meaning: The Macer View/17

	The Macer View
	Comment and analysis from Tim Macer Number 17, August 2006

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The Macer View

Are agencies pushing data problems back to the clientside?

“We don’t really like doing work that involves a lot of heavy data handling”, was the rather surprising response from a large, well-known quant agency, when I was making enquiries on behalf of a client late last year for a potentially juicy, but quite technically demanding project. Since then, I have noticed something of a pattern.

Every large commissioner of research I speak to seems to have a horror story of problems with agencies providing data in formats they or their internal IT departments cannot handle, or being caught in the middle between one research supplier and another who can’t hook up their data and their systems.

“I feel like piggy in the middle”, one clientside research veteran told me. His particular nightmare related to a survey from a panel provider and a third party that provides online analysis. “I need someone on my side who can speak their language and just sort it out”, he said, with frustration.

Then I hear of another research company, big enough and old enough to know better, that told a client, effectively “because we produce the data in Quanvert, we can only give it to you in SPSS format, or Excel,” when the client needed it in triple-s.

As it happens there is a seamless export route from Quantum to triple-s via the SPSS Dimensions Data Model. Did they choose not to offer this, or simply not know about it? And another - a different one - that was very persuasive about providing massive amounts of regular reporting as Excel Pivot Tables, surely the most confusing part of Excel and something which is total not geared towards MR data. It, apparently, saved the cost of licences for using proper software like E-Tabs or Winyaps, but the results were barely usable by the client.

Software companies too can be high handed in what they provide, It is astonishing how many think that a CSV file - effectively a solid block of numbers with no explanation, no control and no audit trail, passes for meaningful data transfer - when better alternatives exist. it is the digital equivalent of stuffing all your questionnaires into shopping bags and taking them along to the board room for the client presentation.

It is hard to know whether it is ignorance, cost-cutting or seeking a quiet life that is causing research firms to push these problems back on their clients who not willing and not equipped to deal with these matters. It is certainly complacent.

Fortunately, there are those out there who do take this seriously - often the smaller players and specialists who have to be multilateral in their approach, This may be backroom stuff to most researchers, but the voices in this article commission many tens of millions of annual spend on research and they are starting to notice it and complain.

Getting this right is as much a part of added value as anything that may go on in the board room.