Dr. Nolinske’s second article in her series is online over at NBRI, “Methods of Survey Data Collection”.  As always, she is insightful and interesting.

As a compliment to her article, I have listed some questions that will help you determine which data collection method is best for your survey.  I welcome your input.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

1.    What type of survey?

• Employee Survey
• Customer survey
• Political Poll
• Market Research
• Other

2.    Approximately how many questions?

The type of survey often determines how many questions you can or want to ask.  You do not want to overburden customers with too many questions, we suggest keeping it under 30, even less for phone interviews since costs skyrocket and response rates plummet if you go higher.  You can go a little higher if it is online.  Employees, on the other hand, are somewhat of a captive audience.

3.    What is your budget?

4.    What is your timeline?

5.    Do you have a list of potential respondents or will you need to acquire one?

6.    What geographic location(s) will you target?

• Worldwide
• National
• International
• State
• County
• Zip Code
• Other

7.    Will this add to cost?

• Travel
• International postage
• International phone calls
• Other

8.    Are there any language considerations?

• Language translation
• Regional dialects that could effect survey data
• Hearing Impaired or other disability

9.    What information do you have for the respondents?

• Email addresses*
• Mailing addresses
• Phone numbers

* If you do not have email addresses for potential respondents, you can distribute survey invitations by mail (or payroll insert in the case of an employee survey) to direct recipients to complete the survey online.

10.     Offer an incentive to obtain a better response rate?

11.     What format should the collected data be available in?

• Raw data
• Tables
• Graphs
• Other

12.     Do you have qualified personnel to interpret your data?

QUESTIONS ABOUT SURVEY DEPLOYMENT METHODS

1.    IN-PERSON INTERVIEWS

• In-house interviewers, hired interviewers?
• Security concerns (dangerous neighborhoods, etc.)?
• Travel?
• Costs for travel?

2.    TELEPHONE INTERVIEWS

• In-house, hired?
• Required telephone equipment/office space?
• Language issues, regional dialects?
• Telephone charges (including international)
• Data entry training required?

3.    MAILED QUESTIONNAIRES

• Postage costs?
• Translation services?
• Printing costs?
• Data entry costs?

4.    ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRES

• Translation services?
• Database services?

Over at NBRI, Dr. Terrie Nolinske has begun a new series of articles aimed at explaining the benefits and pitfalls of conducting a survey.  I enjoy Dr. Nolinske’s writings so much that I decided to mirror each her articles with one of my own to bring some of her discussions over to SSO.

Dr. Nolinske’s inaugural article this week is entitled “Minimizing Errors in Survey Research”.  She discusses the potential errors in the layout and design of a survey instrument.  I decided to add to this by giving examples of errors in the wording or phrasing of survey questions.

Common Errors in Creating Survey Questions

Oftentimes those uninitiated in the formulation of survey questions want to go to a website and find questions or a survey template that fit their needs; cookie cutter questions that appear to ask what it is they want to know from customers, employees, voters, or consumers.  This is good if the original author of those questions is knowledgeable and the questions ask exactly what you are attempting to find out from your survey audience.

Some may even create their own questions which can sometimes be dangerous.  Without some insight into how to write survey questions they may potentially do more harm than good.

The questions that are asked, and just as importantly how they are asked, can have an amazing impact on the answers you receive and the data that is collected; data that will be used to make important business decisions.

Take these questions for example:

I can always talk to my superiors about work related problems.

The problem with this question is the word “always”.  Can anyone ever “always” talk to their superior?  In this example the question is too definitive and therefore some will rate this low when in fact they feel they can talk to there superiors - when needed.

Training and career planning are available.

The issue here is that it is a double barreled question.  If the respondent rates this question low, are they having an issue with training AND career planning or one or the other?

Communication at work is good.

This question does not produce actionable data and is too vague.  How is communication good?  The communication between whom?  Is it too fact, too slow, not enough?

