"Arming Every Business Manager
With a Quick, Affordable Research Tool"

The greatest business asset besides good employees is easy-to-use information about the needs, desires, preferences and habits of the people with whom you want to improve way of doing business. They might be customers, prospects, employees, vendors and partners.

But quantitative market research has previously been difficult to obtain, expensive, time-consuming, and too complicated. That's no longer the case. A little-known yet highly effective Web-based approach to research - SelfSurveys.com - has changed all of that with dramatic results. SelfSurveys.com is a Web-based research tool that simplifies every aspect of collecting survey data, effectively putting business and market research within the means of every empowered project manager or product team has made for dramatic market change. Primary research is now easy for every business team, offering a quick, cost-efficient means of fine-tuning stops anywhere along the product lifecycle and improving processes along the way.

Surveying has historically been the domain of old-line research companies heavy on cost and long on timelines but slow on delivery. SelfSurveys.com creators have engineered a complete paradigm shift to that of no-wait surveys - by harnessing the efficiencies of Internet communications and deploying a platform that streamlines survey development, data collection, data tabulation and data analysis.

TOOL FOR TEAMS

The SelfSurveys approach is making information gathering for business teams as practical as email is for corporate networking. The Web-based research tool makes marketplace surveying much faster, simpler, affordable, universal and useful than most business managers ever considered.

"I've always been amused by the thought that sharp products come from sharp minds as it seemed to be biased toward invention at the expense of application. We were convinced from the start that combining sharp business teams with shrewd information-gathering would deliver even sharper products and smoother processes," said Mike Ghodoosian, CEO of Universal Responses.

SelfSurveys.com provides a global, language-interchangeable service that enables any business team to easily collect and analyze vital information via desktop PCs, laptops or mobile devices to make faster and better decisions. And, the cost of the highly efficient Net-based survey system is so affordable, funding can be found within almost any existing budget.

IMMEDIACY

The job of understanding the needs and desires of marketplaces or employee bases falls flat without rapid turnaround. The window of opportunity for business research - whether for guerrilla warfare or more classic marketing-by-the-numbers - is narrow by any means.

Research consultant Steve Spero sums it up this way: "There's no better day than yesterday when it comes to research and no better day than today when it comes to getting to market."

Today a more competitive corporate America is under increasing pressure to get to market faster than ever. Unfortunately, the pace is only quickening. Empowered teams are being held accountable to make important business decisions on key ROI factors such as marketing, sales, human relations, supply purchasing, alliances and acquisitions. Yet, they're expected to do so in weeks, rather than months in many cases. The operative term of the new millennium is not "consensus," but rather "rapid measured action."

Traditional research efforts typically require a window of 10-17 weeks to prepare a survey, code it, send it out, tabulate the data and compile the results in a meaningful way. But the SelfSurveys.com approach permits corporate teams to accomplish the same job in as little as 3-5 weeks. Not only is the time to prepare, tabulate and analyze shortened, but also the surveying period itself can be compressed. Respondents can complete a survey faster with an automated digital design is easier to complete and return.

"I'm impressed by the ability (that we now have) to rapidly conduct a survey, and the speed with which we get results," said Sig Anderman, CEO, Ellie Mae Corporation, leading Internet solutions provider for the mortgage brokerage industry and SelfSurveys.com customer.

Another important benefit for time-constrained executives is getting a preview on the survey while it's in progress. Universal Responses' SelfSurveys technology allows for accurate data tabulation from Web-based or PDA-equipped respondents -- in real time. You can literally view results in graphical format any time of any day, and see when the response curve begins to drop off significantly, among other response revelations.

SIMPLICITY

When a product management team, a process improvement team, an HR team, a marketing launch team or a procurement team needs market data, they typically don't have someone versed in business research ready and waiting to provide support within their time frame. Many want up-to-the-minute data but they don't want to wait in queue for the Market Research department to undertake the survey or the IT department to host it. Your company may not even have the skill to provide the service internally.

