Make way for Web surveys: turn a print research product into an online service.

Editor's Note: Surveys conducted by associations are nothing new. They are commonly used, for instance, to gain information directly related to members such as in the case of member-satisfaction or member-needs surveys. Some of the more common studies, based on survey information, relate to policy (for example, determining member positions on public policy issues), financial (such as what rates members are charging their clients), and compensation issues. According to Policies and Procedures in Association Management (2001, ASAE), compensation and industry-specific studies are the two most popular areas of research.

What is relatively new, however, is the increasing use of the Web to conduct these surveys. The Web offers several advantages to print versions. They are often easier to complete and submit, the data does not need to be logged in upon receipt, and the end product often can be exploited to create an online service. The following article tells of how one association teamed with Survey Research Associates (SRA), Madison, Wisconsin, to move its compensation survey and print publication online.

ASSOCIATIONS THAT CONDUCT salary surveys consistently report that their members value this member service highly. Associations that don't conduct such surveys, meanwhile, often get requests to provide the service. WorldatWork, Scottsdale, Arizona, formerly the American Compensation Association, sees a trend toward using the Internet for salary surveys. "Increasingly survey data is also available on the Internet," states the 2003-2004 Survey Handbook & Directory (2002, WorldatWork). "Consulting firms and professional associations are starting to use the Internet to give clients access to data on demand that can be cut by geography or industry. While typically not free, these new tools can be extremely useful."

Those statements have held true for Credit Union Executives Society, Madison, Wisconsin. CUES, an individual membership organization supporting credit union CEOs, senior managers, and directors, partnered with SRA to revitalize its salary survey by converting it from a printed manual to an online subscription with enhanced value. The CUES's experience offers an alternative course of action and a best-practices model for the successful conversion of a long-time product to a popular online member service.

A flagging product

While CUES sponsors conferences and meetings, publishes a monthly trade magazine and other professional publications, and offers credentialing opportunities to its membership, it is also known throughout the industry for the executive compensation survey it has produced annually for three decades.

In the mid-1990s, participation rates in the CUES salary survey had begun to decline, and another association had begun producing its own executive salary study for larger credit unions.

Experiencing the same revenue challenges as many other associations, CUES's strategic plans during this time recognized the need to increase sources of nondues revenue. CUES managers responded by investigating ways to improve the compensation survey. From market research with its members, CUES learned that members wanted a thorough survey but at the same time felt the paper survey took too much time to complete. Several members suggested using technology to make it easier to participate in the survey.

CUES managers saw the Web as one possible means of revitalizing the flagging compensation survey. They saw online access as a way to increase participation and revenue by making the survey easier to complete and the data easier to access. Searching for a new partner willing to implement major changes in the way the survey was designed and delivered, the association sent requests for proposals to several local and national consulting firms with capabilities in executive compensation and Internet survey administration.

CUES selected SRA as its new partner in part based on the shared belief that the Internet presented a valuable, new, and efficient way to conduct surveys.

Key ingredients for change

CUES and SRA designed the project as a three-year migration, initiated in 1998, from the existing print-based survey and manual to an online tool. The linchpin of the project was to find ways to encourage members to migrate to the online service as the preferred delivery channel.

The key features of this three-year plan were to

* increase survey participation through improved survey access and effective marketing;

* create a simpler survey containing only the most important survey items;

* offer the survey online but provide a paper option for both data collection and printed reports;

* spread the start-up costs across the life of a long-term contract; and

* share the risks and rewards with the vendor.

The idea behind the gradual migration was to give members the option to choose the traditional delivery method until they were comfortable using the new technology--and were willing to pay a higher price for the added value it offered. In addition, the three-year plan would give CUES more flexibility to deal with unanticipated technological and administrative problems as well as to assess when users were comfortable using the online options for both completing the survey and subscribing to the service. The plan allowed members to either buy the printed manual or purchase the online subscription, which included 12 months of unlimited access to the survey database in addition to a copy of the print product--which would eventually be phased out.

The new look

With the new service, users (via a password) can access standard reports, the equivalent of the print product. Those reports provide standard compensation data broken down by such variables as organization size, location, and number of full-time employees.

But in the end, the online service offers much more than the print version. Users can create custom reports by querying the database by position title and selecting data based on revenue size, geographical region, tuembership size, or one of several other variables in combination. The user can also age the data for estimates of wage change across time and project the data forward to an anticipated compensation action date.

"There are two key features of the online model that turn a product into a service and make it all worthwhile to the user," says SRA Chief Executive Officer Charles E. Carlson. "First, the user can create custom reports--produce the comparisons most important to the user. Second, the user can instantly print a report that shows his or her data compared to the selected market."

This online method contrasts with the more time-consuming and less reliable process of using the printed report, which could involve looking up a job in data tables (which is based on older data), examining tables from several different data cuts, estimating an overall average, and finally aging it forward for estimates of compensation change to the target date.

Because of the enhanced value of the online service, users generally did not express concern over a price increase. Before moving the survey to its online format, CUES managers would typically struggle with the decision to increase the price of the printed report by $10 or $20 to keep pace with production costs. "The transition from a product to a service, which provides data on demand with the ability for the user to generate custom reports, supported a price increase from $179 for a printed manual to the current $399 for a 12-month subscription," says Rosemary Tenuta, SRA's director of business development.

