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Progressive Partnership stays ahead of the game using Tablet PCs

January 2007

One of Scotland’s largest independent market and social research agencies has been leading the way using Snap’s Mobile Interviewing module. Progressive Partnership, one of Snap’s long-standing users, utilises the full product range including scanning, network, key station, Internet and more recently mobile interviewing to fulfil their client briefs. With the release of Snap 9, they were one of the first to pilot the Tablet PC software to interview visitors at this year’s Edinburgh Military Tattoo and were impressed at the benefits that the Tablet interviewing brought to the project. Charles Moncrieff, Progressive’s Information Systems Manager tells us “The advantages of using Tablet PCs over PDA’s are longer battery life, more robust and bigger screen so the survey is easier to read.”

Snap Mobile Interviewing features include comprehensive routing, patterns and masking techniques that improve the efficiency of the interview process.

Snap Surveys has been the preferred survey software supplier to Progressive Partnership for the past 20 years. Last year saw the launch of Snap’s Mobile Interviewing module, which enables surveys to be deployed on PDA’s, Laptops, Tablets, Kiosks or Mobile Phones for use in the field. The software features include comprehensive routing, patterns and masking techniques that improve the efficiency of the interview process. Progressive snapped up this new software to offer their clients and piloted it throughout the summer on two exciting projects. One of these was to interview and profile visitors at the world famous Edinburgh Military Tattoo. The second was used to collect research on entry to further education and to identify barriers.

Tablet PCs were favoured over PDA’s due to the nature of the survey, which included media files and matrix questions that are easier to read on the 8-inch screen. Another advantage of using this interviewing platform is the robustness of the hardware. Progressive use the Panasonic Toughbook rugged series because they are waterproof which is useful for outdoor interviewing especially in Scotland, extremely durable and transforms from a notebook PC to a handwriting friendly tablet PC. The response using this type of face to face interviewing from the public and interviewers has been extremely positive.

Progressive has big plans for the future and is hoping to use the multi-language functionality in Snap 9 and introduce kiosk surveys at the 2007 Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Charles commented that Progressive is seeing greater benefits in using mobile interviewing because of the quick turn around it can offer their clients. They have received a lot of requests recently for Tablet interviewing and have even won contracts purely because they can offer this type of medium. “Using Tablet PCs means that we can further enhance our existing paper, web and scanning data services to offer the latest in survey technology to provide our clients with speed and increased data accuracy”.

For more information on Snap’s Mobile Interviewing module click here or call one of the UK team on 020 7747 8900, or the US team on 603-610-8700.