Answering the question. 'Who knows what?'. (New Products).

Who in your bank doesn't know the company policy on, say, proprietary information? Who's a little hazy on the benefits of your new investment products? Wouldn't you like to know?

Censeo Corp., an application service provider based in Orlando, Fla. offers a new "Knowledge assessment platform" that automates a bank's test materials and puts them online, where they're always available. Better yet, the bank receives a real-time report that shows where the bank employees excel and where they need help.

Setup costs range from $2,000 to $5,000, depending on the complexity of your organization and the complexity of your tests, says Jim Higgins, Censeo's vice president for marketing. There's also a surcharge that can range from $8 to $3 per evaluation; the price goes down as test-taking volume increases.

The values of a turnkey approach to internal testing are considerable, the company says. Higgins estimates that, including the cost of test preparation and printing and the time your staff must spend scoring and posting test results, paper-based testing can add up to $30 to $40 per test

"With the Censeo team addressing the technical issues, our users are free to focus on the most important aspect of the process ... ensuring that bank employees possess the knowledge needed to attract and retain customers," says Censeo president Ron Gross.

With the company's "robust reporting engine," Gross says, "in real time, leaders and trainers can generate a host of Adobe PDF reports that provide both individual results and group performance results." Test scores are computed automatically, and feedback is instantaneous.

The platform can handle a variety of standardized tests--from true-false to multiple choice--and requires no new hardware or software investments-on the part of the users, Gross says. Typically, you receive a link to Censeo's website or an icon that appears on your own home page.