The survey itself uses Oracle database application tools to maintain a dynamic, functional platform and SSL (secure sockets layer) technology to ensure data security. Credit union managers enter updated compensation data throughout the year whenever new salaries and bonuses are awarded. Upon subscribing, managers provide information on when they are scheduled to receive their annual salary review. When the time arrives, they receive an e-mail reminder to update their compensation data. They also can be reminded to provide updates by a personalized "to-do" list that appears when they log onto the service. As credit union managers fill in salary data, they can instantly access job descriptions and other helpful information via pop-up windows. Survey completion is expedited because they need only update the previous year's data without having to start from scratch.

Instead of using the previous model of sending out paper questionnaires and waiting for participants to respond, SRA's survey support specialists regularly follow up with CUES members by e-mail or telephone to build a relationship with them and remind them to update their compensation data online. Support specialists, who are often assumed to be CUES staff, are available to answer questions from CUES members and educate them about new and enhanced features of the survey.

The financing

CUES avoided underwriting major technology-related development costs by structuring the project contract in a way that spread out the expenses. Although most of the programming costs for developing an online service are incurred in the first year, CUES was able to choose a payment option by which the cost of development was amortized across a 3-5 year period through an annual project fee, plus a sharing of future revenue with the vendor. In doing so, CUES shared the start-up expenses (and risks) with SRA but was also willing to share the rewards: CUES pays SRA 40 percent of revenue after expenses.

The organization strategically designed the relationship to benefit SRA if the migration to the new service occurred earlier. There were also penalty clauses if the terms of the contract were not met. SRA received a project fee plus a royalty payment for every online purchase a CUES member made. If members continued to purchase the traditional print manual, the vendor received only a minimal royalty payment. This set a floor that protected CUES's revenue stream while giving SRA an incentive payment when members eventually migrated to the online service. Since the new technology was designed to deliver greater value at a higher price, both CUES and SRA shared the increased revenue.

Return on investment ended up coming even quicker than CUES had planned. The association anticipated that it would need to subsidize the online compensation survey for at least the first two years, but the new member service actually generated a profit in its first year. "As it turns out, the Web caught on more quickly than most people expected--and CUES ended up ahead of the game," says Holly Poast, products and services manager at CUES. And because the new technology overlapped with the old, the migration remained seamless to members until it was working smoothly.

A superior service

The migration to an online service and survey also solved a service problem and improved the survey's results for CUES. Any association that publishes survey results understands that deadlines typically need to be extended and inevitably the report is late when it is finally published and distributed to members. This was a major problem for credit union CEOs who were implementing pay increases in the month the manual was released. CUES would suffer through weeks of members calling to see when the manual would be mailed and asking for early cuts of the data. CUES often would use expensive priority shipping to get the manual to these members. Now, however, current data is always available when members need it. The online format eliminates survey deadlines and lag time for members, and automating the survey allows CUES to increase survey participation while only marginally increasing its costs.

Redesign of the CUES survey from start to finish also has turned around declining participation, boosting the response rate from 30 percent of CUES members before SRA took over the project to more than 50 percent currently. As SRA's Carlson notes, "The secret of a good survey, regardless of how it is conducted, is getting people to participate when they have so many other things to do with their time. Making the survey simpler, more relevant, and more useful will drive up participation. The more people participate, the more valuable the survey is in terms of measurement validity." The relationship that SRA support specialists create through their contact with members also has resulted in increased participation and outstanding renewal rates. With about 450 individuals subscribing to the online reporting tool (roughly half of the total subscribers), renewal is close to 100 percent. Perhaps an equally telling figure is that print manual purchasers are moving to the online service at a rate of 75 percent per ye ar.

Ripple effect 

The success of the online compensation service spurred a cultural shift within the organization. Building on its successful conversion of the compensation survey from a product to a value-added member service, CUES looked for other avenues to revitalize its existing products and move into new ventures. "This project gave us the confidence and experience to implement future technology-related projects based on this best-practices lesson," says George Hofheimer, CUES director of business and professional development. "And our members viewed the successful migration from a print-based to an Internet-based product as a sign of things to come.

In fact, the move to online services has allowed CUES to diversify its income stream and avoid dependence on services more likely to be adversely affected by economic setbacks and security threats beyond the association's control, says Linda Stemper, CUES senior vice president and chief operations officer.

The success of the survey led to the launch of a second online salary survey, CUES Employee Salary Survey. Other new services include an online university, an interactive financial performance report that allows members to benchmark their credit unions against those of peers, and a subscription to information on technology management trends reported by the respected Forrester Research, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As a result of the introduction of such member-focused services, CUES's share of income from products and services has more than doubled since 1998 from a net profit (before overhead allocation) of $348,000 to $830,000 in 2002. The CUES 2003 budget of $10 million will rely on conferences and meetings for about 45 percent of its income, with another 22 percent coming from products and services, as compared to a 2002 budget of $8.5 million that relied on 55 percent of income coming from conferences and meetings and 10 percent from products and services. Poast notes that her division employs three people, who are responsible for administering products and services that bring in $2 million in revenue annually. During the coming year, the products and services division plans to introduce nine new manuals and six new services.

The end product

In its search for a solution to a basic business problem--revitalizing a well-known, but somewhat stagnant, product--CUES has forged a new direction that demonstrates its commitment and ability to deliver state-of-the-art services to members. As a result, CUES's financial performance has remained strong even in uncertain economic times. As income from traditional services such as conferences and meetings has slowed, the association's online products and services have picked up the slack and are now responsible for an increasing share of revenue production. CUES's survey partnership with SRA produced a winner that continues to yield positive results, both for the survey and for related service creation.

Karen Bankston is a freelance writer and writes regularly for CUES publications. E-mail: [e-mail]. This article, developed from a white paper originally written for Survey Research Associates, was revised and expanded for ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT. E-mail SRA's Rosemary Tenuta at [e-mail].