Clients

Canadian Viewpoint

Founded in 1980, Canadian Viewpoint is one of Canada’s largest opinion data collection companies with particular expertise in quantitative fieldwork. As well as utilising the more traditional telephone and face to face fieldwork methodologies, Canadian Viewpoint have been successfully running their SurveyLion online research panel since 2003, making them one of Canada’s leading providers of panel research services.

Background

Operating within a highly competitive marketplace, key to Canadian Viewpoint’s growth in providing online research has been their ability to turnaround client projects quickly by providing highly targeted sample quotas for research projects.

Originally the sample had been accessed by an IT team manually using SQL queries. But as the required quotas became more complex, Canadian Viewpoint decided to begin investigating sampling and panel management systems in 2006 to see if there was a solution available that could meet their business needs.

Choosing MARSC

After reviewing a number of solutions, at the end of 2006 Canadian Viewpoint chose MARSC. Key to this decision was that MARSC offered a solution that fitted the business requirement. Whilst most other providers offered sampling and panel management as part of their interviewing systems, MARSC as a dedicated standalone solution meant that the system could be integrated with their proven surveying and portal database systems. And as Jason Zweig, vice president of online services at Canadian Viewpoint says "MARSC seemed to do a much better job than the integrated solutions."

Centurion’s experience of integrating MARSC with bespoke systems meant that few changes were required to the existing panel database and by working closely with Canadian Viewpoint in the run up to installation MARSC was delivered ahead of schedule in March 2007. The benefits that MARSC brought to the online research team at Canadian Viewpoint were felt immediately.

Funtionality gains

MARSC’s sample reporting capabilities mean that feasibility studies, to determine sample availability to meet client requests, can be carried out in minutes. Then once the project has commenced MARSC’s ability to calculate response rates for individual quota cells based on accumulated contact history has meant that available sample is used more efficiently with less need to issue top up sample as the surveying progresses.

Canadian Viewpoint have also found MARSC’s Activity Filtering really helpful in identifying the most relevant panellists for a study. As well as storing a complete history of each panellist’s survey activity the system can assign different outcome codes reflecting different stages that the survey may have been terminated at. So as well as being able to include or exclude panellists who have completed certain surveys, Canadian Viewpoint can specify the stage at which this inclusion or exclusion might apply, for example identifying people who were invited to but never completed a specific survey.

The Benefits

Canadian Viewpoint have been successfully using MARSC to run their sampling requirement for over a year now and feel that the system has given them a substantial return on investment.

Automation of the sampling process has significantly helped Canadian Viewpoint turnaround online projects faster and has meant that IT resources have been freed up from the sampling process allowing these staff to concentrate on other business issues.

"MARSC has not only improved the efficiency of our operations but is also a value-added offering used in our sales efforts."
Jason Zweig - Vice President of Online Services
Canadian Viewpoint