Corporate Blog & Users Community

Survey tools, offered as an ASP based services, is a global business. Since it is Internet based and offered in the English language, it means that the services can be accessed from any corner of the globe. Making it possible for any company to compete in any national market. Most of these companies are American and all their services are 100% web-based and also payments are made through credit cards. They do have long product lines and competitive prices. 90% of the major players analyzed offer basic survey tools or marketing research tools. Their disadvantages are the language, the psychological distance and not being able to provide off-line supports and services, credit cards as the only means of payments. In my analysis I found that eight companies exist in this service category in Finland. Because of their specialized offerings, it was hard to find these firms as some of them are found in different industry categories. Consulting services are the baseline offerings made by three of firms and the online tool is offered as part of their consulting services. The other firms offer basic online survey tools with strong customer base. Analyzing their baseline value propositions and core advantage I discovered many market gaps and segments which can be targeted with completely new services.

In respect to developments in the sector, My intuitions tells that more and more firms will enter the industry as adoptions become widespread and when it is better understood that the business is lucrative. The online survey tools will become platforms in which firms will build personalized services for their customers. Emphasis will shift more to value-added services and where stronger relationships with customers will be the key competitive factor. Many firms will shift to more specialized markets where it is possible to operate with niche strategies. Also the market will grow further as the use of on-line tools like these will become widespread! As business processes will continue to be governed by information needs also, the abundance of information brought about by development in IT makes the need for personalized information needed for decision making to be difficult and time consuming! So the need for tools that allows anyone to source information they need easily, cheaply and quickly with real-time result analysis possibilities will always be there!

As a founder of Intres Consultings I’d like to tell you more about our history and background of Intres Tool services & solutions - a provision of Intres Consultings. It’s a bit academic here but I encourage you to continue reading.

The foundation of Intres Tool is based on customer perspectives and marketing orientation of competences rooted in the resource-based views. Also the tools are results of long academic work and empirical efforts emphasized in various articles, seminars workshops and conferences in Finland and abroad. About 150 companies have used these models in many of my workshops and seminars and the overwhelming feedbacks and the demand for it as a business tool was the major reason why I want to offer it as an ASP based services to companies. Although originally I wanted to offer it only through consulting services and the idea of bundling the tools as an Internet based solutions was something that came later! The idea came about because of my need to cut the time and costs of carrying out the survey work for my dissertation.  In so doing I contacted some local IT firms on the possibility for carrying out survey work through the Internet. It was supposed to be a one-time-use project. I received offers for software which I can only have access to until when my research is completed. Searching the Internet for options I discovered that survey tools are offered as an ASP based service. I also found out that survey tools are the basic offerings while various business solutions with great value propositions are the baseline offerings!

I set to work to find and analyze all accessible firms in this service category in Finland and abroad so as to understand what they offer, their baseline value propositions and core advantage.  By this I discovered many market gaps and segments which can be targeted with completely new services. My experience on working with small SMEs, research, my expertise and my on-going PhD research were very instrumental for generating the business ideas.  I set to define and design the requirements for the survey tool and apart from creating new service concepts in this category, my existing business tools were further developed so that it can be offered as part of the internet based service packages.

“We were looking for research tool that combines information from multiple sources, maintains the reusability of the data, but especially with the support for Greek language. Intres Tool met these requirements”, says Vasilios Koutsiouris from the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Department of Management Science and Technology.

“Combining languages and feedback channels, independent of time, conversation context, content version or the length is the natural solution for information processing.”, says Jalo Kääminen, Intres Consultings Ltd.

Intres Tool feedback conversations can be created in one or many parallel languages. In multilingual conversations respondent first selects a language and continues to the conversation, where both the responder actions and conversation turns are displayed in the desired language.

Intres Tool currently provides full respondent and reporting support in English, Finnish, Russian and Greek. The system as a whole is translated in English, Finnish and Russian. More languages are currently being added.

Reputation Radar for Stakeholder Management has been released.

Reputation Radar for Stakeholder Management evaluates the external and internal reputation of the company/organization from the point of view of employees, management, clients, business partners and other stakeholders.

What makes Intres Tool Pro Reputation Radar so special?

In default configuration, Reputation Radar for Stakeholder Management utilizes three active conversations, each of them with slightly different contents – even by matrix item. By time and in continuous use, the contents of the conversations with different target groups may separate more and more, but overlapping parts will continue to exist and more can be created. More target groups and conversations can be created as the need arises.

Reputation Radar for Stakeholder Management  enables 360 degree research feedback and research with real-time results analysis.You can combine all feedback channels as a single entity or view the results as comparisons, even though they were directed toward different respondent groups as different versions and at different times, crossing the borderlines of individual reviews evaluations and conversations.

