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 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.

Erik Okerstrom, Research Director, B.A (Phil), Grad Dip (Marketing), M. Bus (Marketing), Member AMSRS, QPMR, Member of Institute of Analytic Professionals Australia

Erik has a health and financial services industry background of 20 years, 15 of those in marketing analytics and research, particularly in customer satisfaction and wellbeing measures.

Before joining Australian Survey Research Erik was Principle Research Adviser at The Social Research Centre where he ran public sector client satisfaction research projects as well as providing senior researcher input into a variety of ad hoc projects in the area of health and human services research. Among numerous projects he led the supplier side redesign of WorkSafe Victoria’s Injured Worker Satisfaction Monitor - a substantial performance measurement project affecting WorkSafe Agents’ remuneration.  Prior to this, Erik was Account Manager at The Ipsos Eureka Social Research Institute where he was also responsible for a range of public sector and health research projects including the management of a long standing syndicated health insurance industry monitor for government and the private health insurance industry.

He has had many years experience in statistical analysis in areas of market research such as segmentation, sales forecasting and modelling, customer satisfaction measurement connected to profit measures, perceived service quality measurement, brand/marketing research and wellbeing metrics. Erik’s master’s thesis was in customer satisfaction and the connection to bottom-line effect.

Erik is also an experienced qualitative researcher encompassing in-depth interviewing, focus group moderation as well as ‘cognitive’ or observational testing which involves research into questionnaire design and interpretation.

Tricia Deasy, Principal Consultant, B Bus (Communication), MA, Member AMSRS, QPMR

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.

Vanessa Koufomanolis, Senior 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.

Daniel Jebb, Research Associate, Dip.IT (Software Development) CERT IV Business Administration, Associate member AMSRS

Daniel supports our Survey Services bureau, using Survey Manager 1, survey Manager 2 or Vovici as appropriate. He manages these software systems from the client’s perspective and is responsible for user training in these systems. In addition he supports the many surveys and other research projects we run by providing assistance with numerical, statistical and textual analysis. He also produces client reports using e-Tabs and our proprietary report writer.

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 web technologies such as ASP, COM+, .NET, C+/C++ 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. He is the chief architect of our new Survey Manager software system.

Ben Almond, Analyst Programmer,Dip. Computing, B.IT

Ben has worked in the IT industry for most of his life, having roles at Bristol-Myers Squibb Pty Ltd, Pulse Energy, United Energy, Asea Brown Boveri Pty Limited (ABB), ANZ, Telstra and Nokia before joining ASR.

He has been an active participant in computing and business seminars including developer conferences and product releases.

Ben has an extensive programming knowledge, especially in delivering sophisticated enterprise solutions using C#.NET (3.5 framework), ASP.NET, VB6, HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, AJAX, WCF, LINQ, Web Services, Crystal Reports, ColdFusion, Flex, Flash, SQL Server (TSQL), DB2/400 and Visual Studio 2008.

He has a wide breath of business knowledge gained from working across many industry sectors. Ben is part of the SurveyManager development team. For variety, he also assists clients with their custom IT projects.

Fahmi Sarker, Analyst Programmer, B. Computing

Fahmi is a senior system developer with over five years of experience in full life-cycle development, including analysis, design, development, deployment, testing, documentation, implementation, and maintenance of application software of primarily web-based distributed applications.

He is experienced in designing and developing software applications, ranging from, B2B applications, internet, intranet and desktop applications and has a solid knowledge in developing applications based on MVP and MVC architecture and in implementing design patterns.

Fahmi is also part of the SurveyManager development team.

ASR has a number of certifications

Australian Survey Research is:

• An Internationally AS ISO 202052:2007 accredited Market and Social Research organisation.
• registered as a supplier with Australian Government Communications Unit
• a Registered Research Agency (No. 40503)
• certified under ASCII 33 by Defence Signals Directorate for handling Australian Government data.

It is a member of:

• AMSRO (Association of Market Social and Research Organisations)
• AIIA (Australian Information Industry Association)
• Dept Human Services (Victoria) IT panel
• Victorian whole-of-government e-services panel
• Member of many State and Commonwealth Government service panels.

Principals are members of AMSRS (Australian Market & Social Research Society).