Criteria for evaluating efficiency and effectiveness

You must remember the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.

Evaluation criteria describe what features will be measured. Evaluation methods describe how they will be measured. Don't get them confused!

• Criteria for evaluating the efficiency of processing techniques and equipment:

  Whenever the word "efficiency" pops up, you should automatically be thinking: "time, money, effort/labour". So let's use them as a structure for an answer.

  • To evaluate time efficiency, you could look at the time taken to:
    • start the system
    • enter data
    • process data
    • produce output
    • communicate information
    • maintain the hardware and software.
  • To evaluate economic efficiency, you could look at the costs of:
    • initial purchase costs of hardware, software, installation, consultancy
    • training and documentation
    • wages
    • consumables
    • repairs, upgrades, maintenance, service contracts
    • interest rates, leasing costs

  Remember to look not just at expenses: also look at income. You might find your costs have increased, but improved efficiency is increasing your sales and you are in fact making more money than before.

  • To evaluate labour efficiency, you could look at:
    • the number of staff required to operate the new system (e.g. the old system may have required 2 people, whereas the new system only requires 1 person)
    • the number of man-hours spent operating the system (e.g. the new payroll system may take half the time to process weekly pay runs than did the original system

• Criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of processing techniques and equipment:

  Effectiveness is a measure of how well a job is done, regardless of the time, money and effort poured into it. Different systems will have different criteria that demonstrate their effectiveness. For example, if you buy a cow, you don't evaluate its speed, and if you buy a greyhound, you don't evaluate its milk output. Examples:

  SAMPLE SYSTEM TYPES	SOME EFFECTIVENESS CRITERIA
  Desktop publisher	Accuracy of formatting Number of text and image formats it can import Ease of use Maximum file size it can cope with Reliability
  Spreadsheet	Accuracy of calculations Quality of graphs and formatting
  Web server	Reliability Security
  Printer	Quality of print Ability to handle printing control languages like Postscript and PCL Whether it can be networked Ozone emissions Noise
  Web page editor	Whether it has built in Javascript effects Quality of its HTML - accuracy and compatibility with different browsers Support for frames, tables, layers, cascading style sheets etc

  Remember: with effectiveness, you are looking at how well it does the job.