Panel Management Software and Data Integration
Posted by Jeffrey Henning on Thu, Nov 13, 2008
Esteban Kolsky, a principal analyst with Evergence, and one of the patron saints of EFM, asked, in the comment section to my post Panel Management 101, "How does the integration work just for panel management? I have integration as critical for EFM - but not directly related to panel management... am I missing something?"
Most panel management software systems have profiles of panelists, where demographic, transactional and attitudinal information is stored for each panelist. Integrating other data sources with these profiles provides users of survey software a number of key benefits. Data integration lets you shorten questionnaires by piping in answers to profile questions behind the scenes. It lets you pipe in questions that you can use for more detailed cross-tabulation and survey analysis. It also provides you with questions that you can use for "on demand segmentation", targeting specific groups for special surveys. And data integration saves your panelists from having to re-enter information your organization already knows about them.
Here are some examples of the type of panel-management integration work that we've done.
- CRM Data - Using CRM connectors to synchronize a demographic profile of an empanelled customer with information from their customer-relationship management records.
- Transactional Data - Storing the most recent customer transaction or series of transactions in the profile. For help-desk surveys, storing the last time the customer contacted technical support, along with details of the type of contact, the resolution, the date of the contact, and so forth. For course-evaluation surveys, storing the most recent classes attended by the student. For retail-satisfaction surveys, storing details about the most recent purchase.
- Benchmark Data - Importing records from past surveys for use as historical benchmarks (especially from phone or paper surveys or other methodologies that predated web surveys).
While enterprise feedback management systems can certainly have other types of integration (we've integrated with third-party communities, besides our online community software; we've exported survey data back to CRM systems), most data-integration opportunities have actually been around panel management profiles. I hope that answers your question, Esteban!
And if you find my blog useful, I think you will find Esteban's blog worth reading as well.