Editor’s note: This issue marks the debut of our new Software Review column. Four times per year, reviewer Tim Macer, a U.K.-based independent specialist and adviser in the use of technology for survey research, will take a look at software of interest to researchers.

While most of us are still adjusting to online research as an increasingly legitimate mode of collecting data from the Internet, one new software supplier, Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI), is encouraging its customers to turn every aspect of their research activities into an online experience. It’s a challenging idea that could be seen either as a tech-led solution looking for a problem or a bold new way to unite and streamline a fragmented research industry in much the way that the 20-foot steel container transformed and modernized a technically-challenged shipping industry in the last century.

This month, GMI launches version 2.0 of its Net-MR suite. With the product’s emphasis on the Internet, it is easy to overlook the huge potential Net-MR has to become the versatile and streamlining steel container of marketing research. That’s because Net-MR is also a Web-based CATI system, CAPI system, project management and data delivery tool. It produces paper questionnaires, very sophisticated tables and charts, and even incorporates software for running focus groups.

Net-MR is a Java-based ASP solution, so you have no software to install or maintain. You just need a decent Internet connection (stable 56K or ISDN will do) and a PC running an up-to-date browser. Beyond that, the software and all your work are held off-site on GMI’s servers. Log in and you are largely unaware that you are not using software installed locally. The Java environment reduces the need for lumbering screen refreshes and brings you familiar drop-down menus, tool tips and the kind of zippy response you don’t necessarily associate with the Web.

Version 2 aims to provide a complete environment to the full-service research agency, independent research practitioner, fieldwork specialist or in-house research facility. After logging in, you are presented with clean, simple navigation to all the suite’s integrated modules. The system encourages good housekeeping from the outset: you must start your project in the project management tool and describe the project, its users, geographies and timings before going on to develop the script. There are even integrated accounting and budgeting facilities as a part of project management suite. It’s a true multi-user system, so while one person is building the interview, someone else can be designing the sample or the quota matrix.

Net-MR incorporates the most sophisticated sampling and panel management tools I have seen to date. You use the same module whether you want to load in some RDD sample from a regular supplier, or if you want to tap into one of GMI’s research-ready managed online panels. Or, you can build your own panel.

Portal-building

There are even portal-building tools to let you create the Web site you need to allow your panel members to interact with you, manage their profiles, check out their points and air their grievances - another module lets you take care of incentive payments too. None of this is difficult - there is even a wizard to help you build a portal.

Of particular interest to the research agency will be the tools that also let you create portals for your clients to use. You can offer clients real-time access to their projects and results at any level of sophistication you choose. For instance, you may only offer published results to one client, while allowing sneak previews of projects in action to another. To one you can offer the crosstab tool with filtering and to another offer weighting and sig tests as well. It is here, in the dissemination of results, where I believe the Internet will come into its own in marketing research.

New look

In version 2.0, the survey-authoring tool has been given a new look. It is productive to use, making it quick and easy to write questions or import them from Word documents. There is a new “overview” tool, which makes it easier to see the question and routing structure at a glance. But I had hoped the new version offered a slightly more visual way of specifying routing logic, which still relies on some rather cryptic codes. Of all the modules, survey authoring is the one that still seems a little unrefined, which could be a barrier to non-technical users. There is a lot of online help available, but again it could do with some better structuring and some decent examples.

Where the design tool excels is in the ease of testing and previewing the survey, which you can see as a “printed” questionnaire, or an online survey. With any online survey tool, testing is everything, as mistakes can be hard to spot and are costly to correct after fieldwork has started. In Net-MR, playing through the interview is never more than two mouse-clicks away.

And as if that is not enough, Net-MR segues effortlessly into its qualitative sister, Net-Focus. This offers advanced online focus group capabilities combined with the option to use the main Net-MR tool to collect qual/quant data from snap polls, or even feed back the groups’ results using the Net-MR analyzer tool in real-time. And there’s more that I don’t have space to tell you about.

Innovation

U.S.-based TNS Intersearch started using Net-MR a year ago for some of its Web surveys and has recently completed a complex CAPI project with the product. Ian Kiernan, the firm’s senior vice president of operations, finds GMI’s vision and its approach to development refreshing. “The speed of innovation is unreal,” he reports. “It is quite unbelievable what they have done in so short a time. We were the first to use Net-CAPI - it was just a vision to start with, but we said what we wanted to achieve, and they pulled this out of their back pocket. We were using 80 different field service companies for one project - a large consumer study - and had to find a more efficient way to manage it. To give you an idea of the complexity of this study, this was a 90-minute interview.”

In case you were wondering how a Web-based tool can offer a CAPI capability, the secret is in the Java, and in another kind of portal you can create: the interviewer portal. Interviewers can use this to pick up their latest assignments on their laptops by logging into the Internet. If any interviews are done with an open Internet connection, the data are transferred back immediately, which is how CATI works. But once the assignment has been opened, interviewers can go offline and the Java applet running in the browser keeps the interview running and can store any number of interviews in an XML database ready for automatic transfer the next time an Internet connection is opened.

Intersearch used this to take all of its suppliers online so they all accessed the same surveys and data through the Net-MR interviewer portals. This meant interviewers only needed to connect briefly each day but quotas could be adjusted constantly, and the client could observe the data coming in at a much earlier stage.

There were some problems along the way, and Kiernan sounds a note of caution that some of the tools still lack the “industrial strength” he is seeking. “The CATI solution, in particular, still lacks depth. But my expectation is that by end of the year they will be close to having a real CATI product.”

Harness the Internet

Kiernan sees GMI as a firm with a vision, and it is a vision he shares: to harness the Internet to reduce the cost of ownership for technology and make it easier to collaborate across the globe with co-workers, suppliers and clients.

“Most people don’t know just how huge the cost is of having local servers and DP staff in multiple centers,” Kiernan says. “And it takes a long time to get projects into the field, programming in different versions and on different packages. The opportunity to use shared infrastructure across the world will be a tremendous step forward. You can use the power of the Web to do things you currently cannot do - monitoring quality and productivity on remote fieldwork, or having people working at home.”

One system

By contrast, ResearchLab is a new start-up full-service agency in Oslo, Norway. To founder and President Ulf Andersen, Net-MR offered the opportunity to use the same tool across all interviewing methods. “My goal is to have one system that is completely channel-independent for us in our data collection,” he says. “We chose this because it has three vital elements integrated into one solution: interviewing, reporting, and panel management.”

Net-MR is used collaboratively within ResearchLab for all studies. Apart from Web surveys, the majority of fieldwork is outsourced. Andersen’s long-term goal is to work with suppliers also using Net-MR, and he is about to embark on a 9,000-interview Web-CAPI project with a partner in neighboring Sweden. He reports no problem with importing data from other packages and has found the SPSS import works well. It means all the surveys can be analyzed and published to clients using the same tools.

“Our clients particularly like the Analyzer module and the client portal functionality where they get all their projects reported through one portal. Very little training is required: it takes about an hour. For our clients, it’s a real selling point, yet it’s very easy for us to administer.”

As at Intersearch, there have been some software issues. “You need to be very competent to find the problem,” cautions Andersen. “But as soon as you discover these things, I must say GMI do their best to fix them quickly.”

Growth pains

When a product comes from nowhere to outstrip long-established rivals in just two years, some growth pains are inevitable. But like a popular new band’s second album, version two can be make or break for a developer: the wider market expects reliability while early adopters are looking for more innovation. The challenge for GMI is now to deliver both in equal measure.