News
First American LoanPerformance Selects Universal Responses Loyalty Management Program
SelfSurveys.com Enterprise Edition Earns "Microsoft Certified
for Windows Server 2003" Status at VeriTest
Universal Responses Corp.'s
SelfSurveys.com Achieves over 10 million surveys
in 2003
Universal Responses Corporation
Launches Version 3.5 of SelfSurveys.com Latest
Web survey engine built with Microsoft Visual Studio
.NET 2003 to run on Microsoft Windows Server 2003
increasing performance
Koll Appointed to Advisory
Board at Universal Responses Corporation
Universal Responses announces
end-to-end Services with Microsoft .NET Passport
Universal Responses Corporation
Launches SelfSurveys.com Version 2.0, the latest
multi-language Do-it-Yourself tool for on-line
Surveys
First American LoanPerformance Selects Universal Responses Loyalty Management Program
LoanPerformance chose URC to conduct a Customer Loyalty Program based on URC's reputation and outstanding track record of high reliability and performance. "LoanPerformance has experienced a period of unprecedented growth in adding new data and analytics clients. We chose to execute the Customer Loyalty Program with URC to help us benchmark where we stand with our customers in terms of their current satisfaction and future product purchase perceptions. The initial CLM study yielded not only confirmation of some of our assumptions, but also provided significant insight and actionable next steps for improvement in our communications and processes. We gained an objective view of how our clients perceive the value of our products and, beyond that, how they feel about their relationship with our sales, client services and executive staff.," said Robert Visini, vice president of marketing, First American LoanPerformance.
"Customers know that it is unreasonable to expect companies to consistently deliver exceptional value in every dimension every time. However, they will buy from market leaders who maintain reasonably high standards and are in touch with what their customers want. Universal Responses Corp assists our clients by connecting loyalty to revenue and profitability to give them a clear picture of their customers," said Mike Ghodoosian, co-founder and CEO, Universal Responses Corp. URC specializes in Customer Loyalty Programs that give clients in depth, time-sensitive knowledge of customer attitudinal shifts, while also capturing intelligence that, in turn, can result in specific action plans to enhance customer relationships and profitability. URC's CLM solution identifies key trigger points including:
The Zitter Group Selects SelfSurveys.com HR Evaluation Systems for its National Operations
In assessing job performance in its New Jersey and California offices, URC has customized a 360 degree survey for TZG to examine seven work quality measures, eight communication measures and six professionalism measures, as well as accommodate expanded employee comments. The 360 survey is undertaken quarterly with full confidentiality between employees.
URC customized the other TZG internal evaluation system, a Quality of Work Life survey, to assess more than 10 variables. TZG is conducting it twice annually. TZG has a work force of more than 25 employees and is growing rapidly.
"Our goal is always to implement not only a cost-efficient and highly customized evaluation process, but to augment that with an analysis process that allows us to compare individual performance against company performance," said Andrew Pecora, Vice President, The Zitter Group.
Underlying TZG's decision to develop and implement the two evaluation systems was an overriding desire to fortify a strong team ethic, as well as to enhance a work environment in which all employees feel valued, understood and challenged. Critical to the process was to design a comprehensive, actionable set of measurement criteria that could be administered with a fast, reliable turnkey approach. The number of measures is not restricted.
For each survey, TZG had the raw data exported from Universal Responses Corporation through URC's ReporterWIZTM into both Excel and Word, the most usable formats for TZG's operations.
Universal Responses Corp. utilizes a state-of-the-art data center with 24x7 back-up, and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide scalable, highly secure (firewall and secure socket layer - SSL) databanks. TZG employees are electronically allowed access to the surveys once per quarter.
Faced with a limited budget and anxious to get the evaluation systems in place, TZG contracted with Universal Responses to set up and turn on both systems within two weeks. TZG used a URC survey developmental tool called DesignerWIZ™ to create surveys suitable for each of its HR objectives. Actual setting up of the Web-operated surveys and data collection methodology took five days.