The pace at our Company is hectic.

The problem with this question is that it is negative.  Survey questions often convey information before actually asking a question.  In this case, the question broadcasts a bad message about the company.

Information is widely shared at [Company], so that those who make decisions have access to all available data.

This particular question has a list of issues:

• It‘s not a simple sentence making it difficult to understand.
• Is it asking the respondent about information being widely shared?
• Is it asking the respondent about data availability?
• Is it asking about the access that those who make decisions have to data?

Instead, try these questions:

There is appropriate information exchange within the [Company].
The information I need to make good decisions is available.

As you can see, the questions used in a survey can be tricky.  Examples here are from an employee survey, but the same holds true for a customer survey, market research, or a political survey.  Many surveys have been skewed to one side or the other by the simple phrasing, or mis-phrasing of the questions.

Consider that the questions you use can dramatically affect the data that you collect before you use “example survey questions” or “survey templates” found on the net.  And if you deploy the same survey year after year (which you should, how else will you know if you’re improving?) the negative effect of poorly written survey questions will be multiplied.

Now for a shameless plug, the Survey Software Online system includes proven survey questions formulated from years of experience.  Questions are grouped by the type of survey you are conducting and then by topic.  You can pick from 1000’s of questions that have been scientifically designed and used in surveys for decades.  Of course, you can also create questions from scratch if that is what is needed.

Don’t leave your survey to chance and don’t take question formulation lightly.

David Harrison
Survey Software Online

We all have to work to live. Work can be enjoyable and even fun at times. But work is mostly something we do because we have to do it. That doesn't mean you should give up one third of your life and wonder every day if what you do for a living is worth the trouble.

If your company does not engage its employees - recognizing and rewarding measureable contributions by everyone in the work force to the company's success and profitability - you feel like your efforts are wasted or no different than any other person in the office.  If you’re in management, you may wonder if the people working for you even care if you succeed. Your company's future is at stake - and that's the message of the MacLeod Report.

An innovative and remarkable body of work, The Macleod Report, was released in July of this year. This report results from a large scale effort in the UK to understand how - and IF -companies measure their employees' contributions to the organization's success while gauging their levels of inspiration and passion for achievement. The report includes case studies of actual successes and failures for companies that actively engage their associates or don't give the matter any attention beyond handing out the employee handbook and showing new hires where the lunchroom is.

Before you roll your eyes and think "another feel-good report" from a bureaucracy, take the time to read this report and discover how successful institutions and organizations not only keep their key employees and contributors, but inspire and motivate those who are sitting back and just collecting their paychecks. The results can be beneficial to those at all levels of skill and responsibility. And it just might keep your company in business, as a leader and innovator, for years to come.

This is good stuff.  My question is why does the U.S. have to wait for the UK to lead the way on this type of initiative? Why don't we see any US-based national surveys of this type?  If there ARE domestic agendas out there for such wide-ranging studies, they’re being kept as closely guarded secrets.

These days it seems that the federal government has its hand in everyone’s business, rightly or wrongly.  Much discussion has taken place over the role of our federal government in business.  These discussions have reverberated throughout our history.  In high school we learn about economic policies ranging from the Laissez Faire attitudes of Adam Smith to the heavy handed protectionism of Alexander Hamilton.  What I personally would like to see from the U.S. Government is helpful studies like the Macleod Report. 

Depending on which statistics you believe 30-50% of all new businesses in the U.S. fail within 5 years.  Studies like the ones conducted for the Macleod Report would seem almost imperative to improving these numbers and might very well be the best money ever spent by the U.S. Government.

Research (and the resulting guidance) from Washington on how to more efficiently run a productive and profitable company, to the betterment of everyone involved, would seem more helpful than many of the inane research studies that I see being funded these days. 

As one of the standard bearers of capitalism we should be on the forefront of this type of research.  I believe this is a great way to gain economic stimulus from the ground up.  It has been proven time and time again, engaged workers are more productive workers.  More productive workers take better care of customers and that equals better profits and a stronger company.

