October 2003

Eight years running
Bernett Research collects partnership grades for the VARBusiness ARC

BOSTON: Every year the computer industry waits anxiously for the results of the VARBusiness magazine Annual Report Card (ARC) special issue, an opportunity for resellers of hardware, software and services to grade their relationship to the leading 75 hardware and software vendors whose products they resell or represent. The community of resellers and developers account for well over $150 billion a year in sales of products and services. How they grade their respective vendors, in many cases, reflects the strength or weakness of a vendor's fortunes—and often indicates the future direction of its stock price.

Before all eyes turn to VARBusiness, however, VARBusiness turns to Bernett Research Services Inc. to collect the data for the ARC.

"The October publication of the VARBusiness Annual Report Card is always a big event in the computer industry," says VARBusiness vice president and editorial director Robert C. DeMarzo. "It's also our biggest issue of the year, and, every year for eight years now, we have counted on Bernett Research to collect the data we use as the foundation for our coverage."

"It's gratifying to be involved in a project that impacts an industry as profoundly as the VARBusiness Annual Report Card does," says Bernett Research co-CEO Matt Hayes. "We can always count on the ARC to present us with some interesting challenges every year," he adds.

For the 2003 ARC, Bernett Research made more than 370,000 calling attempts and sent out almost 55,000 emails to get the necessary quota of completed questionnaires for each vendor. Altogether, nearly 5,000 surveys were completed of which more than 2,000 were completed on the web. The percent of completed surveys from the web doubled from 2002 to 2003, Hayes notes.

"The high percentage of web-completes reflects a willingness of more business people to rely on the web for business to business communications," Hayes says. "At the same time, the ARC clearly demonstrates that it takes much more than just being able to post a survey on the web to complete a research project of this magnitude. Our call centers still account for more than half of the completes, and, in many cases, the web-completes were the result of someone being contacted first by phone. We pride ourselves on being one of very few data collection companies with the multitude of skills required for research projects on the scale of the ARC. We can do whatever it takes to get the job done right and on time."

This year it took just a little over two months to get the job done right for the 2003 VARBusiness Annual Report Card.

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About VARBusiness magazine
VARBusiness is the leading trade publication for the computer industry distribution channel. A CMP Media publication, based in Manhasset, NY, VARBusiness has a circulation of more than 100,000 subscribers. Check out the 2003 VARBusiness Annual Report Card at http://www.varbusiness.com/.

About Bernett Research
Bernett Research is a privately-held market research and data collection firm based in Boston. Founded in 1972, Bernett Research collected strategic information for many high-profile clients long before there was an Internet. Its strategically located call centers and professional interviewers now add a depth of capability to its email and Web-survey tools that is unique among market research firms active today. Its focus facility at its Boston headquarters has been recognized by the annual Impulse Research survey as "one of the best in the world."

Marquee clients include: Abt Associates, Directions Research, Chadwick, Martin, and Bailey, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, IPSOS, Research Collaborative, Synovate, MIT Sloan School of Management, VARBusiness magazine, Zanthus…and many more.

For more information about the range of data collection services available at Bernett Research, please contact Andrew Hayes directly at 617-746-2705 or by email at andrew@bernett.com.