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Faircontrol

Situation

FairControl provides business intelligence services to major exhibitors at trade fairs, through systematic, survey-based evaluation of visitors and exhibitors at shows, conferences, seminars and events around the world. It provides fact-based insight into the success of its clients' presence at these events and advice on how event participation can be optimized.

Clients span the work of technology and industry, and include, for example Adobe Systems, BMW Group, Intel, Nokia, Orange Communications and Siemens. FairControl has assisted exhibitors at events in Brasil, Czech Republic, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, UK and USA.

Challenge

FairControl needed to be able to deliver evaluations to clients more quickly than manual paper-based questionnaires would permit. It also needed to be able to react faster when urgent changes were required. The logistics of dealing with large volumes of paper at trade fairs was proving to be a heavy burden as facilities for storage, distribution or producing extra copies at short notice were unpredictable and often limited.

Solution

FairControl approached SPSS MR for a data collection solution to complement its existing analysis capabilities that use SPSS for Windows. FairControl has now equipped its on-site interviewers with standard palmtop organizers for conducting interviews and collecting data electronically.

Results

FairControl needed a way to speed up its work - one that would enhance the professionalism of its trade fair evaluation service - and opted to equip its interviewers with palmtop devices to collect the data, running Entryware™ from SPSS MR.

The company, based in Germany, carries out surveys of visitors and exhibitors to major trade events around the world, especially in the automotive and the information and communication technology sectors. Founders and joint Chairmen, Bjoern Jopen and Kim Hellmig, had achieved considerable growth in the company since it started offering the service in 2000, with a string of top events requesting its services, such as the NAIAS (North American International Auto Show) in Detroit, the leading European IT trade fair CeBIT and other major fairs across Europe, America and Asia. With its global reach, SPSS MR can support FairControl locally at all the international events it attends.

The two partners were concerned about the time needed to deliver results to the client, which was often not until the event was over, by the time the questionnaires were transferred to the office and typed into SPSS for Windows. Checking and making corrections to the inevitable mistakes made by interviewers further added to the time. And at the event, handling all the paper could be a major headache, especially with a number of different questionnaire versions required, for visitors, for exhibitors and a special one for the press, plus two or three versions for different languages at these international events.

Bjoern Jopen recalled some of the other problems: "Quite often, the client would have thought of other questions to ask, while on the plane, and would arrive at the event asking us to make changes. Sometimes you would want to react to things at the actual event, and change the questions a bit. On paper, it's impossible to make these changes quickly, We could be running around the streets of Detroit or Paris looking for a copy shop and could easily lose half a day. "

FairControl approached SPSS MR to see if there was any technology to help, who suggested trialing Entryware(tm). At the next event, FairControl equipped half of its interviewers with palm-top PDA (personal digital assistant) devices running Entryware(tm). The other half acted as the control group, and used paper, as before.

During the event, FairControl observed that there was significantly less administration required and less work involved in getting the work to the same level of accuracy. "With Entryware(tm) it is much easier to get to the desired level of accuracy," commented Mr Jopen.

The real time-savings come after the interviews are finished, as Kim Hellmig explained: "With Entryware(tm), the data is already in digital form. Entering it from paper typically adds a delay of two to three days. Our customers want to see the results as soon as possible, so this is a big advantage. We can give them a quick evaluation after the first day or two on what they can improve while fair is still continuing."

Mr Hellmig also estimates that a whole day of valuable researcher time is saved on each project due to the tight integration between Entryware(tm) and SPSS analysis products. "What is also fantastic," he said, "is that you only need to design the questionnaire for the PDA and all the definitions and the labels for SPSS are already set up."

He also welcomed the accurate management information he can derive from Entryware(tm) such as interview length, time of day and individual interviewer productivity: none of which relies on the interviewers' imperfect recall. "Measuring performance is important information for us and for customers," Mr Hellmig remarked.

FairControl now uses Entryware(tm) at the majority of its events, and has found the solution also simplifies their operational requirements on the ground. There is only a relatively small amount of equipment to ship and set up, as opposed to boxes of questionnaires that take up very costly exhibition space in which to set out the different versions in advance then collate the results afterwards.

The software also allows FairControl to accommodate the different questionnaire versions and languages within each device, so an interviewer can switch, for example, from a survey in English to French or German by tapping one option on screen. This ease of control helps to convey the professionalism that FairControl values so highly.

Bjoern Jopen confirmed that, by switching to Entryware(tm): "The business has grown. If we approach a client, especially in the IT or telecoms industry, they can instantly see we are professional and innovative. It solves many of the logistical problems of interviewing and means we can be much more flexible. We can react very fast to changes. It also saves a lot of time and stress for our project managers. This clearly gives a better impression to the visitors and exhibitors to trade fairs that we interview. "