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"DatStat Illume is on its way to being the industry standard for researchers; it gave us all the capabilities of a $40 million research firm and made our small company competitive with larger firms for $125,000 less than an SPSS investment."
Devoted to bringing efficient, high-quality web-based survey and assessment best practices to academic and government-based social scientists, Survey Sciences Group, LLC (SSG) was founded on a start-up budget and sophisticated online survey system requirements. Having used SPSS with a previous research firm, SSG founders compared their options and sought out a more cost-effective, flexible, and reliable solution.
Experience with SPSS proved upfront investment costs were astronomical: multiple servers were required each with their own product licenses to handle the survey respondents—SSG needed to perform like a large firm without the associated costs. Plus, emailing respondents and tracking their response was not included, and would require additional costs.
The inflexibility of SPSS required significant customization to meet basic survey requirements while history showed 2 hours of respondent support was required for every 1,000 individuals invited to a survey—inconveniences SSG didn’t want.
Creating a basic survey in SPSS required programming skills—a resource SSG preferred to allocate to client projects that helped build the business.
With multiple projects and clients, SSG needed flexibility and efficiency including secure project-based access for clients, data downloads with predefined data labels, and real-time reporting.
With scalable deployment options and no load limitations; SSG was able to initially host their system with DatStat, then move DatStat Illume to an onsite production server.
DatStat Illume’s broad set of off-the-shelf capabilities and flexibility removed the need for most custom development—insuring reliable functionality and a seamless experience for respondents.
DatStat Illume delivers a familiar and intuitive survey interface for seamless survey design regardless of complexity—no programming skills required to create surveys.
With variable naming, data dictionary, role types, and advanced reporting functionality, SSG reduced manual effort associated with offering clients the ability to view real-time data.
Saved $125,000 in startup costs by removing the need to install multiple servers onsite to handle the expected respondent load.
With minimal custom work and 85% less support hours required, SSG is able to pass savings to the customer—for their last engagement that translated to $12,000.
Within the first year, saved $50,000-$60,000 on labor costs—SSG hired two client-focused resources instead of one programmer.
Secure real-time access to data that everyone can understand and report on improves client satisfaction and efficiencies for SSG and saves time for everyone, which translates to cost savings for the client and SSG.