"The importance of accurate, timely and easy-to-use turnkey solutions cuts across every aspect of human resources, staffing evaluation and environmental assessment," said Mike Ghodoosian, chief executive officer, Universal Responses Corporation. "The Zitter Group has tapped into what is the finest server-based and Web-connected research system in the world."
"We firmly believe in the 360 degree approach to employee evaluation in continual improvement of the workplace. We've found that the SelfSurvey.com approach to accurate data gathering, segmentation and tabulation is the best value in survey design today," said Zitter's Pecora.
The SelfSurveys system uses traditional primary research techniques to help all types of corporations, including human resources firms, financial institutions and high tech companies to make market-focused, efficiency-driven decisions in workforce productivity and employee assessment.
About the Zitter Group
The Zitter Group helps life sciences and medical product manufacturers work more effectively with managed care companies. With 17 years of experience, TZG has worked with and for most major pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies, and every major managed care organization.
Government of Nova Scotia Selects SelfSurveys.com as Cost-effective, Centralized Approach to Assessing Opinions of Commonwealth Citizens
Universal Responses Corporation (URC), a leading global provider of online surveys and turnkey market research, announced today that it has entered into a three-year contract with the Government of Nova Scotia (GNS) to obtain a single low-cost, Web-based survey system for conducting surveys by its 14 provincial departments and 50 municipalities.
The GNS surveys have been designed to evaluate citizen satisfaction about policing and other services, measure employee satisfaction, improve familiarity training of elected officials and determine citizen satisfaction with governmental websites.
Previously, the various municipalities and provincial departments have independently retained research firms to conduct their assessments on a project-by-project basis with little consistency between surveys. The affordable simplicity and greater usability of the URC solution also has allowed the GNS to promote more collaborative activities between citizens and their local and provincial governments.
"We have a geographically disperse and disparate set of government bodies who have been assessing their populations through an inefficient patch quilt of approaches that has been awkward to reconcile from one province to the next," said Steven Feindel, Director, e-Services for the department of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations. "We are extremely pleased with the Web-administered SelfSurveys.com system. The easy-to-evaluate and highly reliable system has allowed us to cut back on research costs while increasing the usefulness of data from municipality to municipality and department to department."
The SelfSurveys.com methodology provides a scalable research solution that allows each GNS municipality or department manager to create his or her own customizable yet similar opinion assessment surveys from virtually anywhere and with minimum effort. Each survey can be analyzed in minutes through a wide array of analytics, including cross-survey analysis, and automatically tabulated in a consistent manner.
In the past, the various government bodies throughout GNS' territory manually employed localized tabulation tools and methods to create and manage a wide range of survey formats. This often led to delays, inconsistent analysis, unclear results and unnecessary implementation costs.
Requiring minimal training, the SelfSurveys system allows GNS officials to make all survey results instantly available anywhere within the expansive province, even through the use of PDAs.
Surveys can be deployed and analyzed with much greater efficiency than would be possible with traditional surveying approaches or even partial Web-based alternatives.
Universal Responses Corporation's SelfSurveys system permits any team of government employees, however geographically dispersed, to create a survey by instantly tailoring one of several draft questionnaires already in place. Remotely located team members can preview any survey online via password access. GNS team members also are able to post detailed comments visible to each other while reviewing survey results in real time.
"With the SelfSurveys centralized and automated evaluation system, GNS officials have reduced operating costs, quickened time to results, simplified assessment processes and refined comparative analysis, for a dramatic improvement in the value and efficiency of how they had been surveying their staffs and voting populace," said Mike Ghodoosian, CEO, Universal Responses Corporation.
SelfSurveys.com Enterprise Edition Earns "Microsoft Certified for Windows Server 2003" Status at VeriTest
"Microsoft is pleased to have Universal Responses Corporation achieve Certification for Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter Editions," said Dennis Oldroyd, Director, Windows Server Marketing, Microsoft Corporation. "This certification will help Universal Responses' customers feel confident about choosing SelfSurveys.com as a reliable, secure, and available Windows solution for their survey engine needs."