And that one third of our lives that we spend working, seems less and less like work.

Shawn Devlin
Marketing Research Analyst
Survey Software Online

Innovation can take many forms. An organization develops a new product or service. A new business model offers customers a new brand experience. A new strategic partnership is formed, resulting in new customer segments and new distribution or communication channels.

More than ever before, organizations view innovation as a strategic priority, giving them a competitive advantage over others, at a time in which most employees are asked to do much more with much less. Who has time to innovate? It’s tough enough to slog through daily operations without having to think up new ways of doing business, too.

Making innovation a strategic priority often requires that stakeholders make a shift in their thinking to make innovation a consistent, repeatable part of their daily business routine.

“Creativity thinks up new ideas, but innovation takes that idea and turns it into action,” explains Lisa Bodell, Founder and CEO of futurethink, adding that “Stakeholders need to separate good ideas from great ideas before turning that great idea into a business thought.”

Ideas are the easy part. Knowing what to do with them is the trick that turns a creative idea into a business innovation. Consider the Swiffer, that nifty collapsible mop with replaceable ends. During the research and development process, P & G took an ethnographic approach to determining what was missing when people cleaned their homes. Once the gap was identified, they created a need and subsequent demand for their innovative product.

Admittedly, not every organization has P & G-sized resources to combat hurdles to innovation which, in most organizations, include lack of time, money and inadequate staffing levels. Bodell states that other hurdles include “an evaluation process that squelches innovative ideas, no way to track the progress or success of innovation initiatives and no way to tap into the thinking of employees, partners and users.”

A good place to start in your innovation initiative is to find out who in the organization is already doing something interesting or cool. Interviews, focus groups and surveys will elicit employee knowledge, opinions, attitudes, and degrees of satisfaction with existing innovation initiatives. Once that baseline is established, an overall approach to innovation can be developed.

The Quest for Innovation: A Global Study of Innovation Management 2006-2016 was a survey commissioned by the American Management Association and conducted by the Human Resource Institute. This polling of 1,356 global leaders captured the top five elements necessary for developing an innovative culture in any organization. That is, 1) customer focus, 2) team work or collaboration with others, 3) appropriate resources (time and money), 4) timely and effective organizational communication, and 5) the ability to select the right ideas for further research.

“You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what people brag about and what they wear -- similar to ways in which you get a feeling about someone's personality,” notes Carter McNamara, MBA, Ph.D., in his Field Guide to Leadership and Supervision.

The steps to creating a culture that supports innovation on a daily basis are more accessible than one might first imagine. Every cause needs a champion and innovation is no exception. Innovation requires top down support, where those at the top lead by example and encourage stakeholders to take smart risks.

“What often limits innovation in any organization is that people tend to want to ‘get it just right’ before sharing their ideas,” explains Bodell. “Leaders who support innovative thinking need to help employees become comfortable with sharing their ideas- and works-in-progress.”

Artists at the Academy Award®-winning Pixar Animation Studios share their beginning sketches and drawings of animated characters with team members early in the process. This allows them to stimulate the thinking of their colleagues, gather feedback and build on that feedback throughout the animation process which adds depth to the finished product.

“Many people worry that by sharing their ideas, someone will beat them to the punch,” remarks Richard Bowers, Ph.D. “There is no limit to what can be done if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

Other steps in creating a culture of innovation require leaders, managers and supervisors to encourage new and alternative thinking and to share subsequent ideas within business units and across the organization. Everyone needs to know what others are working on and feel a part of the whole. Employee feedback about the status of organizational innovation can be captured in surveys about employee engagement, employee satisfaction, working relationships, and organizational assessment.

