Who we are

Our key people have worked academically and in a variety of roles in the private and public sectors. Collectively, our consulting expertise has been obtained from a range of qualitative, quantitative and mixed mode studies in government, publicly-owned instrumentalities and private companies in Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, USA, Europe and the Middle East.

Key staff

David Willcox, Project Director, B Sc, Dip Sc, M Sc, D Phil (Oxon)
David is a scientist with extensive research experience and a background in national and international business. He has published over 50 articles in Australian and international journals and has worked professionally in various Pacific Rim countries, New Zealand, England, Australia and the United States of America. His experience includes the negotiating, setting up, administration and marketing of commercial biomedical and computer operations. In addition, he is skilled in the evaluation of electronic and biological technologies and the coordination of research and development projects in commercial environments.

David is one of the founders of Australian Survey Research Group. He was instrumental in the creation of Survey Manager and is the inventor of the "OnTrack” and “CompTrack" approach to performance management and capability profiling. Over the past 20 years David has been increasingly involved in the creation, use and control of large databases. His philosophy is to ensure computers deliver valued-added information to the end-user in an uncomplicated manner.

His expertise lies in the analysis of people, what they do in their work environment, what they should do and how to motivate them to higher levels of performance. Another major interest is what makes customers loyal and how large organisations can consistently meet their changing expectations.

Peter Salmon, Principal Consultant, Dip Elec Eng, BA (Hon), PhD, MAPS, AFAHRI, CMIMC, AFAIM
Peter is an experienced management consultant specializing in information management, software application development, research design, and statistical analysis. He has extensive knowledge and experience in developing and applying complex mathematical models to survey results. Peter is also an experienced focus group convener and interviewer.

As a psychologist and statistician, Peter enjoys the challenges of data mining especially where they involve predictive models of customer or stakeholder behaviour.

Tricia Deasy, Principal Consultant, B Bus (Communication), MA, AFAHRI
Tricia is a researcher with a background in organisational communication, market research and human resource management. She designs and analyses complex research projects usually in the role of project manager. Many of her projects revolve around employees or association members as internal customers; assessing satisfaction levels or gauging current and required skill levels. Tricia works across all industry sectors, including government and not-for profit organisations and with very small and large organisations. She also has expertise in designing and implementing human resource management systems, integrating human resource information, creating organisational change and designing and delivering development activities and employee communication programs. She has extensive experience in designing performance management processes and organisation / industry-wide capability frameworks. Tricia has developed numerous development programs and curricula as a result of work as a university lecturer (seven universities in Australian and USA) and as a corporate trainer in banking, automotive manufacturing and mining industries. Before becoming a research consultant, Tricia was a graduate course director and subject leader at Monash University, Melbourne.

Richard Fraccaro, Senior Consultant & Statistician, B Info Sc, B Maths Hon, member IAPA
Richard has over 10 years experience as a statistical, management and IT consultant, across many different disciplines and fields. He has been involved in large and small projects involving stakeholders, management and technical staff.

As Richard is also a skilled IT Analyst, he is able to combine IT with statistics to offer clients new ways of analysing and presenting data.

As manager of ASR's survey bureau, Richard is in constant contact with a range of public and private sector organizations and advises on leading-edge developments in survey deployment and feedback tools.

Vanessa Koufomanolis, Consultant, B Arts, M App Social Research, member AMSRS
Vanessa is interested in the implementation of public policy and corporate governance. She has worked on a wide variety of survey & and research projects, including multidisciplinary studies of industrial relations, skilled labour shortages, the socio-economic impacts of policy changes, population growth, and the demography of technology uptake.

She has worked on a variety of research assignments involving employee, customer or stakeholder satisfaction where both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used. As an experienced user of Survey Manager, Vanessa designs web questionnaires with clients and manages surveys from inception to analysis and reporting.

Leigh Barratt, Analyst Programmer, Higher Dip Elect Eng & Computers, Dip Computing
Leigh started his working life as an electrical draftsman before leaving England to work in Hong Kong. Upon his arrival in Australia, he trained as a computer programmer, topping his class. He worked for several companies on major database applications before joining ASR in 2000. Since this time, he has been one of the main developers of Survey Manager and OnTrack products. He is an Oracle DBA and is skilled in Visual Basic and web technologies such as ASP, .NET, COM+ and XML. In recent years, Leigh has alternated between providing client support, working on special projects and ongoing R&D associated with the company’s products.

Michael Ray, Analyst Programmer, Adv Certificate and Assoc Dip Computing
Michael started his working life as a policeman in country Victoria. He then trained in computer programming, and topped his class. He joined ASR from EAN Australia, the merchandise bar-coding experts. Michael has considerable experience with SQLServer, SQLBase, Gupta 4GL, ASP, .NET, COM+ and XML. He has been the main developer of ASR’s online performance management system (OnTrack) as well as maintaining the company’s competency profiling and training admin system. He also works on the Verified special project. He is used to working on site independently and regularly liaises with clients as part of new installations.

Swapna Ranjith, Analyst Programmer, B Eng, OCA
Swapna worked for a number of major Indian ITT companies before joining ASR. Her experience encompasses the software development life cycle, relational databases, SQL, PL/SQL, Java ASP, .NET and data warehousing. She works on ASR's proprietary software products and supports the IT components of client assignments.

