PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 23, 2017 –– Say goodbye to static year-end reviews, and say hello to their digital replacements.

Temple University’s Fox School of Business recently incorporated into its curriculum the use of DevelapMe, a competency-based, real-time feedback app developed by two faculty members and one administrator that aims to revolutionize the performance-review process. With the app, graduate and undergraduate business students at the Fox School have received real-world leadership experience through analytics, and training in a discipline like human resource management in which it is often difficult to embed live scenarios.

A mobile application, DevelapMe allows for the capture and application of feedback in order to track improvement and professional development. The app utilizes a 1-to-5 sliding scale for real-time grading of competencies, which can be catered to a specific client’s needs, and opportunities to submit commentary – either by name or anonymously. DevelapMe won the grand prize at Temple University’s 2016 Be Your Own Boss Bowl, which has been ranked by Forbes as one of the nation’s five most-lucrative college business-plan competitions.

DevelapMe is the product of Dr. Tony Petrucci, Academic Director of Leadership Development; Dr. Michael Rivera, Associate Professor of Strategic Management; and Cliff Tironi, Performance Analytics Manager for the Fox MBA and MS Programs.

“Human resource executives nationally are moving away from yearly reviews for a litany of reasons,” said Petrucci. “They are oftentimes inefficient, time-consuming, and frequently inaccurate. In addition, they don’t align with millennials’ desire for more-frequent feedback. And over 12 months, you can lose track of daily performance and behavioral nuances as they happen. With DevelapMe, those moments can be tracked in real time to accurately assess a colleague or an employee, and demonstrate areas of strength or weakness.”

With DevelapMe, the results speak for themselves. In Fall 2016, nearly 50 full-time MBA students at the Fox School were assigned full leadership responsibility for a team of six freshmen business students during a six-week business project. The project required the undergraduate and MBA students to use DevelapMe to deliver feedback (peer-to-peer, direct report-to-supervisor, and supervisor-to-direct report). Over the project’s duration, more than 25,000 pieces of feedback and over 2,800 comments were logged. The data showed that 65 percent of the MBA students improved in their leadership behavior, and 25 percent of undergraduate students improved in human capital skills, like high performance conflict management, during the course of the project. Overall individual student improvement ranged from 4 percent to 100 percent.

James. A Sanfilippo, MD, can attest to DevelapMe’s value. A Fox MBA candidate, Sanfilippo is also a spinal surgeon at Reconstructive Orthopedics, in Moorestown, N.J. His practice utilized DevelapMe to gain immediate insight into the interactions and behaviors between patients and its physicians and support staff.

“Today’s leaders need emotional intelligence more than ever,” Sanfilippo said. “The DevelapMe app from the Fox School of Business has afforded the leadership of Reconstructive Orthopedics an opportunity to strengthen and grow our skills surrounding EQ with the tools of real-time feedback and communication.”

Many companies are seeing the value of the DevelapMe app to drive individual and organizational performance by capturing interactions as they happen in the workplace and categorizing them by competency.

“We know our employees at every level are our most-important asset as an organization, which is why we are continually focused on their development, and on new ways of ensuring engagement and open communication,” said Chris Conroy, president of fleet-management organization ARI.

“We engaged the Fox School executive education team, who provided our senior leadership with the opportunity to work with DevelapMe, and they found it to be both thought-provoking and impactful. These kinds of experience have helped us stand out as a company and, I believe, have helped us to be recognized as a Fortune Top 100 Best Companies to Work For year after year.”

Tironi and Rivera recently delivered a presentation on transforming leadership through data analytics, using DevelapMe. They presented Friday, Jan. 20, at San Francisco’s Hyatt Regency during the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) 2017 Leadership Conference.