IBM SPSS Data Collection

IBM® SPSS® Data Collection is a complete suite of products for survey, market, or business researchers. It enables them to quickly and efficiently acquire clean data from the widest range of sources using an expansive array of methods.

This is increasingly important as business today demands faster, more representative and more cost-effective surveys for deeper insight into customers’ thoughts and opinions. Both commercial organizations and market research firms rely on its advanced technologies.

IBM SPSS Data Collection products provide everything need to meet or exceed those demands.

With IBM SPSS technology research organizations can:

• Extend their reach to population segments that are hard to engage through conventional channels
• Conduct global surveys efficiently and cost effectively to register the preferences and opinions of people in distant countries
• Achieve global scope through round-the-clock operations across many countries
• Analyze free-text responses alongside categorical data with IBM SPSS Text Analytics for Surveys
• Mine the rich veins of comment and opinion found on social network sites, blogs and other Web sites with IBM SPSS Modeler Premium
• Use advanced analytics to augment the value they provide by finding extra insights to give organizations a competitive edge
• Become an “insight partner,” working with clients’ organizational data as well as research data to provide a holistic view and to empower them to act on insight to drive customer intimacy, product planning and operational efficiency.

IBM SPSS Data Collection for customer intimacy

Improve business performance through better customer insight

The IBM SPSS Data Collection family empowers businesses to capture customer input across multiple touch-points, and then broadcast the “voice of the customer” throughout the organization. With it, they can collect information through surveys triggered by activity on a Web site, or during routine interactions with customer service or call center staff.

For enterprises, collecting this valuable feedback is one of the key steps in developing customer intimacy. Along with transactional data and other forms of information, it helps businesses make decisions that are focused on and individual to each customer.

With our technology they can:

• Engage customers and build valuable relationships by collecting feedback at regular intervals and involving customers into decision-making processes
• Manage the Enterprise Feedback Management or Customer Experience Programs that are the building blocks of a true customer intimacy solution
• Measure and track customer loyalty to better target retention efforts
• Develop and deliver market-driven products through continual surveys of target customers
• Optimize marketing efforts by testing concepts, imagery and messages before deployment
• Increase the profitability of customer interactions by maximizing the value of  up-sell or cross-sell opportunities
• Increase customer satisfaction and lifetime value by continually tracking customer attitudes and responding to emerging problems and opportunities
• Make customer-centric decisions with far greater confidence
• Satisfy and retain valuable and profitable customers, and attract others like them, more easily and cost effectively
• Identify and proactively manage business risks

The latest release of IBM SPSS Data Collection includes many enhancements and improvements designed to give researchers more power to conduct deeper and wider surveys so that they can provide even more profound results to internal and external clients.

With IBM SPSS Data Collection 6, researchers can:

• Exercise enhanced control for deeper insight
• Avoid the limitations of conventional tools and ask the questions they really need to, and generate better insight
• Empower use across the enterprise – IBM SPSS Data Collection 6 is designed to accommodate all types of users across the survey life cycle
• Broaden their reach and increase the productivity of telephone interviewing environments
• Refine operational efficiency with increased speed, reduced footprint and improved scalability.

Specific enhancements and improvements are listed below.

A completely new addition to the IBM SPSS Data Collection family, IBM SPSS Data Collection Author Server is a powerful tool that researchers can deploy to create and deploy surveys in a multi-user, Web-based environment:

• Role-based rules control who can access the system and what tasks they can perform
• Manage customized files with the IBM SPSS Data Collection Publish Assets Utility
• Use single sign-on to authenticate and manage users in a multi-user, multi-repository environment, and to store and retrieve the credentials they use for logging in to content and workflow repositories.

Hierarchical data (unbounded loops)

Hierarchical data (unbounded loops) – create unbounded loops for iterations based on a response to a preceding numeric question (e.g., to collect household, doctor, patient, and treatment data).

Hierarchical data (database questions)

Hierarchical data (database questions) – create single response, multiple response, and loop questions where the category lists are generated by a connection to an external database, ensuring that lists are standardised and always consistent, and can easily be updated .

If /Block routing

With the user interface, create logical routings using the conditional statements If, Else If, and Else.

Project templates

Save complex project settings to templates to create and configure projects more easily. Each project template contains all of the elements (settings, resources, images, etc.) needed to start a new project. An activation template assists project activation. Project templates can be stored to and accessed from server directories.

• Save a project, including all associated files and settings, as a project template.
• Create a new project based on the files and settings of an existing project template.
• Store to project templates and access them from IBMSPSS Data Collection Interviewer Server, IBM SPSS Data Collection Question Repository, a local directory, or a library.

