i-Pulse uses 'traffic light' performance measurement principles to enable users to record and illustrate progress on aspects of management practice. Improvement progress and areas for improvement can be noted with improvement action plans being defined. It is designed to save assessment data for up to 25 assessments with progress over time being demonstrated both on screen and through hard copy reports which are designed for internal, or external use. For larger organisations with business units there is a comparison feature.

1. The aspects of management practice that are fundamental to smaller organisations vary to some extent for different sectors. i-Pulse contains templates for smaller businesses, third sector organisations, hotels, business units of larger organisations and franchisees. Each template provides a number of management indicators, with target performance, under four sectoion headings. These templates can be customised to suit the practice of any smaller organisation.

2. i-Pulse is designed to enable any smaller organisation to self assess their progress against the management indicators of their template and to enter the results of their assessment efficiently in terms of traffic light score and their improvement progress. Areas for further improvement can be converted into action plans.

3. The results of self assessment can be viewed in the software but in addition i-Pulse provides a hard copy assessment report which also shows grade progress over time. This report is designed to demonstrate to external organisations the management practice of the organisation.

4. A feature of i-Pulse , which will usually only be used by larger organisations with business units, is the comparison feature. This feature enables the management assessment files of individual business units to be grouped together so that comparison reports can be compiled to compare management practice.