To foster a culture of innovation, leaders must support their teams with resources and expose them to creative ways of being. Offering tools for creativity and innovation on the company intranet is a start. The workforce must feel motivated to participate fully in innovative thinking without fear of reprisal. Employee recognition for innovative ideas – from a day off, memo or heartfelt thank you -- means someone noticed and cares. And, remember to keep people apprised about what happens to ideas as they make their way through the innovation pipeline.

If you would like to learn more about how Survey Software Online can help you identify activities related to innovation and help keep your stakeholders apprised of your innovative ideas, check out our website at www.SurveySoftwareOnline.com.

Jan Stringer West, Ph.D.
Organizational Psychologist
Survey Software Online
Addison, Texas

Need to gather stakeholder feedback about customer or employee attitudes, behavior and satisfaction but can’t justify the fees of a full service survey research firm? Consider using Survey Software Online (SSO) at www.SurveySoftwareOnline.com where you get a strategic, discriminating product at an affordable price.

Survey Software Online is several cuts above existing online survey software systems. SSO differentiates itself because it was developed and written not by software writers and developers, but by survey research professionals; their in-depth focus and expertise make the difference.

Survey Software Online is a subsidiary of the National Business Research Institute, Inc., (NBRI) an organization staffed by organizational psychologists who understand which research methodologies are appropriate for measuring organizational variables, and how to implement such research without contaminating data through poorly designed survey items, scales, or processes.

“Many customers wanted a full service survey research team, but had no budget for it. SSO was created by our organizational psychologists to fill that need. We now offer a complete continuum of services from self serve to full service,” explains Ken West, Ph.D., President and COO of the National Business Research Institute, Inc. “Everything is done on our servers with no strain on client resources. The process is very scientific, based on survey industry standards.”

Although anyone in any department of any organization might find Survey Software Online of use, the service may be most helpful to those in human resources, sales, marketing and customer service who routinely use surveys to gather information on employee and/or customer satisfaction.

When comparing Survey Software Online to other online survey software, SSO rises above the others because of its rigor and in the amenities it provides.

“Survey Software Online is competitively priced; we offer clients unlimited numbers of surveys with unlimited numbers of items per survey while also offering customizable account preferences,” notes Melissa Barba, Director of Research Consulting at NBRI, adding that expansive customer support is offered online or via a toll-free telephone number.

Like most online survey services, Survey Software Online offers users a free 30-day trial or annual services at either a Standard or Premium level. Differences between the Standard and Premium levels are in the number of survey responses; the creating, editing and deleting of demographic groups; downloading passwords, addresses, and submission status; the capability to design and send email announcements and thank you’s; and the ability to track survey respondents.

“Survey Software Online is one of two providers to offer customizable account preferences and survey design from scratch, along with custom headers, footers, images, logos and links, customized buttons and messages and use of your own ‘from’ and ‘reply’ email addresses,” states Ms. Barba, noting that these custom features set this software apart from others.

Users may ask any questions they desire using formats that include multiple choice (with single or multiple answers) and essay or open-ended text. For matrix blocks using scales (e.g., satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, dissatisfied), SSO offers users the ability to create, edit and delete custom scales. It even allows users to save questions and items to a Personal Survey Question Library for later use or reference.

Users can use their own email lists, which can be uploaded directly from Excel into the system. Email announcements about upcoming surveys, invitations to complete surveys and email thank yous are all customizable (e.g., company logo, mission). Users have the ability to track responses and send customized reminders to those who have yet to respond, a very useful feature!

“Clients may change the dates on their surveys and reuse the surveys year after year. This allows organizations to compare data from year to year,” notes Ms. Barba.

Individual survey items are either radio buttons or a drop down menu which may optionally require a response. Open-ended items may or may not require a response. Therefore, there is no such thing as an incomplete response which could muddy the data. Even if respondents do not complete the entire survey, the data already in the system is used in analysis. Reports are available in either HTML or PDF formats.

