An Effective Management Tool
by Martin Day
Published on this site: September 28th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
If your perception of conducting surveys is that they can
be a useful exercise but are too time consuming to prepare,
cumbersome to deploy and require considerable resources to
process the numerous responses into a meaningful report it
is perhaps time to think again.
Online surveys turn what was once a time consuming, resource
hungry, cumbersome process into a low cost, quick, easy exercise
that delivers real-time reporting.
- Ease of Design
Out with the word-processor, now there is a quick and easy
way for almost anyone to create surveys using a simple menu
system that allows surveys to be created in minutes and
with the ability to add additional questions and modify
and move existing questions around.
- Ease Of Delivery
Once a survey has been created it is deployed through the
internet or organisations intranet making it instantly available
to anyone with access to the internet.
- Ease of Promotion
There are a number of easy ways to invite respondents to
participate in a survey such as sending an email that contains
a link to the survey or linking to the survey from a suitable
website.
- Ease of Participation
Online surveys don't just make it easy for the publisher
as most respondents find that, when compared against the
traditional pen and paper survey, completing a survey online
is quicker and easier and from the publishers point of view
a lot less prone to mistakes such as respondents missing
out questions or multiple responses being entered against
single response questions.
- Ease of Survey Management
With an online survey the publisher can see in real-time
the response rate and summary results.
- Ease of Analysis
At the end of the survey the response data is ready for
detailed analysis, the information can be loaded into a
spreadsheet or third-party analysis program where the respondent
data can be sliced and diced.
- Appreciating the Ease
Once the ease of the total life cycle of conducting a survey
online has been appreciated by business managers they will
begin to recognise the multitude of new opportunities that
exist.
The costly annual employee satisfaction survey can now be
done quicker and cheaper allowing the exercise to be conducted
bi-annual or quarterly ensuring any employee problems are
identified and dealt with early. There is also now an opportunity
to conduct smaller and more targeted ad-hoc surveys on a departmental
level or a niche area of the business improving employer/employee
communications.
A survey can be used to help deliver a management message
and measure the employee support and concerns of introducing
new initiatives, something a simple one way memo style directive
cannot do.
Survey's can be used as a marketing tool as the survey explains
the benefit of a product or service and gathers the response
from potential customers.
ROI today
Technology too often delivers better ways to perform certain
tasks but with a Return on Investment that often requires
'investment' first and the 'return' later. Many of the available
online survey services such as www.surveygalaxy.com
have not only turned a cumbersome task into a cinch, but reduced
the cost down to a pinch, giving you a return on investment
from day one and opening up a world of possibilities and further
savings.
With the opportunities that online surveys bring it is a
tool the smart manager will always have to hand in their personal
tool box.
Martin Day is a Director of Survey Galaxy Ltd
a web site that allows anyone to create, design and publish
online surveys. For more information please visit http://www.surveygalaxy.com
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