Improvements to IBM SPSS Data Collection Phone Interviews include:

• Phone activity – IBM SPSS Data Collection Dialer licensing is now established via the License Authorization Wizard (installed with IBM SPSS Data Collection Server)
• Phone Participants activity – user interface has been improved to better organize available features and improve accessibility
• Telephone keypad for dual tone multi-frequency (DTMF) – option to use a telephone-style keypad for sending dial tones when the contact can only be reached via a menu system (e.g., “Press 1 for Dr. Smith, press 2 for Dr. Jones”)
• Combine the powerful and rich sample and interview management capabilities of IBM SPSS Data Collection Phone Interviews with third-party dialers. In line with the IBM SPSS open platform philosophy, this Solution Development Kit makes it easy to integrate IBM SPSS Data Collection Phone Interviews with a third-party autodialer or IVR-enabled dialer
• Integration with Pro-t-s and Sytel dialer is already available as part of IBM SPSS Data Collection 6.
  
  The Sytel predictive dialer is designed for performance in market research and is the one “software only” dialer to be fully integrated with IBM’s SPSS phone Interviews; Sytel is empowering customers in over 46 countries and delivers 24x7 support worldwide.
  
  PRO-T-S is a researchPredictive dialing system designed by researchers specifically for survey research –  Tried, tested and widely used.

Single sign-on

Support for LDAP single sign-on using Integrated Windows Authentication (SSPI). Single sign-on can be used to authenticate and manage users in a multi-user, multi-repository environment:

• Improve usability and user efficiency
• Users enter credentials in one place for all applications
• Reduce ‘password fatigue’
• Simplify and streamline user management
• Enforce tighter data and system security policies
• Centralized compliance reporting.

Role-based access

Customize and manage the tasks users are permitted to perform according to their roles. Role-based limitations restrict users from viewing, editing, and adding components in a survey without assigned privileges.

Role-based access applies to both the desktop and server editions of IBM SPSS Data Collection Author when the projects are located in IBM SPSS Data Collection Interviewer Server Administration.

The following roles have been created (administrators can change these to suit individual requirements):

• Analyst – define the way each question should be reported (change the analysis context) but not add or remove questions
• ProjectManager – run surveys at any time. Project managers cannot add or change any survey element
• SampleManager – create and upload samples to Interviewer Server Administration
• SurveyCreator – create surveys using a combination of library items and new questions. Library items can be added to the survey but cannot be changed. Survey creators can create and change new items, but they cannot write scripts
• SurveyCreatorAdvanced – enhance surveys by changing standard questions, adding new questions, and writing scripts
• SurveyLauncher – activate surveys.
• Translator – add translations to existing questions

Customer accounts

Users, roles, projects, and activities can now be grouped into customer accounts, allowing administrators to:

• Group user, role and activity user projects and system (template) projects by customer accounts
• Manage users in hierarchy structure
• Provide tailored branding options for Data Collection products by customer account. Branding information such as company logos, default page pictures, home page site links and CSS files can be set for each customer via the new CustomerAccountAdmins role. Common users in a customer account can only view branding information for their account
• Track the number of concurrent users for all activities

Create unbounded loops for iteration based on the response to a preceding numeric question. configured and, in IBM SPSS Data Collection Professional, render unbound loops with iterations based on scripts.

Interview Scripting

The new SampleActivationScrtipt script demonstrates how you can automatically activate Web surveys.

IBM SPSS Data Collection Data Entry has been enhanced with a number of new features:

• Single keystrokes replace multi-stroke actions – a number of actions that previously required multiple keystrokes (e.g., Alt+P for previous) can now be accomplished with a single keystroke as well as the original multi-stroke combination
• Increase the productivity of data entry by advancing automatically to the next question for single response questions, and automatically inserting separator characters for multiple response questions
• Manage password and encryptions more easily through the IBM SPSS Data Collection Interviewer Configuration Wizard.

IBM SPSS Data Collection Paper now includes:

• Support for Database Questions – support for previewing draft questionnaires that contain Database Questions created in IBM SPSS Data Collection Author 6. The following database question types are supported:
  • Single response database question
  • Multiple response database question
  • Database array
  • Database grid
• If/Block and Set Response routing items – support for previewing If/Block and Set Response routing items when the Include routing item scripts option is selected
• Select a context – support for multiple-contexts. A new Context option displays content in a different context.

With IBM SPSS Data Collection Survey Reporter 6, you can now use:

• Summary Means Tables – run column means tests against a range of variables, which can include both numeric and categorical variables
• Hierarchical data (database questions) – create single and multiple response questions whose category lists are generated by connecting to an external database.

Query concurrent activity from log files with DM Query. These desktop utilities can be downloaded to a workstation:

• IBM SPSS Data Collection Quota
• IBM SPSS Translation Utility
• IBM SPSS Data Collection WordCapture