To simplify survey creation, SelfSurveys has introduced a DesignerWIZ developmental Web tool that any novice user familiar with conventional Microsoft Office software can use to create professional looking surveys in a very short period of time. To get the survey process moving more quickly, SelfSurveys has included an extensive array of templates within DesignerWIZ. . Clients can quickly craft typical surveys using the tool at no additional charge. The templates include:

Customer Satisfaction

Brand Awareness

Attitudinal Research

Trade Show Evaluation

New Product Developmental Assessment

360^o Performance Reviews

Customer Service

Employee Satisfaction

Web Site Feedback

Customer Profiling

Presentation Evaluation

Training Effectiveness

The Internet-based service also allows anyone to export data to an Excel spreadsheet, Microsoft WORD, any XML-formatted report or one of many statistical software packages for further analysis through another service referred to as ReporterWIZ. The ReporterWIZ delivers professional looking charts for presentation to clients. It will display survey participation trends, simplify cross tabulations, build bar charts and publish reports to any designated URL over Internet Explorer.

A ServerWIZ greatly simplifies the survey distribution process. When SelfSurveys.com hosts a survey on its servers, the company provides each user with a unique URL on which to display the survey. This unique URL won't be provided to any other person or entity, but can be accessed by anyone requesting it. The company also has a "rapid draft" survey prep team to help guide anyone through the survey development process upon request.

Omar Kouatly, Microsoft Program Manager, said, "SelfSurveys.com had a sincere interest in helping me succeed. They were so responsive when I had a question or needed something done fast."

Regardless of whether support is available in house, most business managers realize that they can usually have a survey more affordably and more reliably hosted by an established outside third party such as Universal Responses.

MOBILITY

Another factor that can considerably impair fast turnaround on business research or account for lower than desirable response rates is the difficulty in surveying targets away from their offices or those who are typically mobile, such as cell phone users or sales reps.

Instant feedback has long been more the myth than the reality until PDAs appeared. SelfSurveys offers one of the first location-independent electronic survey capabilities using PDAs or smart phones.

At a seminar, trade gathering, product test site or users' conference, gathering critical stakeholder information can take only minutes, even providing the option for centering a presentation around real time audience input. Moreover, the accuracy and the usefulness of the data are much greater than ever before. Digital means not only simplicity, but also eliminating errors in collating, tabulating and trend detection. Paper surveys traditionally have been labor intensive, error prone and time consuming to not only implement but to analyze. Today, paper as a survey tool and survey-takers themselves are rapidly becoming a relic of the past, being left behind in the trash heap of pre-digital inefficiency.

Derek Brown, Director of Marketing at Microsoft, in referring to use of the SelfSurveys.com survey tool at the Microsoft Fanfest 2001 developers conference, said, " We were able to capture information at registration time which helped us to gauge interest in each conference session so we could anticipate optimum room sizes and (quickly) refine the overall agenda. The survey we did with the attendees also revealed an interesting picture of the demographics that made us think differently about attendees. The SelfSurveys service was cost-effective and the results formatted to allow us to make clearer business decisions."

APPLICATIONS

There are so many applications for Web-based and mobile electronic research approaches that they would surprise even the most open minded of all customer-facing business advocates. Today, every part of the lifecycle needs regular feedback from targeted audiences.

In a white paper on "Ease of Use" published on its highly trafficked Web site, IBM recently disclosed a key finding that according to industry data, each dollar spent on user studies during product design saves $10 on problem fixes during product development, or $100 or more in rework after product release. The corporate giant also revealed estimates showing that "80% of maintenance costs are spent on unforeseen user requirements, while only 20% are due to bugs." Market surveys, most agree, are perhaps the best way of identifying user requirements early on.

According to the IBM report, "If you do not regularly measure customer and user satisfaction, then you cannot be sure that you are delivering the user experience that will create success. Since users' perceptions, expectations, desires and alternatives are constantly evolving, you must continue to measure satisfaction over the life of your offering."

