2015.

How you graded us

We asked how you like our applications (with an A grade representing “Best in class” and a B grade representing “Like to use”).  Below is the percentage of people who responded with an A or B:

Overall Application Grades

  • Forte: 91% of respondents graded Forte A or B
  • Javelin: 84% of respondents graded Javelin A or B
  • Stellar: 73% of respondents graded Stellar A or B

Release-specific Grades

  • Forte 5.0: 60% of respondents graded the release A or B
  • Javelin 5.3: 75% of respondents graded the release A or B
  • Stellar 5.0: 63% of respondents graded the release A or B

*The Forte survey results only reflect users in the United States. The survey is being sent to users in Canada shortly and the blog will be updated to reflect any changes in results.

We were pleased to see how many people like our applications and feel confident that you will like the upcoming versions of our software even more. We are constantly working to make our features easier to use, and are gratified when your feedback tells us those efforts have been a success.

There are always opportunities for improvement, and these surveys help us determine where we should focus our efforts. Some examples of new feature requests from the surveys include the creation of user-defined materials for Stellar and the ability to organize the Job Tree in Forte.

Forte 5.0 Features Feedback

This release of Forte concentrated on infrastructure work and a few smaller features.  Our primary focus was to make the application a better user experience. Over 43% of responding users felt 5.0 was more stable than 4.6 which shows we’re making improvements in another key area.

In terms of ease of use, over 78% of respondents liked “Changing the Default settings for Job, Level, and Member.” Other “likes” for this release included:

  • “It is well designed. It has the capability to maintain a complete inventory of framing components for a given project.”
  • “More user friendly.”
  • “I like that the format did not change. It is still easy to choose the application for sizing and floor performance.”

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Javelin 5.3 Features Feedback

We received three times as many responses to this survey as the Javelin survey sent on the prior release. This release of Javelin included many new features, and we asked users to rate these features in terms of their usability (1 is easy, 4 is difficult). The top three rated easiest to use:

 

Stellar 5.0 Features Feedback

We also received more responses to this survey than the previous Stellar survey. This release of Stellar contained many new features and also reflected our ongoing efforts to improve stability. 47% of respondents called the stability outstanding or an improvement over previous releases. Almost 41% said that the overall quality of this release was better than in previous releases.

The feedback on specific features demonstrated that this new release delivered the features Stellar users want. These are the top two features rated “Exactly what I needed” or “Meets my needs”:

  • Redefine Left End of Beams                                     1.10
  • Export Material List to Excel                                      1.13
  • Force Orthogonal selection (i.e. Ortho Mode)          1.15
  • Cut History Reports                                                   46.88%
  • Pending Cuts Reports                                               45.17%

 

Thank you!

Thank you for taking the time to provide us with this important information which we will use to improve our software. Look for surveys after each application’s release to help keep


Steve Tem