One of the most trusted independent labs, VeriTest conducts testing for this program using methods that they co-developed with Microsoft and reports the results of that testing . Specific tests verified that SelfSurveys.com 3.5 Enterprise Edition executes correctly on Windows, installs and uninstalls cleanly, and complies with all security requirements. Further, as part of the Enterprise and Datacenter levels of testing, it was verified that SelfSurveys.com Enterprise Edition remained stable and highly available under high load and high stress.
To view the full certification report visit www.veritest.com/go.asp?urc1.
"Through Windows Server 2003 certification testing at VeriTest, Universal Responses Corporation has demonstrated a commitment to its customers to ensure SelfSurveys.com Enterprise Edition version 3.5 meets the highest levels of reliability, availability, and security," said Katrina Teague, Vice President, Marketing and Channel Development, VeriTest.
VeriTest's testing establishes an unprecedented technical standard for identifying applications that are secure and manageable, and that run reliably on the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems.
SelfSurveys.com Enterprise Edition is a scalable, easy-to-access survey engine, which can be run on hardware as simple as a single machine. Performance increases with the addition of a second server, used to run the SQL Server 2000 databases. Additional servers can be configured in clusters to provide high availability, and SelfSurveys.com can also utilize load balancing across the available computers to scale to extremely high performance levels. In real-world use, surveys of over 300,000 respondents in multiple languages are readily handled.
"Universal Responses Corporation's Windows Server 2003 certification demonstrates to customers that SelfSurveys.com Enterprise Edition version 3.5 delivers great performance and reliability on Intel? Xeon? processor-based systems," said Ajay Malhotra, Director of Marketing of the Enterprise Platforms Group at Intel.
VeriTest tested SelfSurveys.com Enterprise Edition a single Intel? Pentium? !!! Xeon processor-based server, a dual Intel Pentium !!! Xeon processor-based server, and a 4-node cluster comprised of 8-way Intel? Xeon? processor MP-based computers with Fibre Channel storage, and on a 32-way Unisys ES7000 datacenter-class high performance and high availability server.
Universal Responses Corp.'s SelfSurveys.com Achieves over 10 million surveys in 2003
"If you don't have an easy tool. You just wouldn't collect the information", commented Derek Brown, Director of Marketing at Microsoft Corp. These feelings are shared by the large and rapidly growing number of companies that utilize SelfSurveys.com.
Universal Responses Corp. utilized a state-of-the-art datacenter, and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide a highly reliable, scalable and resilient service. By outsourcing the IT infrastructure, companies gain fast time to market for their surveys, and do so at a cost-effective price point. Results are available as they come in as raw data, calculated graphs, or as downloadable files that can be imported into other analytical tools such as Excel or SPSS.
Surveys are easily developed in DesignerWIZ?, and deployed to pools of respondents numbering anywhere from a dozen to 300,000 people via client Web sites, email messages, or mobile electronic devices. Professional survey services combine with high response rates, commonly in the 10% range, to deliver statistically valid results for making business decisions. Sophisticated account management is ideal for large organizations who use teams to develop surveys or who have several departments who will be acting somewhat autonomously.
Universal Responses Corporation Launches Version 3.5 of SelfSurveys.com Latest Web survey engine built with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 to run on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 increasing performance
URC chose Microsoft Windows Server 2003 for its advanced security, reliability, and scalability features. Typical surveys run 500% faster and support 300% more simultaneous survey respondents.
"Selfsurveys.com is an excellent example of how companies can use Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the .NET Framework to build high-performance Web-based applications that deliver information on any device any time," said Mike Kass, product manager for the Developer and Platform Evangelism Division at Microsoft Corp.
Surveys can now be delivered inside e-mail messages, a unique capability that complements existing deployment options through Web browsers, Pocket PCs, mobile phones, or kiosks. This new capability will increase the already impressive 10% response rates that URC customers typically receive, well above the response rates for paper-based surveys.
