Phil Hearn: Blogger, Writer & Founder of MRDC Software Ltd.
Replacing Quantum Software – What Matters?
The need to replace Quantum as a tool for processing market research crosstabs has been gathering pace over the years. Quantum still rates highly in terms of being good at producing crosstabs using a scripting language, but modern data processing needs have moved on significantly since Quantum’s heyday. There are few alternatives: besides our MRDCL product, Merlin and Uncle are the only alternative scripting languages, although the authors of Ruby claim that their product is a viable alternative to Quantum. However, MRDCL has made the greatest strides forward to make the production of crosstabulations fit well with modern market research needs.
Quantum’s history
Quantum became the number one product for crosstabulations in the 1980s. It dominated markets worldwide except Australasia and parts of Asia, where Surveycraft gained a foothold. Surveycraft and Quantum were acquired by SPSS in the late 1990s; Surveycraft soon died, and Quantum was left undeveloped. However, Quantum lived on due to its sizeable user base, although it was in danger of dying as it did not run properly in Windows until an upgrade by Unicom, who had acquired the product, in 2018. “Quantum 6 is an exciting first step in a new wave of development and innovation around the Quantum product”, announced Mr. Corry Hong, founder, president and CEO of Unicom in 2018. However, since Mr Hong’s announcement, nothing. So, Quantum runs under Windows but has not moved since the late 1990s to reflect changes in the market research industry. Given the vast number of blog posts on Unicom’s website announcing new products for other products, we can assume Quantum has slipped off the radar in the last five years.
Key differences that matter
The critical issue for me is that market research has changed substantially since the late 1990s, and this should be reflected in software products. These changes have shaped our development of MRDCL in those 25 years. The key issues are:
- The importance of automation tools
- The importance of productivity
- The growth of online surveys
- The increasing importance of tracking studies
- The improved skills of staff
- The importance of connecting data and software
Let’s look at each of these in turn.
1. The importance of automation tools
Back in the 1990s, the production of crosstabulations was a backroom process mostly carried out in a factory-like process by DP experts. Crosstabs were often the final destination for survey processing. Things have changed. Data collection tools need to connect seamlessly with crosstab tools, which, in turn, feed into reporting and data visualisation tools. This means that automation is essential, and the production of crosstabs needs to be integrated into an efficient series of processes. MRDCL has built-in tools to automate reading data from other systems, processing data and delivering data, helping to facilitate the need for automation.
2. The importance of productivity
In the last 25 years, relative to all business costs, labour costs have increased, and computing costs have reduced. This is true to some degree in virtually every economy in the world. This means that staff productivity has grown significantly in importance since the 1990s. MRDC’s development of MRDCL has focused heavily on productivity over the last 20 years. The tools we have added have drastically reduced the time users spend on preparing and managing projects. Our EPS tools, for example, which automate and deskill work carried out in MRDCL, have halved (or more) the time staff spend on many projects, particularly the bigger, more complex survey processing challenges. Moreover, MRDCL allows users to build templates that mean work can be shared amongst a team, with less skilled staff carrying out the easier or more labour-intensive tasks. This, in turn, reduces errors and ensures staff are as productive as possible.
3. The growth of online surveys
Online surveys did not exist in the days when Quantum was last developed. A typical online survey is shorter than a paper questionnaire survey. It is usually prepared using a specialist online survey software tool. Therefore, Quantum has no special tools to process online surveys. Automating tabulations and analysis directly from the preferred online survey software tool has become crucial. For example, MRDCL Central has tools to automate the transference of SPSS data, a common output from online platforms, directly into MRDCL, meaning a complete set of crosstabulations can be prepared in minutes.
4. The increasing importance of tracking studies
Tracking studies have been a popular research survey type for many years. What has become more important is the need to automate tables, charts and reports so that processing costs are minimised. Arguably, it’s the same point that labour costs need to be minimised, but there is far more scope to automate processes using the modern tools that MRDCL offers. The final output might be Excel, PowerPoint, a PDF file or an online dashboard. However, automating the process can save many hours of work. MRDCL has been developed to make this as easy as possible to ensure that the path from data to reporting is fast, error-free and cost-effective.
5. Improved skills
You might think the issue of whether a scripting language is needed has been avoided. This is addressed further down this article, but one barrier that has diminished over the last 20 years is that far more people are capable of using a scripting language like MRDCL. It’s a massive change, in fact. It means that languages like Quantum that made specification easy at the expense of efficiency are less relevant nowadays than a product like MRDCL, which can make both highly skilled and less skilled staff effective.
6. The importance of connecting data and software
Quantum was a market leader at a time when surveys were just surveys. Modern research often demands that other non-research is integrated with research data. This may be data relating to respondents or figures used for targets or comparisons with research data. The explosion of data in recent years means there is more need to integrate different data sources as market research moves towards business intelligence. Our software has moved in this direction, too. Accessing databases has been made available for several years, but it significantly increased MRDCL’s scope. Similarly, connecting software platforms together has gathered pace. This is because, in the 1990s, most research agencies tended to use one platform for the entire process, which mostly amounted to entering data from paper questionnaires through to crosstabs. Nowadays, data comes from different sources and needs to be reported or delivered in different ways.
Should you replace Quantum with a like-for-like product?
