Many departments within an organisation, such as marketing, customer service, and human resources  - are now responsible for designing surveys, collecting data and analysing results effectively. The new Keypoint, from Cambridge Software Publishing has been developed to address the growing need for an intuitive software package that makes it easy for non-specialists to create and implement professional surveys inhouse.Tom Godfrey, VP of Zacnet Market Research, based in Tampa. Florida USA, uses Keypoint to support telephone and web based surveys, and is finding this capacity popular with his clients.

"Market research exists to help reduce risk. In difficult economic times, a company can find out more in a brief survey of their customers or potential prospects than in any other way.  This information is invaluable for decision making."

Keypoint combines questionnaire generation, data collection, analysis and presentation in a single package. One of the most powerful features according to Tom Godfrey is that it enables his team to create a basic survey very, very quickly. "Once created we can then develop a more sophisticated survey, so the product offers depth as well as ease of use."

"Although we have used Keypoint primarily for telephone surveys. We have seen a growing demand for web hosted surveys." With Keypoint the same survey can be printed, published on a client's own web site or sent as an e-mail.

In addition, there is surveyserver.net, a subscription service that enables a web hosted survey to be published on the Internet without the need for access to a company web site. Zacnet now offers its clients this option, which is very attractive for departments who want to keep control and not involve third parties.

"We have attracted a lot of new business by being able to offer this type of service. This interest has come from software companies doing customer satisfaction surveys but also from start-ups looking to gather that initial public reaction or looking to drive the direction of their product or service - industry sector is not important."

"My feeling is that ALL companies should be interested in Keypoint. It enables an internal department to create a simple customer survey of 10-15 questions and load it on to surveyserver.net in less than an hour."

Peter Lay, Business and Associate Director of Bristol based Wyman Dillon, a market research and data analysis agency, with clients that include Readers Digest, GlaxoSmithKline and British Airways, echoes this view. "I see a clear benefit for anyone involved in human resources or implementing crisis or change management, as it enables non-specialists to conduct a quick survey of internal clients. In these circumstances you may need to keep the results confidential and an easy to use multi channel tool such as Keypoint can be invaluable."

Peter believes that the value of the output is directly related to the quality of the source data, and his company works to the Class One Statistical Merit Standard set by the Government.  This involves verifying the data and manually investigating each illegal entry. 

"Numerous surveys are conducted on the streets each year but the results can be skewed by inaccurately entered data. A strength of Keypoint is that it addresses this at an early stage.  Each question can be given an allowed range of values and prevents the entry of data that falls outside the permitted values.  This makes it a useful tool for maintaining quality control."

Another benefit of Keypoint is that it enables an instant picture of the results.

"Although we would use dedicated statistical analysis tools for predictive modelling, data mining and such, Keypoint does have very useful facilities for analysis and presentation of data, and again the automated features would be an advantage to non-specialists."