The Marketing Research and Intelligence Association (MRIA) has honoured Delvinia as the winner of the Award for Excellence Behind the Scenes in recognition of a new tool developed by our innovation team to automate the sampling process for our AskingCanadians data collection business.

Over the past year, AskingCanadians has been re-evaluating its internal processes in an attempt to become more efficient in the way we contact our panellists and more mindful of the experience we deliver.

Due to the large number of surveys AskingCanadians fields for its clients each year, and the sheer number of survey invites that are sent out, a high proportion of survey respondents were being screened out because they either did not qualify, or a demographic quota had been filled. These screened out panellists represented a significant cost.

In an effort to improve the sampling process, our innovation team developed an algorithm designed to automate sampling by routing respondents into the appropriate surveys.

This new tool, known as the Application Sampling Algorithm (ASA), is enabling us to now turn those screened out survey participants into completed surveys, significantly reducing our screen out costs and increasing the overall capacity of our panel – the largest in Canada – to meet our growing client demand.

ASA was created by our team for internal use, however the true potential of ASA is the ability to be utilized by any company that wants to adopt a truly agnostic sampling system to improve their panellist experience and find efficiencies and cost reductions in managing their own panels.

The Behind the Scenes Award, presented at the MRIA’s annual conference last week, recognizes a research practitioner or team whose efforts are ‘behind the scenes’ and do not have direct client contact.