With Intres Tool Pro with Reputation Radar for Stakeholder Management, you’re no more bound to isolated “surveys”. No matter how much the contents as a whole changes by time, the old results are still comparable

Reputation Radar covers the following information areas:

• Perceptions of the company Image
• Possibilities to commit yourself to basic task, vision and targets
• The effectiveness/functionality of service processes
• Organization’s service culture
• Personal concerns and self-image
• Perception of the company image - a third person approach
• Operational level of the organization
• Competences of these organizations
• Feedback to teams / departments

License grants rights to use the solution for a single organization, its stakeholders and clients.

Available languages: English, Finnish (with parallel Finnish, English contents)

Intres Tool is happy to announce that the Greek website for Intres Tool has been released!

The Greek website is available at www.intrestool.com/gr and contains information about the services provided by Intres Tool software. Intres Tool software and web site is currently available for English, Finnish, Greek and Russian content languages. More languages are being added.

Enterprise Solution for Student Lifecycle Management (SLM) has been released!

The solution enables client’s institutions to connect with their students at every point of the lifecycle of the study history.

The package contains exploration for student experience e.g. in the following fields:

• Search & application process
• School image
• Personal development and Career goals
• Programme and Courses
• Teaching Staff
• Experience with Faculty (tutoring, orientation, counselling)
• Student Services
• Research and Library
• Technology

The SLM package also includes the Course Feedback Package.

Data Packages are web applications that allow you to start gathering feedbacks instantly, without the effort of creating your own contents

All Intres Tool Professional accounts now ship with one FREE Data Package with no extra charges!

Using a ready-to-run Pro Data Packages with your Intres Tool Professional account ensures that your data is dynamically reusable and can be edited and combined between different versions of reviews and online conversations.
Continue reading…

Would you like to start evaluating your websites for Free, using the Free Website Evaluation Tool? Would you like to gather the Course Feedbacks from your students? Are there customers whose Satisfactions you’d like to evaluate? Do you need to have your Seminar participants registered, or evaluate their Seminar Experience afterwards?

The FREE Intres Tool Lite now ships with Lite Data Package with 5 ready feedback tools!  Now you can access all these ready Intres Tool Lite solutions absolutely for Free and create solutions of your own, by simply registering!

Background:

The city of Kajaani, Finland wanted to research the facts why passenger rates from the local airport have decreased sharply, and what to do with the results.

A customer experience study was carried out using Intres Tool information solution, which helps, firms access crucial information they need easily, quickly with possibilities for real-time results analysis.

Results:

The City of Kajaani and the local enterprenous association published the following major findings:

The research revealed that thousands of business travelers in Kainuu region choose to travel from airports of neighboring regions because of the lact effective competitive environment at the Kajaani airport. The reduction in passenger numbers that has occurred during the recent year at the airport of Kajaani (a drop of 128.000 passangers annually to to 92.700 passangers annually) is largely because of the high pricing and poor route timetables of the single flight operator flying from Kajaani airport. More and more business travelers choose to fly from more distant Oulu and Kuopio airport, where competition has improved the service levels of passangers and, at the same time, decreased pricing. Passengers clearly desire alternative flight operators and competition at Kajaani Airport, and based on the facts, proper action can be taken to improve the service level at the local airport.

Research Facts:

■ Participation invitation was sent to 633 companies and organizations, out of which 161 completed the questionnaire

■ 39 % of the respondents makes 1-5, 14 % 6-10, 17 % 11-20, 10 % 21-50 and 10 % 51-200 return flights per year.

■ 42 % of the respondents uses the Kajaani airport services only. 58 % use the services of more distant airports, too.

■ The business organizations in the area make 31500 return flights between Kajaani and Helsinki

■ The city of Kajaani and Kajaani share the common anxiety that the decrease in passenger rates at Kajaani airport will lead to reducing the flight services and connections from Kajaani.

Open feedback:

“Flights from Kajaani are very expensive, in practice, double the regular price.”

“The main reason for flying via Oulu is the more favorable pricing and timetable. Gladly we would travel from our local airport.”

“If you are able to fly from Oulu with 80 euros, it is worth taking a taxi drive from Kajaani to Oulu (distance 180 km), and still you save money compared with Finnair pricing.”

“Just would like to see a rival flight operator.”

“I just got to know from our most important tour operator that there is no connection from flight from Frankfurt to Helsinki to Kajaani. We have to fly our customers first to Kuopio or Kuusamo, and transport from there to Kainuu (distances 169, 246 km)

Recommendations:

“The growth in passengers at Kajaani airport can occur, but only if the competitive environment improves”.

“Business travelers’ increase in price awareness may further encourage passengers to prefer more distant airports. At the moment, already 14 percent of the passengers have switched to using Oulu and Kuopio airports, where there is good and fair competition between multiple flight operators. Blue1 has been able to reach a greater market share among these passengers.”

Media sources:

Kainuun Sanomat (Newspaper), 18.12.2007, article available upon registration only

Koti-Kajaani (Newspaper), 19.11.2007, page 8

Website of Finnish assosiation for private entrerpreneours, 17.12.2007

Website of Finnish News Agency (STT), 17.12.2007