Case study: Borough-wide IT Business Survey

Business Area: Research & Consultation

Client: Newham Council and the University of East London

Background:

The Newham Kick Start Project was led by two organisations: Newham Council and the University of East London. The purpose of the project was provide support to businesses in the area (Newham) to help them trade electronically; pre-empting the national move by public sector organisations to only trade with businesses that are e-enabled. As part of the project, the consortium wanted to assess the current level of e-commerce usage among businesses operating within the Newham area.

The Brief:

Conduct a survey,  by phone,  contacting all businesses operating within the London Borough of Newham. Target set:  30% response rate Actions:

  • Provided support with design of questionnaire
  • Recruited and trained in-house telemarketing team
  • Designed procedure for conducting interviews with the aim of increasing the response rate
  • Phoned over 6000 business contacts provided to us with the intention of getting them to complete a 20+ question questionnaire
  • All calls/interviews (approx. 9500 phone calls) completed within 3½ weeks of project start
  • Data was also entered onto a database, for sending to the University for analysis

Outcomes:

  • Project successfully completed within timeframe
  • Response rate:  62.5%
  • As a by-product,  provided client with an up-to-date database of local businesses

END

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