There are key issues of audience size and how quickly you need to deploy it. I’ve found the Totara 360 tool is much cheaper (no per-use cost) but it’s also a lot more work compared to buying a pre-made tool. If you only need to deploy to a small audience (say, less than 100 senior managers) it maybe more cost effective to use an existing commercial offering. Also, if you’re on a deadline (particularly if its only weeks away) then look elsewhere. 

My view, the Totara 360 tool works best when you need to adapt the process to your organisation, there are large numbers involved (e.g. mandatory for all people leaders), and you need to regularly repeat the process, say twice annually. It’s compelling when you need to integrate it into other HR processes such as the annual Development Plan – and can with good business design transform this from an almost meaningless HR process to a tool that staff & people leaders use because it adds value to them. 

My experience:
The best deployment I’ve seen was to a large group of low & mid-level team leaders. The aim was not on generic behavioral skills but on a small set of quite specific and targeted questions around readiness for change, change management, visible leadership qualities. This was tied to an area of significant business focus, it was short (like everyone we have survey fatigue) with less than a dozen questions, and repeated twice a year. 

 
There was more work involved than immediately obvious – you need to craft the emails (invite, chase up), you need to decide all your business rules (how long it’s open, min number of respondents), who is going to handle administration (user’s will call you – having found unlikely ways to interpret your instructions), and the question and answer design – which is not trivial as the Totara tool doesn’t come with a set of competencies to use. 

 
Then, there is the user level reporting. Senior managers (and OD folk purchasing these tools) have only ever seen highly polished and very expensive 360 reports – with lots of infographic style charts, tables, automatically generated ‘insights’ and all beautifully colour coordinated. The Totara 360 reporting is not in this league. It’s an on-screen/pdf report export. You’ll want to budget for some theme/styling work! 

To learn how to do this? Golly, the Totara help material and your vendor will help with the technical steps but the bigger skills would be on its design and your own processes around using this type of feedback. You have a whole set of new options and flexibility – including the ability to make it short – which require you to re-think some assumptions that are built into the expensive pre-packaged 360 tools. 

Next steps, I’ve since moved to a new agency that doesn’t use 360 but if you personally message me (it’s an option if you click on my name) I can give you some contact details (fancy a trip to Wellington?) and also send you some collateral on deployments. 

Good luck!
Austen