Russell Group University updates worldwide alumni database. The University of Manchester, like many organisations, has found that their alumni contact and preference data degrades rapidly and keeping it up to date is a challenge, especially if your 270,000 alumni are situated worldwide. Even more of a complication when you have a mixture of postal address and email addresses. Sigmer Technologies Ltd won the procurement competition to act as survey partner for the project.

Falmer, Brighton, Sussex -- (SBWire) -- 12/03/2010 -- The University of Manchester, a leading UK higher education institution, wished to undertake a communication exercise to its 270,000 alumni members. The aim was to update alumni contact details as well as to gather preference and attitudinal feedback on a number of topics key to the University’s communications strategy. The requirement was for a well-designed, accessible communication that combined a welcome from the head of alumni relations and a questionnaire that would be attractive and functional across both on-line and postal channels. E-mail addresses were available for approximately 95,000 alumni and the remaining 177,000 were invited to the survey via paper questionnaires.

The competition was won by Sigmer Technologies which provided a high-quality service at a competitive cost and was able to offer:
• In-house team for technical survey design for on-line and paper modes
• Graphic and accessibility design for on-line and paper questionnaires
• A robust 'industrial strength' survey system hosted from our highly-secure data-centre in London
• Low-cost printing & International mailing
• Cost-effective and secure data management, data entry and confidential recycling
• Flexible data import and export in formats designed to simplify university effort in the extraction of invitee data
• Updated alumni contact information in formats ready for systems such as Raiser's Edge
• Pre-population of both on-line and paper questionnaires with data particular to each invitee.
• Provision of an on-line reporting portal which provides real-time access to summary statistics during the survey.
• Ability to conduct complex analysis and reporting of attitudinal responses

All of this delivered within an adaptable and transparent project management environment; with full quality assurance at each stage and of every deliverable.

Sigmer survey design team worked closely with alumni relations department to develop the paper based and online surveys both of which were fully compliant with the Universities’ branding guidelines. The postal survey pack consisted of an A3 page folded into 4 x A4 pages which allowed a covering letter and 3 sides of questions. This was dispatched in a branded envelope and included a branded business reply envelope for certain invitees.

A novel feature of the survey was the pre-population of contact information in both on-line and postal questionnaires to encourage a higher and more accurate response rate. This inclusion was subjected to rigorous quality assurance both in terms of accuracy and also for position within the on-line and postal questionnaires.

As part of the personalisation of the postal surveys packs, each postal invitee was given a unique invitation to an on-line version of the questionnaire to encourage them to utilise this lower-cost and more energy-friendly response channel.

The online survey was hosted from Sigmer’s high security data centre in London. The alumni Relations Department was provided with an on-line reporting portal that allowed them to monitor overall statistics for the survey and to view a standard summary report of attitudinal responses. A further detailed reporting portal was provided at the end of the survey allowing viewing and downloading of survey data in many cross-tab arrangements.

The survey has been a considerable success for the University and it has provide a valuable insight into the attitudes and preferences of their alumni. It has also allowed the updating of a large volume of alumnus personal, contact and business information.

About Sigmer Technologies Ltd. and Survey Suite
Sigmer Technologies was formed in 1999 and is based at the Sussex Innovation Centre,on the University of Sussex Campus in Brighton. We are experts in survey design, survey development and management of response data. During the survey design stage wuse demographic profiling of invitees, and a thorough assessment of usability and accessibility needs, in order to ensure that the survey is as inclusive as possible for each cohort. See our range of survey case-studies at http://www.surveysuite.co.uk/case_studies/index.php

Sigmer provide the Survey Suite range of products and apply these to many different survey projects including
(http://www.surveysuite.co.uk/general_surveys/alumni_survey.php) alumni surveys
(http://www.surveysuite.co.uk/staff_surveys/project.php), customer surveys
(http://www.surveysuite.co.uk/customer_surveys/project.php) and research surveys
(http://www.surveysuite.co.uk/general_surveys/project.php)

Sigmer provide secure hosting of on-line surveys from their secure datacentre based in London. More details of our technologies can be found at http://www.surveysuite.co.uk/survey_systems/Technology/
And our services are detailed at http://www.surveysuite.co.uk/survey_systems/
Contact Info:
John Archibald
Sigmer Technologies Ltd
Email: surveys@sigmer.com