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MyWorkTools.com Quality Standards
MyWorkTools.com strives to ensure that all submitted tools are high quality, have been proven successful in the real world, and are ready to save tool users the maximum amount of time possible.
Tool providers can earn more money and establish a powerful "personal brand reputation" by making their tools the best within their department. Tool providers should make their tools look great, highlight the areas for tool users to customize quickly, and be as complete as possible.
Basic Formatting Guidelines
You must follow the basic formatting guidelines below for MyWorkTools.com to review the tool and decide to accept or reject:
- Spell-check the tool.
- Does the tool look great on screen and paper?
- Make sure that the name of the tool is clear and logical. A good example would be "Joint Venture Agreement". A bad example would be "doc1129p".
- Keep tool names to 35 characters or less.
- Set up easily identifiable "search/replace" parameters and make sure that each tool does not contain proprietary information. You can do this two ways:
- Replace Company, people, department, business unit, actual numbers, code words, project names with [COMPANY], [PEOPLE], [DEPARTMENT], [BUSINESS UNIT], [NUMBER], etc.
- Replace Company, people, department, business unit, actual numbers, code words, project names with COMPANY, PEOPLE, DEPARTMENT, BUSINESS UNIT, NUMBER, etc. By putting this in all caps and bold, tool users can quickly find what they need to change.
- Either way is fine, although the "brackets" approach is more universally accepted.
- Each tool should look professional.
Here are some things to review based on type of tool:
Word Documents
- Does the page look good? Are the margins, tabs, numbering consistent and logical? Are the section headings highlighted? Are they consistent or is one bold and centered and another underlined and left indented?
- Make sure that you "Print Preview" to ensure that you do not split paragraphs or split sentences at the page break.
- Is the font consistent - or is part of the document Arial 12 and another Times New Roman 8? Unless it will ruin the document and cause major re-work, each document should be Arial 12. Use your best judgment here. Do not force a font type or size if the document already looks great!
- Is the header/footer correct? Are there page numbers?
- Unless it will ruin the document and cause major re-work, each document should be left justified.
Excel Spreadsheets
- Does the page look good? Are the rows and columns consistent and logical?
- Make sure you "Print Preview" each tab in the worksheet to ensure that it prints properly, is centered correctly, and can be easily read. Which way will it look better - portrait or landscape? Did you center the worksheet vertically and horizontally?
- Did you make the header, footer, font type, and font size consistent?
- Do items within the column line up properly under the column heading?
- Double check all formulas - do they add up correctly?
- If the formulas are complex, did you provide any "hints" or help?
- Do you have graphs? Are they linked to the worksheet properly?
PowerPoint Presentations
- Some presentations look great on the monitor but are impossible to read when printed on paper. Make sure that the colors you have chosen look fine on both the monitor and paper.
- Did you make the header, footer, font type, and font size consistent?
- Are there page numbers?
Pricing Tools
- Tool prices should be based on customer value.
- Tool prices can be changed at any time.
- Initially, we are asking tool providers to provide at least 50% of their tools for free to build up the community. Sure making money is important, but we view this business as a marathon, not a sprint. If we develop a critical mass of tools that help people get their job done, the money will come!
- Price points should be Free, $9.99, $19.99, or $29.99.
Each tool has what is known as "meta data" to help tool users to understand what the tool does. The meta data fields are
- At A Glance
- Background
- Benefits
- Time ROI
An example of the approved format is below and can also be found on the Web site. Remember, this "meta data" is a key point of differentiation for tool providers and can effectively pre-sell your tools for you.
At A Glance - This Excel spreadsheet is a template for developing a sales forecast, in units and dollars, by product, channel, and geography, for any product related business.
Time ROI - It takes on average 10 hours to develop a sales forecast. By using MyWorkTools.com, you will save approximately 8 hours of development time since all you will have to do is input company specific information.
Background - Developing a realistic sales forecast is an important element of an overall business plan. Forecasting sales too aggressively can drive up expenses that can create a loss for the company when the sales do not materialize. Forecasting sales too conservatively can create inventory shortfalls that will result in lost sales when sales come in above forecast. The key to developing a good sales forecast is clearly detailing the assumptions that go into the forecast model and can have positive or negative effects on sales. This tool includes forecast by month, in units and dollars, quarterly roll ups, channel summaries, annual roll ups, graphs and much more.
Benefits - Using this tool will enable you to accurately forecast sales and increase business efficiency - from cash flow and inventory management to expense planning and sales force productivity and morale.
One Last Point
Our MyWorkTools.com community is only as good as the members make it. Take a few minutes to clean up your tool so that others may benefit. When you download a tool, you will be very appreciative that someone else did the same! It will also make your tool more valuable since the user will save more time, and time is worth money.
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