meaning: The Macer View/15

	The Macer View
	Comment and analysis from Tim Macer Number 15, March 2006

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The Macer View

Technology standards: Triple-s has triumphed, but other initiatives are in danger of faltering. Tim Macer reports

This month sees the number of software developers who support the triple-s standard for MR data interchange pass the historic 50 mark. It has been a slow burn since three software manufacturers got together in 1994 to see if a shared standard could put an end to customers having to waste effort reformatting data between almost antagonistically incompatible software packages. Enlightened self-help was also on the table, as the standard has also spared these developers from constantly re-writing their own import and export tools to satisfy an ever-changing line-up of software tools. In a dozen years, triple-s has changed twice and the number of exports not written as a result must now be in the thousands. That’s probably over £1 million of savings for the developers and surely even more for the MR industry.

Yet, for the industry, this success story remains largely a lesson not learned. Other standards initiatives are struggling to get off the ground through lack of resource and interest. There will certainly be no money for Champagne at triple-s virtual HQ, unless it comes from the pockets of the five stalwart volunteers who keep it going.

As a large section of the industry now looks to panels as the one sturdy ladder with which to haul itself out of the hole created by the collapse in survey participation, there’s a pressing need to start considering standards here too. Software manufacturers are providing a bewildering choice of web survey tools, but little in the way of panel tools or integration with panel providers. Third party panel tools are thin on the ground. And panel providers are proving reluctant to let their panel out of their hands. Increasingly, if you rent a panel you will find you are under pressure to use the panel provider’s software to do the web survey.

It is not a healthy situation as it is an approach designed to wall purchasers in, rather than offer them choice. It would be wasteful in the extreme if we all had to carry a multitude of mobile phones in our pockets in order to reach the people who were connected to different networks.

Yet the situation is not so different to the would be sample purchaser, or even the research buyer, who is forced into using different delivery methods and formats for reports if he or she dares to widen the circle to more than one supplier.

Last month, Lloyds TSB and HSBC announced an initiative in online banking so that one web login will provide the customer seamless access to accounts with other companies too - but not the bank. It demonstrates that today’s technology has never made it easier to achieve integration in a secure and sustainable way to make life easier. A similar initiative in MR could ensure that panel providers need not fear for the identity of their panel members if interactive but arms-length access could be provided by one system communicating with another in a secure way to an agreed standard. Whether it could will depend on not a little enlightened self help among the providers. Still, stranger things have happened.