Martin Cattach, Customer Service Manager
With more than 25 years experience in sales and marketing both in the IT &T and Financial services Martin has been involved in a diverse mix of projects. Prior to joining Australian Survey Research, Martin held roles including VP Sales and Marketing Australasia for a Nasdec-listed company and was Sales and Marketing Manager for a an offshore telco joint venture in China. Past sales experience includes large solution sales to many of Australia’s leading companies and government organizations He has worked as a consultant for Telstra and Lease Plan. In financial services Martin held sales and marketing roles in two investment banks.

Yasmin Nekula, NSW Manager, B Bus
Yasmin has had 15 years experience in sales and marketing in small, medium and large blue-chip organisations covering fast moving consumer goods, IT, pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Prior to ASR, Yasmin worked in a new business development and marketing role at Starcom, within the IT industry. Previously, she worked at Nestle for 5 years, developing and executing strategies for a portfolio of pet food brands. Yasmin has also worked as a change management trainer and consultant in a business specialising in methodologies to assist organisations manage the human aspects of change.

She has had extensive experience in planning and managing complex projects to achieve set objectives. As NSW Manager for ASR, she is the first point of contact and communication for our NSW clients.

General

As displayed in the circle, ASR provides products and services that assist you in internal management of your organization AND in managing information about people or activities that are outside of your organization. We can assist you in generating data, creating information from this, and helping you use it to manage your day-to-day business.

The following activities are part of our core business:

• Survey services bureau
• Web survey software
• Statistical and data analysis
• HR and market research
• Internet/web development
• Web application hosting
• Custom web-database projects
• Workforce planning & profiling software
• Training management software
• Performance management systems

Market research consulting

We specialise in projects requiring a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques. For example, we use multiple methods of collecting data, including:

• Desktop research
• Face-to-face interviewing
• Telephone interviewing
• Focus groups
• Workshops
• Web and/or e-forms
• Paper
• CATI.

ASR undertakes large and small survey research assignments for government business enterprises, private and not-for-profit organisations. Our consultants are noted for their expertise in designing questionnaires for a range of business purposes, including all forms of employee & 360° surveys, member and customer satisfaction.

ASR has extensive survey experience in human resource, market, social, government and custom research. We apply a range of methodologies in our research activities and are always prepared to adapt these to meet specific client requirements. As well as using traditional methods to collect information, the company has its own web and e-forms software system which it can apply to research & survey assignments.

Typical projects involve some or all of the following: project initiation, publicity or communication strategies, questionnaire design, data collection, analysis, interpretative reporting, and client presentations.

Survey Services

This is a survey-research professional services centre using Survey Manager for collecting information by web, paper, e-forms and computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI). The bureau offers a range of services, including:

• Questionnaire design
• Design and implementation of communication programs
• Project management
• Data collection
• Survey & research consulting
• Analysis
• Interpretative report writing
• High performance statistical processing
• Specialised business intelligence
• Web access & dissemination.

Survey Services supports four types of survey project:

• Anonymous
• Anonymous with return
• Invitational, and
• Multi-rater, including upward feedback and 360°.

For multi-rater surveys:

• Our Survey Manager software allows for user-selected respondents
• Qestionnaires are presented in a single menu for multiple recipients
• Pre-survey messages and reminders are sent automatically
• Progress is tracked automatically
• Individual feedback reports can be returned by paper, e-mail and the web.

The bureau features:

• Servers housed in secure Tier 1 Data Centre
• Use our database and web servers (or house yours with us)
• Defence security clearance SSL encryption available
• Suitable for internal and public use 24x7 up time
• Monthly subscription, short term and long term projects
• All types of data and analysis accommodated
• Certified by Defence for handling Commonwealth data.

Analytics Bureau

We run an Analytics Bureau in collaboration with Space-Time Research, Australia's most successful business intelligence company.

At the heart of the solution is SuperWEB, the web browser interface to Space-Time Research's acclaimed online micro-analytical processing technology. This embodies those characteristics that make Space-Time Research's content delivery and reporting solutions so successful internationally - extraordinary performance, elegance and ease of use. It has proved effective in bringing common statistical knowledge and data interrogation capabilities to a broader spectrum of business people in organisations.

We perform routine and specialised statistical analysis and reporting on completed survey and other data for various statutory bodies, government agencies and companies. SuperWEB, and its companion products, enable ASR to offer web data mining and reporting on modest as well as truly massive data sets. We can transform your data to appear in SuperSTAR, and disseminate reports under password control over the web. Typical uses are:

• Employee survey: distribution of the company data and work area data, so that a line manager can view his/her work area and compare their local results to the company-wide results.
• Customer satisfaction survey: distribution of the company data and product/service lines, so that various managers can view their product/service and compare their results to the company-wide results.

Software products

1. Survey Manager™ for data collection and surveys
2. SuperCROSS for PC-based analysis
3. SuperWEB for data analysis and reporting over the web
4. Leximancer for text analysis and data mining
5. CompTrack for workforce analysis and capability tracking
6. CompTrack for training administration
7. OnTrack for employee performance management

Software development

Software development with consulting support enables ASR to provide its clients with a unique capability for integrating information technology with business processes. We specialise in database-driven web applications, often involving e-commerce. We develop mainly using Microsoft® tools.