Companies and their staff have become far more adept at finding innovative ways to make software do what they want effectively. This may be a subtle point, but Quantum works in a very structured way. There is little scope for creativity and finding efficient ways of linking different procedures. Users switching to MRDCL from Quantum lose many benefits if they write the script in a ‘like-for-like’ way. Sure, you can use MRDCL like Quantum – effectively translating your Quantum language skills to the MRDCL language. It’s a bit like how I speak some languages, translating word-for-word. MRDCL has evolved due to its constant development to offer a vast array of tools to be more productive. Ignoring these tools will minimise the benefit of switching to MRDCL. Some former Quantum users find the flexibility and power of MRDCL daunting at first. However, it doesn’t take long for real productivity gains to be enjoyed. It’s hard to explain this in a short blog article, but at MRDCL demonstrations, I like to ask potential customers what their biggest pain points are so that I can demonstrate a neat solution – it usually works!
What are MRDCL’s productivity features?
It’s hard to explain these briefly, but here are five specific examples:
1. Code lists
Users of scripting languages will usually copy open-ended code lists or brand lists into their Quantum script. Then, if they want to produce sub-totals with ranking, they would spend hours organising these code lists and writing scripts to specify what they want. In MRDCL, you can build a custom Excel template that handles this in a spreadsheet (we can freely share one). One line of MRDCL code reads the spreadsheet and updates the script automatically if there is a change, addition, or deletion in the spreadsheet.
2. Databases
If you have a database of information about respondents, you can merge this data with survey data without time-consuming, error-prone manual procedures and without carrying out manual recoding processes. You simply link the sources together.
3. Data lookups
As MRDCL can read Excel worksheets, writing an MRDCL script that uses the Excel worksheet as a lookup or a driver of analysis is straightforward. For example, an unskilled person (or an automated process) could generate price data in a spreadsheet that can look up this information based on survey data. Similarly, you can design spreadsheets to define what outputs you want by writing scripts that understand the coding used in the spreadsheet. This allows some powerful processing deskilling tasks that would be clumsy or expensive to maintain in Quantum.
4. Data editing and corrections
Data editing is often part of the research process. Rather than physically changing data, making it difficult to trace changes, it is better to store these changes in an electronic form to be applied to the data, giving an audit trail of each respondent’s data.
5. Tracking studies
When you have a tracking study, automating the whole procedure from data to tables to reports using MRDCL is easy. MRDCL is an open system that allows users to take parts of the data needed for subsequent processes or outputs. You can even embed MRDCL within your own processes, systems or platform.
Of course, these are just five examples, but MRDCL can simplify things for you in many more ways.
Do I have to switch to another scripting language?
It’s time to address the question of whether you need a scripting language when there are so many crosstab products on the market, although few have scripting capabilities. Many good software products process data and produce tables using a relatively simple user interface. This might be the right type of software for you as these products have improved. If you handle fairly straightforward projects, a non-scripting software solution might suit you best when replacing Quantum. You will need to check that all the functionality you need is available, but it could be the right course. Also, if the volume of work is low, learning and using a scripting language will generally be the wrong decision unless there is some unusual prevailing factor. So, a scripting language is not always the right choice. But wait!
When does a scripting language give you an advantage?
A scripting language allows you to produce analysis more quickly so long as it is used by trained staff. MRDCL, however, goes a big step further. MRDCL focuses on productivity. It allows you to build your own templates for complex or repetitive requirements. This has two enormous benefits – firstly, less skilled staff can assist experienced MRDCL users, and secondly, projects can be taken over or shared more easily when staff are absent or leave. A scripting language should only be used if it offers an advantage. We will tell you candidly if MRDCL will help you or not.
How does MRDCL reduce costs?
MRDCL is more efficient than Quantum and its competitors and offers higher productivity. The following calculation is not untypical. Let’s say the spend on the Quantum team was $100,000 per year. With MRDCL, that cost can probably be halved as less skilled staff can do some of the work, and the tools within MRDCL will make staff more productive. Other hidden costs and risks to business, such as taking over a project when someone leaves, can also be drastically reduced. As I said at the beginning, our focus will remain on automation, productivity and value for money.
Why MRDCL?
At the end of all this, we appreciate that MRDCL is an investment for our clients. There is some pain and effort to learn to use such a powerful system. But, like all investments, you should rightly expect a good return. MRDCL will do that and continue to pay you back.
More to explore
Is MRDCL the only replacement or alternative to Quantum?
If you are looking for a replacement or alternative to Quantum, you will find that there are very few options. Quantum was for many years the number one software package for market research batch tabulations using a scripting language, but it has effectively been retired as it does not run under modern versions of Windows and is no longer advertised on the owner’s website.
Is Quantum Still The Best Crosstabulation Software For Market Research?
An explanation of why MRDCL may or may not be the right replacement for Quantum. Hundreds of software platforms now produce crosstabulations (sometimes called crosstabs, tables or tabulations). However, there is a massive difference between what Excel and top-end tabulation software products like Quantum, MRDCL, and Merlin can produce in terms of crosstabs.
How easy is it to switch from Quantum to MRDCL?
I have always admired Quantum as a market research analysis program. It is still powerful enough to process most survey tabulations, but after almost 20 years without development, its position has slipped. Whilst still functionally strong, modern releases of Windows do not support Quantum.
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MRDC Software has been supplying software for market research since 1992. It is known around the world for its leading tabulation software, MRDCL, but has expanded its portfolio of products to have productivity-focused software for data collection, data analysis, reporting and dashboards.
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