Perseus Development Corporation and WebSurveyor, combined under a newly formed holding company funded by Austin Ventures, announced today they were selected as a winner of the CRM Rising Star award by the editors of CRM Magazine. Perseus Development Corporation is the originator and leading provider of Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) solutions, while WebSurveyor is the leading provider of online survey software for business professionals.

Read more at the Boston Daily Business News.

New article by Stephen Swoyer today on the The Data Warehousing Institute web site about SPSS’s goal of becoming more "mainstream," partly based on the results of its integration of desktop analytic applications and server-based predictive analytics applications such as Clementine and Predictive Enterprise Services. It also highlights SPSS 15’s ability to be integrated into non-SPSS applications through the SPSS Programmability Extension.

Read more at The Data Warehousing Institute

SurveyZ is an entirely web-based, self-service internet survey system developed and operated by Utah-based Qualtrics. It offers a variety of advanced capabilities, including unique survey questions, branching, looping, piping, trigger-based responses and form grading as well as an unparalleled collection of pre-written surveys that you can borrow questions from or use as the basis for your own surveys. The design and organization of the SurveyZ survey development environment isn’t particularly impressive (it looks like something out of 1998), and the design options for the surveys themselves are fairly limited — yet the design process is fairly smooth and even the most complex surveys can be created by individuals with very little experience. SurveyZ has a built in e-mail invitation system and a very limited reporting engine. All in all, if you’re looking for a survey system that can do just about anything and you don’t care so much about design or reporting, SurveyZ may have everything you need.

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Opinio 5 is a well-designed, easy to use and highly customizable internet survey system published by Oslo, Norway based ObjectPlanet. The software, which is available both as a hosted service and as an application you can install on your own web server, offers all of the major features you would expect to find in a moderately advanced packaged with a few very powerful and interesting extras (and a couple of notable deficits). It is perfect for a corporate research department or organization with users at several levels — novice will find it fairly easy to create smart looking surveys very quickly, while more advanced users will be able to control precisely how the surveys look and feel. Opinio also offers a highly configurable reporting engine that for some applications may completely replace the need to examine the results in an outside data analysis package. The software is well priced, extensible, and is definitely worthy of consideration for any midsized research department looking for a flexible, easy to manage internet survey package.

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U.K. based Research journal reviewer Tim Macer recently published a review of ETabs AutoGraph 2.0, a program designed to assist in the “desktop creation of indivudual or repetitive charts and tables from most industry-standard tables for output to Excel or Powerpoint including Quantum, Merlin through TabsML, Pulse Train’s XtabsML, Wincross, Quanvert, Snap, Dimensions, Mentor, and SPSS tables, or direct imput from Pulsar.

Macer rates Autograph as a 4.5 out of 5 for ease of use; 5 out of 5 for cross-platform compatability; and 4.5 out of 5 for value for money. To read the complete review, visit Research Magazine.

For more details about AutoGraph from the company, visit the E-Tabs web site.

ResearchExec, owned and operated by the Fairfield, Connecticut based company of the same name, is an entirely web-based survey system that is available either as a hosted solution or as a package you can install on your own server. It offers a tremendous amount of customizability as well as a number of advanced features such as the ability to set quotas for individual questions and advanced survey logic. It has integrated panel management that allows you to send surveys to specific members based on their responses to previous surveys. The survey development system, while elegantly designed and extremely flexible, is tedious to use and does not play well with FireFox 1.5 or Internet Explorer 7 RC1. It offers very little in terms of a reporting system, and you should expect to do most of your analysis in a separate program such as Excel or SPSS. Because of the focus on advanced features, the sharper learning curve and the lack of a reporting engine, ResearchExec is more likely to appeal to users at a professional research firm and not those looking for a quick easy way to produce and report on internet research.

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Beeliner Surveys is a simple, easy-to-use and extremely inexpensive online survey service operated by Cambridge, Massachusetts based @Spinfish Web/ROG. Although its survey capabilities and design flexibility are very limited, the system is very easy to use and it includes some very unique and useful features, such as the ability to include full surveys within e-mail messages and create custom reports that can be saved and reused. While the program does have some security issues and while it does very much limit your options in terms of the types of questions you can ask, organizations looking to conduct a quick and easy survey may find the program does what they need at a price they can afford.

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Grapevine 3.0 is a moderately priced, relatively full-featured online self-service survey solution published by Toronto-based Business.ca. It offers most of the basic features, a few of the advanced features, and a collection of well designed, pre-written surveys and design templates that are sure to appeal to small companies and organizations who aren’t looking to spend a lot of time reinventing the marketing research wheel. The survey design/management interface is fairly easy to master, although the non-Web 2.0 driven survey development environment can sometimes be a little slow and frustrating. The system includes a lovely reporting engine, the ability to add multiple users to one account, the ability to upload lists of respondents (and send out invitations) and a fairly strong help system. While I am not so sure that I would recommend this package for advanced users or firms that intend to do a lot of research, it may be a very appropriate choice for a firm that finds the pre-written, pre-designed surveys worth the cost. 

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There are a lot of excellent internet web interviewing packages out there. Since it is unlikely that I will personally have time to review, compare and contrast every one of them, I’ve compiled some of the criteria I consider when evaluating internet survey software systems including questions I ask about basic capabilities, advanced survey related capabilities, design/development features, user experience related elements, response management capabilities, reporting capabilities, pricing, system requirements and available support and training. (more…)

Every September it seems like a new and very slightly improved edition of SPSS is released — this year is no exception, and in just a few weeks SPSS 15.0 will hit the streets with a few new minor features that may (or may not) improve the way your charts and graphs look; change the way you organize your data, and even provide you with a few additional statistical tools and programmatic capabilities that you never knew you were missing. So, am I going to rush out to order this new and exciting version? Probably not.

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The Digivey Survey Suite from Arizona-based Diatouch, Inc. is probably one of the most full-featured, flexible and friendly touch screen survey systems I’ve had the opportunity to play with. In addition to supporting a wide range of Windows XP-based hardware platforms ranging from touch screen kiosks to pen-based tablets, the survey creation software is extremely flexible, thoughtfully designed and easy for just about anyone to learn and use. Surveys can be quickly customized in just about any way you choose and can include audio, video, and images. Digivey also supports several advanced features such as branching, skipping, and piping and comes with some very strong reporting capabilities that may for some users eliminate the need for further analysis. The cost of the software is fair and should be within the budget of most companies who seek to develop an on-going on-site survey program.

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