“Most users of online survey systems are not trained in data analysis,” states Ms. Barba. “This can lead to erroneous conclusions.” The rigor with which Survey Software Online was designed and developed minimizes these types of errors. And, having saved significant dollars by designing and implementing your own surveys, you might have some money left over to take advantage of the expert analysis of an organizational psychologist at the National Business Research Institute or consult with a statistician to ensure valid, reliable results!

Finally – customized surveys at reasonable prices! Run, do not walk, to your computer and register for a free 30-day trial demonstration of Survey Software Online at www.SurveySoftwareOnline.com. Your organization will be glad you did.

Advertising and marketing communities have clamored for our auditory attention on the radio; they have directed our visual attention to store shelves, billboards and television. In the United States, an average child is exposed to more than 30,000 television commercials a year; the average adult to approximately 86,500. In recent years, advertisers and marketing communities have used sensory branding to bombard our other senses of smell, taste and touch, luring us into trying over 1,000 new brands each year.

Researchers understand that the human brain rarely processes sensory input in isolation. Advertisers and marketers understand that consumers are most receptive to a product when that product appeals to and engages consumers’ multiple senses.

“We store our values, feelings and emotions in memory banks,” says Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense: Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound. “The human being has at least five tracks—image, sound, smell, taste and touch that contain more data than one can imagine because they have direct bearing on our emotions. They can fast forward or backtrack at will.”
Our senses help us understand the world around us. Our senses trigger memories and memories influence our emotions. Our sense of smell evokes the strongest of emotions and is the sense most closely linked to memory because it is hard wired to our brains. Seventy-five percent of our emotions are generated by what we smell. Emotions influence behavior – consumer behavior in the global marketplace.

Sensory branding includes the standardized ambience of what customers see (e.g., size, layout, color of lights, staff uniform), what customers hear (e.g., type of music or sound, volume), scents customers smell and where (e.g., in the air, on tissue paper, bags or receipts), what customers taste and what customers touch.

Sensory branding makes its impact each time customers engage with or react to a company’s product or service. By employing scent, sound and material textures in immersive customer experiences, marketers build strong connections with their customers and drive preference for their brands. Sensory branding drives customer satisfaction, but few organizations actually conduct market research or customer surveys to determine the extent of cause and effect.

What appeals to one customer may not appeal to another. An individual might react adversely to a scent by itself, but respond favorably to the same scent when it is used in combination with a particular sound, texture or taste. Customer surveys are adept at teasing out subtle nuances in perception and subsequent interpretation through consumer behavior. Which of the five senses were stimulated? Which messages resonated with customers? What were subsequent customer behaviors?

Customers at Celebration Health, Florida’s Hospitals’ healthcare facility, were cancelling MRI’s in record numbers, resulting in significant revenue loss. Employing strategies in sensory branding, Celebration Health renamed their MRI department ‘Seaside Imaging’, painted beach murals on the walls and added folding lounge chairs. They transformed the MRI machine into a sand castle. Scent Air provided Coconut Beach and Ocean scents. A 50% reduction in cancellations resulted.

Samsung, the consumer electronics giant, pumps a scent smelling like honeydew melon from the ceiling of its retail spaces prompting one visitor to observe, “I love the smell of technology. It smells stimulating.”

Kellogg’s spent years studying the relationship between crunchiness and taste, before patenting the crunch of their cereal. Consumers enjoy every “Snap, Crackle and Pop”, part of the Kellogg’s brand based on auditory stimuli, taste and texture.

“Far from being a practice limited to the few, today multi-sensory merchandising stimulation and sensory branding are separating best practice from good. It is a science. It can be unique to your stores. It can create sub-conscious and unconscious stimulation, suggestion and memory reinforcement and retrieval that are part of your brand DNA, and an important driver of productive outcomes for your business,” observes Peter James Ryan, chief executive navigator, Red Communication.

