Frequently Asked Questions
The first versions of EIDOS tools were already developed in the early 90s. About ten years later, measures were taken to bring EIDOS to a state-of-the-art software development environment.
Today, EIDOS is available in Version 9 which reflects major efforts to improve EIDOS based on our users feedback and new insights of cognitive science over a long period of time.
A lot of companies in both the private services sector as well as institutions in the public services sector use EIDOS. Please understand that we do not publish our clients' names.
We really appreciate that many of our clients give us permission to forward their contact details to allow parties interested in working with EIDOS to get in touch with them directly. This is a much better reference than a list of logos.
Initially, EIDOS was developed to help decision-makers in politics make better decisions thanks to its visual and cognitive support. It didn't take long for the decision-makers in business to notice that qualitative reasoning is very valuable to them, as well. They were well equipped with numbers from the past based on Enterprise Resource Planning systems. But they realized that visual tools could help them to handle complexity and to deal with uncertainty.
No. EIDOS can be applied for any complex, costly and controversial tasks in any environment and industry. Please review a few examples of application areas here.
As potential new clients frequently ask us about competition, we are observing the market more or less carefully: There are products that support the one or the other tool or feature of Parmenides EIDOS.
Both, our customers and we ourselves have – until now without success - tried to find comparable products that support them with at least half of what EIDOS offers. They have also asked solution providers to combine different solutions. We don't know of any product that can compete with Parmenides EIDOS to date – and we continue to further develop Eidos.
Parmenides EIDOS is owned by the Parmenides Foundation. Parmenides AG holds the exclusive rights to sell EIDOS licenses or to share the right to distribute licenses with partners, e.g. the European School of Governance, Berlin. The right to sell licenses is accompanied by a license agreement to pay licenses fees to the Parmenides Foundation.
The primary goal of selling EIDOS is to generate license fees income for the Parmenides Foundation, which uses the proceeds to cover the Foundation's running cost and to finance its research activities.
We’re happy to support you in doing so. Please get in contact with us for a quote.
We offer a service to build these tools or processes as templates for you.
Please get in contact with us for a quote.
The power of EIDOS can only unfold if users know how the tools, processes and frameworks work together and how they build on each other. Based on our experience, this is not a question of clicking but rather a question of education.
MBA students often get to know management tools and techniques one after another without learning the answer to the question: 'Which tool is for which purpose?' This is what we like to teach users first and then to hand over an evaluation license afterwards - Just as you can’t test drive a car without a driver's licence.
Parmenides AG and EUSG sell license packages that contain licenses, training and initial support to clients.
We don't use software resellers and kindly ask them not to send us requests. Parmenides EIDOS is not plug-and-play software and thus not distributed without proper training.
We offer customized start screens of Eidos with your companies or institutions logo - for no additional costs(!).
As the majority of our profit goes into the not-for-profit Parmenides Foundation (or further developments to improve EIDOS) we unfortunately don’t have the means to support small organizations and give away licenses for free.
As the majority of our profit goes into the not-for-profit Parmenides Foundation (or further developments to improve EIDOS) we unfortunately don’t have the means to support small organizations and give away licenses for free.
We’re aware of the problem. However, there are public institutions that were able to buy Eidos after a public tender process, amongst others due to the fact that there is no direct competition. Please contact eusg for support.
Yes we do – and the good news is that teaching licenses are free(!).
Please use this contact form.
There are temporarily project licenses available that allow you to use Eidos for a defined number of users and duration.
Please use this contact form to get a quotation.
It is hard to precisely measure the value of good thinking and thus the adoption of Eidos somehow errs from the usual business case logic. There are users claiming they saved millions due to better decisions by the application of EIDOS.
Regardless of knowing that there is no serious method to prove the value and the contribution of a tool supporting e.g. a multi-stakeholder decision-making process or an important strategy session at board level, here are some examples that our users mentioned:
- Improving the quality of decisions even by small degrees can save significant amounts of money. We know examples of important (millon €/$) investment decisions that were improved by the application of EIDOS.
- Due to it’s structuring characteristic EIDOS is ideal to support meetings and decision making processes via phone or screen-sharing which can be reflected in related time and travel budgets
- The specific format Eidos provides to capture knowledge supports efficient experience exchange, knowledge sharing and management, the reuse of successful approaches through templates. All arguments that would be used for putting together a business case for a knowledge management system can be used for an Eidos business case as well
- Increased productivity of time and resources invested in meetings, e.g. by generating meeting minutes with a single click at the end of the meeting. EIDOS Management Toolbox empowers and stimulates employees to make use of management tools and techniques they acquired during their education. Such use leads to more structured work products and increased quality of related decisions and approaches.
Parmenides EIDOS - Management Suite is a stand-alone software solution for Microsoft Windows. It is comparable with an Office Suite but with some minor differences.
As with the Office Suite, each document is stored in a single file. The ten different tools of Parmenides EIDOS are integrated in one single application with harmonized icon bars. It’s easy to learn due to the generic user interface of all tools.
Yes. Parmenides EIDOS allows content to be copied in via the Microsoft clipboard. A lot of tools allow imports and exports to and from Microsoft Excel. The EIDOS report generator also generates interactive PowerPoint presentations.
Parmenides EIDOS enables users to attach almost any type of file and helps them to structure content generated with MS Office efficiently.
No. But it is possible to run Windows on an Operating System of Apple. Hence, Apple OS-X users can also use Parmenides EIDOS.
In general, EIDOS Version 9 requires Microsoft Windows 7 or later as the operating system and it is also recommended to install Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel, as well.
No – solely the activation of a license is completed via network, however, this can also be done over the phone and/or via email (choose telephone activationdduring the installation).
We are happy to provide you with the needed configuration files for your developers to built the necessary interfaces.
We have also a great partner that provides a kind of meta-layer to easily feed-data from almost every database and ERP system into Parmenides EIDOS tool formats. We are pleased to arrange a demonstration. A combination with EIDOS Visual Scoremap is eye-opening.
Just select and copy the items and paste them into the tool of your choice. You can even copy two columns from a spreadsheet or table and paste them as an element with additional comment.
This is powerful and to our knowledge quite unique.
No - for a couple of good reasons, e.g. to avoid the risk to loose the history of the enrichment of the reasoning process and the risk to generate a black box.
Yes, you can attach almost all type of files to e.g. the elements in Situation Analysis or the objects in the Constellatory Overview, and you will be able to see the content with a simple mouseover operation.
Users love the very cool feature allowing to drag&drop attachments from one element to another as well as to drag&drop attachments from one open file to another open file.
Yes – however, it depends on your companies IT security policy whether this will work in your environment.
A simple mouseover allows you to see a preview of the link. Another cool feature that provides value add but is not a core feature that we would mention in a training or to make someone buy EIDOS. Nevertheless it's cool and maybe we can make a user curious who haven't found that feature before.
This depends of course on the size and nature of your endeavor – however, a bright and sharp projector and screen is essential, as people will need to focus on the screen’s content for some time.
Flip charts at the side e.g. for group work are always a good idea.
The most efficient way is to use the pack&go function that packages all Eidos and attached other documents and files in the structure you have developed during your team exercise into a zip file that unfolds that same structure on your counterparts laptops.
If your colleagues do not have Eidos installed (because they still think in Excel and decide in Powerpoint), the “Create Report” – Button allows you to let Eidos prepare an interactive/clickable (!) PowerPoint slide set that you can send to your colleagues.
