Friday, December 15, 2000

eServices Face Challenges

A new Report from the Yankee Group boldly predicts that in 2001 mobile solutions projects will transition from beta stage to full-scale deployments. The Yankee Group also highlights the fact that users will demand more strategic work and fewer prototypes from service providers.

According to the Report, titled "2001: A Service Provider's Odyssey: Who Wins and …" most service vendors have been investing heavily in new initiatives. The top ten key factors impacting service firms include: mobile solutions, smart cards, staffing, collocation/netsourcing, application service providers (ASPs), changing consulting firms, product firm initiatives in consulting, vertical opportunities, multi-geography delivery, and distributed computing.

We believe the technology marketplace will continue to grow selectively," said Andy Efstathiou, a program manager in the Yankee Group's E-Sourcing Strategies (ESS) Planning Service. "However, the market will get much harsher on ill-considered initiatives. Therefore, the cost of not getting it right will be higher in 2001, and the benefits for getting it right will be higher as well."

Additionally, the Report examines service provider's accountability and the ever-present demand for varied sourcing options. "Not only will users seek a single point of responsibility to deliver complete solutions, but flexibility in sourcing options will be a key source of competitive advantage for vendors," continued Efstathiou. "We expect and illustrate in this Report that vendors will build more technologically robust offerings through various hosting options: ASP, netsourcing, and offshore development."

Online Polling Highly Accurate - Better than Phone Polls
Thirty six days after the votes were cast, the results are now in, and George W. Bush has ascended to the presidency while a second winner has also emerged. Harris Interactive (Nasdaq: HPOL), the global leader in internet-based market research, announced it had achieved 99% accuracy (races called correctly or within a +/- 2% of error) in predicting 73 political contests in November.

Research Business Report, an industry-leading market research newsletter, has provided the first independent assessment of the accuracy of Harris Interactive in forecasting the recent election. Making a direct comparison between the final Harris Interactive Internet-based poll with the final telephone based polls of other firms, the Research Business Report concluded:

1) In average percentage points, online outperformed phone polls. Harris (Interactive) was off an average 1.8 points for Gore and 2.5 for Bush. Phone polling was off 3.9 points on the average Gore percentage and 4.4 for Bush.

2) On the one hand, proponents of online research methods can breathe a sigh of relief and express thanks to Harris Interactive. At the same time, Harris (Interactive)’s results make an indelible impression on behalf of its sometimes controversial online surveying method, which includes "propensity weighting" — questioned by some researchers and derided by others during the last year.

Dr. Gordon S. Black, chairman and CEO of Harris Interactive commented on the results: "Harris Interactive’s national forecast using the Internet outperformed every survey conducted by telephone while our state by state forecasts were about twice as accurate as the comparable telephone forecasts. We even predicted that Gore would end up with about 200,000 more popular votes than Bush — only about 100,000 off from the official difference of 300,000. The 99% accuracy of the Harris Interactive 2000 election results will stand as the turning point in the use of the Internet as a replacement technology for telephone-based market research. Harris Interactive is the only market research and polling firm that demonstrated in full public view that it has mastered the science of using Internet-based respondents to correctly project to the total population."

Election 2000 marks the second time that Harris Interactive has used the Internet to outperform the telephone in election polling. In 1998, Harris Interactive correctly predicted 21 out of 22 statewide races compared with 17 out of 22 by telephone. Stated Dr. George Terhanian, director of Internet research at Harris Interactive: "We were even more accurate in 2000 because we continue to perfect the use of propensity weighting, a statistical method that has been used routinely for about 20 years in the educational and medical sectors but infrequently in others. Harris Interactive has pefected its application to not only election forecasting but to all aspects of Interent-based market research."

This Harris Interactive election study was conducted using only the Internet. From October 30 through November 6, 2000, over 300,000 members of the voting-age population participated in this poll — the largest online election study in history. During the peak of the interviewing, Harris Interactive processed more than 40,000 online interviews per hour, including 7,800 simultaneous interviews. Final data were weighted and tabulated in real-time, using Harris Interactive’s proprietary systems.

News Tidbits (appears every day on front page)
- Even though eTown.com recently laid off several workers, the staff is still going forward with a union vote to take place on January 12, 2001. If approved, it will become the first dot com industry to unionize. In addition, unions are trying to get Amazon.com workers to unionize and, if successful, could start a virus effect with unions infiltrating eBusinesses everywhere.

- The downturn for eBusinesses is being felt over the holidays as several companies are cancelling parties. According to an AP story in USA Today, "The tumbling stock market and mass layoffs in the Internet world are bringing out the Ebenezer Scrooge in many tech-related companies, which have canceled or scaled back holiday party plans at the last minute. Some are just getting people together in their corporate offices."