Some sensory branding campaigns have spinoff products or services. The Westin Hotel chain has a worldwide Sensory Welcome program. A customized soundtrack creates a relaxed mood in the hotels’ public spaces, blending with infused scent and interior design. The company’s White Tea fragrance became so popular it is now sold through the company’s in-room catalogue, its branded website, and in Nordstrom department stores.

The impact of marketing through sensory branding can be measured at every step of the customer relationship. Internally, employee surveys measure the level of employee engagement in the process of sensory branding initiatives. Which marketing managers and operational staff have authority to act on specific aspects of the sensory brand? What organizational structure best supports project teams? How are teams trained and motivated? What are the implications for organizational design – for the communication and coordination among operating groups and implementation teams?

Assessing customer satisfaction or employee satisfaction with various aspects of sensory branding helps inform existing and future business decisions. Have you identified the impact that sensory branding has on your return on investment?

If you would like to learn more about how SSO can help you identify outcomes and be more productive, contact us now at 1-800-756-6168.

Dr. Jan Stringer West, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Survey Software Online

There is a clash of the titans going on in the Web-based applications arena. In the blue corner, from Redmond, Washington, the veteran multi-national computer software behemoth Microsoft. In the red corner, from Menlo Park, California, the Sultan of Search Engines, Google. The two have been trading punches for the past few years and the fight is just getting started.

The Microsoft versus Google battle features two companies approaching the Web-based applications market from completely different directions. Bill Gates and Microsoft built its empire on desktop applications running on local PCs, while Google conquered the online search and advertising markets. As Microsoft tries to grab a slice of Google’s search business, Google has been counter-punching by going behind the firewall of Microsoft. What lies ahead is a day where the Internet and browsers, instead of a computer’s operating system, may be the foundation for application development.

Watching Microsoft and Google slug it out for world domination of the computer industry has significant implications, pushing technology to the limit in a race for supremacy. Over the past few years Web-based applications, or Webapps, have been establishing themselves as the preferred platform for business information systems and other critical applications. They are part of the Web 2.0 generation, where websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They house the ability to access interactive facilities, allowing users to run software applications entirely through a browser.

"We're on the cusp of the next generation, the next revolution in computing," Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google, recently said. "We're really being ushered into the era of cloud computing."

“Cloud computing” refers to applications and data stored online and accessible from any device with a Web browser. Browser-based software never requires installation processes or hard drive space because it lives in the virtual cloud on the Internet. And whenever you launch it, you always have access to the latest version, unless the Internet connection at your local Starbucks isn’t working.

The blog you’re reading now is posted on Survey Software Online (“SSO”), a complete Web-based user interface and communication platform that enables business professionals to effectively create, deploy and report the results of surveys.

Web-based applications like SSO combine the communication capabilities of the Internet with software resident in the “internet cloud”. A Web-based application is a program that resides entirely on the Internet as a multi-user, cross-platform application that allows many users to work from it at any one moment in time. The many advantages of using this technology are beginning to win over the computing populous.

One of the biggest advantages of Webapps is accessibility. Since applications like the SSO app are based on the Internet, users anywhere in the world can access them.

Plus, the constant updating and that annoying “network administrator” have been zapped by Webapps. Instead of every user having to download patches for their operating system, which seems like a weekly process, patches and upgrades are applied to the Webapp server so it has no impact on the user. The network administrator, who blocks every bit of software you try to install on your system, is bypassed through Webapps.

It may seem that Web applications spell trouble for software makers, and to some degree they do. But software vendors are adjusting to the times. Webapps opens a wider market for software vendors, who aren’t constrained by having to write code around a specific hardware platform and limit their market or incur additional costs to build for another platform. Many bugs and computer viruses are squashed in Web-based applications because no union is necessary between the Webapp and the local computers operating system, which can be rife with problems.

Webapps make the Green movement giddy. With software boxes, printed manuals, shipping costs, CD’s, and all the environmental consequences involved to distribute software, Webapps are both economically and environmentally friendly. Furthermore, Webapps eliminate the entire software piracy issue with one click of the mouse, leaving the U.S. government time to focus on those high-seas Somali pirates instead.

