Background

The Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants (TSCPA) is a nonprofit, voluntary, professional organization representing Texas CPAs. TSCPA has 20 local chapters statewide and has 27,000 members, the largest in-state membership of any CPA organisation in the United States. With the society's commitment to serving the public interest with programs that advance the highest standards of ethics and practice within the CPA profession, they joined the California-based RAN ONE in the new online initiative.

Business Challenge

To move the nationally recognized CPA MAP Survey, an industry benchmarking exercise, from being a paper-and ink based survey, to an online format in 2001. The existing paper-based survey posed three problems that the new online format would help to eliminate or alleviate:

1. Identification of respondents and distribution and collection of survey forms.
   
2. Data entry of completed forms and subsequent data cleansing
   
3. Generation and distribution of survey analysis and reports

The Strategy

The CPA MAP Survey project is designed to allow public accounting firms to provide details of their practice and view benchmarking reports generated from the data collected. The online system would permit the Society to reach more accountants, collect data quicker and with fewer errors, as well as generate and distribute reports more efficiently.

The survey consisted of over 300 individual questions, and the resulting reports could be generated with a wide range of filtering options available to the user. Before proceeding with the development of the system Bullseye undertook a thorough analysis of the data collection requirements and documented and reviewed the findings with the client. This was conducted remotely through document and information exchange and regular conference calls.

The Solution

The solution developed allowed Accountants to register on the site and complete the survey online. Since the survey would take a significant time to complete, users were provided with the option to save their un-submitted information for completion at a later date.

The survey was programmed with many data validation rules that meant that the system could warn users if they entered information that was outside a probable range of responses, could display optional questions only when they were relevant, and could pre-fill information in the survey automatically by examining responses to other questions. These features significantly reduced the time involved in data cleansing when the survey was closed.

The survey results were generated from the survey data collected and presented to the user online with options to download print format (PDF) versions. All respondents who completed the survey were provided with access to the reports online for free, whilst e-commerce functionality allowed other users to submit payment to view the reports.

Results

Survey participation increased 330% from the previous year. Data entry work was eliminated from the report generation process, and the data cleansing effort was significantly reduced.

In addition, The Texas MAP Society now has an online survey that can be modified as required year-on-year with minimal effort, allowing them to realise significant savings in the future and provide a return on investment.

In June 2001, the site won an Electronic Accountant web award from 'The Electronic Accountant'.

Technology Used

• SQL Server 2000
• Active Server Pages
• Windows 2000 Server
• PGP Encryption
• MS Access