But the value of fast, reliable, "at a glance" results isn't limited to the arena of product marketing. Companies expanding into eCommerce have made some of the costliest mistakes of the Internet era. The need for customer-driven site experiences, not company driven ones, was never more critical than in a Web environment as it takes but a few seconds for a customer to switch to a site that might better suit his or her needs. CIO Insight magazine surveyed 400 top IT executives in December 2001 and reported that over 80% of the respondents stated that customer satisfaction is their top objective in deploying an eBusiness solution.

The list of potential applications is literally endless. Consider IT departments themselves. The IT Value Research Center houses a CIO magazine survey of IT professionals conducted in 2001 that shows 86% of respondents agreeing that measuring IT value is an important or an extremely important priority. 38% of those respondents held the title of VP or above. Respondents pointed to customer satisfaction as one the three most important factors they assess in measuring the value of IT work.

The most time-honored method of measuring customer satisfaction - whether that of internal or external customers - always has been through surveying attitudes, behaviors, opinions and preferences. But SelfSurveys.com has proven that the process has never been easier than with Web-based research.

MARKETS

In virtually every industry today, research surveys have become an essential product development tool. Increasingly, companies are also using it for other business functions such as streamlining procurement processes, greater quality control, improving corporate culture, influencing standards development and fortifying partner relations.

The vast majority of industries stand to gain handsomely in improved value propositions and greater ROI through frequent use of Web-based surveys, according to SelfSurveys.com. They include the telecommunications industry, the financial industry, computer industry, the packaged goods industry, the healthcare industry, the hospitality industry, the transportation industry, the entertainment industry and even professional sports.

eLearning will be another huge market for instant feedback through market surveys as it matures into the greatest change in education over several decades.

Further, opinion polling on political issues and news events will only grow in popularity, as the Internet becomes the location of choice for instant surveying.

As business goes global, so too does the interest in feedback. Language presents a barrier for most survey companies that can bog down a survey process with delays and hidden costs, as well as results that are harder to collate. Universal Responses has addressed this issue with the latest upgrades to its intelligent survey tool - Version 3.0 - by designing in a capability to accommodate six languages at the same time interchangeably (Spanish, German, French, Italian, Chinese and English). Globally, survey participants choose a language of choice and SelfSurveys.com technology instantly converts everything to a single database.

FEATURES

While there are a wide variety of survey tools and polling services on the market today, many offer only simple collations and digital tabulation. Complete hosting, like that offered through SelfSurveys.com, moves the process along even faster, by avoiding the time and internal politics of involving IT departments. Universal Responses can initiate a survey the same day that participant contact information is provided and survey questions finalized. Moreover, teams can take a preliminary tabulation at any time to get a quick peek at initial feedback.

Another special feature is the use of a process called dynamic branching. Depending upon the answer selected, a respondent will instantly be skipped to the next appropriate question - allowing her or him to move more quickly thru multi-level questionnaires.

SelfSurveys.com technology can also control who takes a survey and ensure that each respondent only takes a survey once. Survey data can also be downloaded directly into a company's own statistical databases as CSV or XML files for easier manipulation. The SelfSurveys platform has been designed to even accommodate side-by-side comparisons of similar surveys done at different times.

Electronic surveying took a giant leap in polling technology in past months when they transformed surveying into a visual medium, rather than simply a factual one. Survey developers now have the option of inserting pictures of the very items for which their seeking input -- in minutes. Pictures or graphical representations of advertisements, packaging, products, presenters, applications and processes can be added to make the survey process more effective.

Surveys and databases are password protected and hidden safely behind company firewalls. They also can be encrypted during data transfer using secure socket layers (SSL). All data is confidential; Universal Responses never sells nor provides any SelfSurveys data to any third party.

Sophisticated digital technology like that at SelfSurveys.com has taken the age-old practice of gauging opinions and made it not only more accurate and immediate, but at the same time more pleasurable and easy. Even more impressive, the results have become more understandable and actionable in the process.

For more information, please contact us at info@selfsurveys.com .