Web-based applications, because they are developed on open source platforms and supported online, provide cost-effective solutions. Webapps work any where, any place, any time, and even conquer the Mac vs. Windows issue, which, of course, is a whole other battle of the titans.

Dr. Jan Stringer, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Survey Software Online

The current recession has almost every company in a state of red alert, cutting costs across the board, from canceling the year-end bonuses to purchasing cheaper toilet paper for office bathrooms. No expense is being spared.

However, the employee has been the most unfortunate victim of the recession. With unemployment at its highest rate in a quarter-century, tens of thousands of workers have found themselves in the cross-hairs of cost-cutting, and thousands more are wary of being next on the chopping block.

“Everybody is so fearful that companies are thinking, ‘What can we hang on to and what should we liquidate?’ ” Martin N. Baily, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton told the New York Times recently. “A lot of the reduction in employment is businesses deciding to close down operations or get out of a certain line of activity.”

Scary stuff to think about, especially if your company just ordered a big supply of pink slip paper from the local Staples. But more and more experts are warning companies to tread carefully when taking the slash-and-burn approach to controlling costs, and think about the value proposition of what they’re doing. Sacking a bunch of employees may look good to the bottom line, but if it ultimately undermines the fundamental value proposition to customers, that company’s reputation could suffer a fatal blow.

Cutting costs is nothing new for companies, but most want to do it without sacrificing results of their products or services. The SSO idea is a fairly mainstream offering to companies that are looking to trim their budgets. The range of cutbacks can swing from creative to downright kooky. Here are a few:

▪ Employees at Microsoft won’t have to worry about ants at the company picnic, because there won’t be any company picnic. The software maker is cutting the fat and fried chicken out of its budget, canceling its annual summer picnic for the Seattle-area, which includes about 41,000 workers. That’s a lot of potato salad.

▪ At SRS Inc., employees have been recruited to be cost-cutting cops. SRS, a FEMA contractor, enlisted the help of its workers as expense monitors, rewarding individuals based on their efforts to help the company save money. One coordinator centralized office supplies ordering for SRS’s five offices through Staples, making ordering more efficient and improving the bottom line.

▪ An Australian television station has really taken a fanatical stand, downgrading the staff’s free luxury coffee to the bargain-basement Nescafe brand.

▪ Air travel is down around the world for the ninth consecutive month, according to the latest industry statistics, and business travel is one of the main culprits. With the economy in the tank, companies are cutting costs and staying at the office, choosing conference calls and virtual event solutions. As the economy sags, many events marketers are adding virtual events to their calendar. ON24 Inc., a supplier of webcasting and virtual-event solutions, recently released the results of an online survey it conducted of more than 300 enterprise business executives about their plans to attend or host live trade shows, conventions, and sales training seminars in 2009 versus their use of virtual events. Every metric from the survey showed that companies are embracing virtual events over travel, which is more bad news for the airline business.

▪ Where all the money goes is a mystery for some companies, so many are investing in software that counts every penny. Ariba, for example, sells software that helps companies track where they spend money, even when thousands of people in the company are making purchases. The Ariba software consolidates information into one place, so it becomes clear that instead of using seven different suppliers for paper, the company could use just one. Then Ariba sets up a reverse auction for suppliers to bid for business. That should leave the boss shouting, Ariba! Ariba!

▪ Even one of the most extravagant spenders on employee perks, Google, is cutting back, canceling afternoon tea at its New York office. Egads! What would the Queen think? For much of its history, Google spent money like drunken techies, hiring thousands and dishing out generous perks, including three free meals a day, free doctors, ski trips, laundry facilities, and subsidized personal trainers. While the company has vowed to keep the Google culture alive, it predicts that belt-tightening will continue as revenue growth continues to slide.