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If you have a perception that conducting surveys can be a useful exercise but are far too time consuming to prepare, cumbersome to deploy and require considerable resources to process the 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.

The 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.

The Ease of Delivery

After preparation a survey is deployed through the internet or organisation’s intranet making it instantly available to anyone with access to the internet.

The Ease of Promotion

Inviting respondents to participate in a survey is achieved with ease by either sending an email that contains a link to the survey and/or linking to the survey from a suitable website.

The 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 Managing the Survey

With an online survey the publisher can view in real-time the response rate, summary and detail results.

The 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.

Recognizing the Ease

Once business managers appreciate the ease of the total life cycle of conducting a survey online they will start 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 help deliver a management message and at the same time measure the employee support and concerns of introducing new initiatives, something a simple one way memo style directive cannot do.

A survey can be used as a marketing tool by explaining the benefit of a product or service and gathering the response from potential customers.

ROI today

Technology often promises more efficiency but requires ‘investment’ first and the ‘return’ later. Many of the available hosted online survey services 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 many opportunities that online surveys bring to a manager it is a tool that is always useful to have to hand in their personal tool box.

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