New management features allow larger companies to assign different roles to their employees, enhancing their ability to work together on survey projects. For example, different employees can perform financial account administration, analyze results, translate questions into foreign languages, or author surveys.
The survey data exporter has also been enhanced to deliver selected data to surveyors who want to perform detailed analysis on their PC using applications such as Microsoft Excel. New advanced surveying features include stoppage, extension, and answer rotation, satisfying even the most demanding expert surveyors.
Koll Appointed to Advisory Board at Universal Responses Corporation
Universal Responses, a global provider of quick, easy-to-use business research tools, expects to gain from Koll's extensive expertise in business planning and his strong grasp of international markets.
"Bringing with him a wealth of knowledge in business strategy and technology deployment, we're delighted to have Thomas take a seat on our board. His insights will help us build more strategic relationships within the computer and telecommunications industries as we grow our business internationally. Thomas' accomplishments with Microsoft have been no less than outstanding," said Mike Ghodoosian, CEO of Universal Responses.
Koll also serves as chairman of the board of Infowave Software (TSE: IW), a global provider of wireless software for the enterprise and network operator markets.
Previously, he was vice president of Microsoft's Network Solutions Group, where he was responsible for Microsoft's business with wireline and wireless telecommunications companies, network equipment providers and Internet service providers worldwide. Koll was instrumental in developing Microsoft's vision for mobility and initiated its wireless strategy. Prior to that, he was general manager of Microsoft's Dedicated System Group and also served as general manager of worldwide business planning and strategy for the world's largest software company. Koll joined Microsoft in 1988. He holds a master's degree in political science from Free University of Berlin.
"As companies large and small place greater emphasis on better understanding their business choices, I see a great future for Universal Responses and fully intend to serve as a pivotal resource in assuring that future," Koll said.
Universal Responses announces end-to-end Services with Microsoft .NET Passport
"We view Microsoft as a leader, bringing business communities together, with its .NET Passport offering. Enabling our SelfSurveys.com site with .NET Passport allows us to make it easier than ever for people to visit the site to complete surveys or view their results," said Mike Ghodoosian, Universal Responses' CEO and Co-Founder. "Universal Responses is enjoying the combined benefits of rapid time to market for our solution and ease of access by more than 200 million active users of .NET Passport and the global community of Microsoft business partners."
"We are very excited about Universal Responses' commitment to simplifying the online experience for its customers," said Erin Cullen, Product Manager for .NET Services at Microsoft.
"Microsoft's .NET Passport, will provide SelfSurveys.com and its customers with enhanced security and privacy while eliminating the need to remember multiple passwords."
With this new release, SelfSurveys.com's customers will be able to simply click on the .NET sign-in scarab on the SelfSurveys.com home page to enter. There's no need to remember often forgotten usernames and passwords. In today's dynamic business environment, Web-based survey tools and Weblications? are what successful business leaders are using to make, better, more informed decisions faster.
Universal Responses Corporation Launches SelfSurveys.com Version 2.0, the latest multi-language Do-it-Yourself tool for on-line Surveys
The client applications are hosted on-line utilizing high reliability servers. Clients need not to be concerned with hardware and software configurations. This application has an easy-to-use interface so that even beginners can learn to design the surveys by themselves. SelfSurveys.com Version 2.0 offers customization, private labeling and reporting. The Cross-Tabulation part of the reporting tool also allows for better and faster analysis of surveys. The reporting and data collection is done on the Internet allowing clients to use the reports and management tools in real time.
About URC
Founded in 2001, Universal Responses Corporation provides government agencies, global enterprises, and growing businesses with the most efficient tools for gathering business intelligence at any location. Using rapid-response, Web-based technology, Universal Responses offers highly reliable, automated information-gathering tools at SelfSurveys.com to collect, analyze and compare vital business data from any desktop computer, laptop, PDA or PC Companion mobile device in any of six languages. Principal applications areas are marketing, product management, opinion research, human resources and procurement.