There are two web-based applications used to create and carry out a CVA survey:

1. The CVA project manager is used to define the scope of the project, schedule interviews and analyse results.
2. The CVA interview software can be used by interviewers or can be sent as a link to customers to complete the interview.

The CVA project manager can be loaded at https://portal.pims.ai/cvaproject/ (please note the final “/”). You will be redirected to our single sign-on login page. If this is the first time you have accessed the software please register. Once logged in the screen above will be displayed, click Create New Project to start the project definition.

The project creation wizard has screens to define: the scope of the project; the key buying factors ( attributes); competitors; and how the interview is presented to interviewees. You can also define segmentation options and additional questions as part of the wizard, or they can be added at a later date. Additional questions are qualitative or numerical questions that can be added to the survey and asked after the numerical input. For example, you could ask:

• Whether the interviewee expects the market to grow (and by how much)
• What areas you could improve on
• What additional services they think will become important, etc.

The wizard has 4 stages, with up to 2 additional steps if you selected to define segmentation and additional questions.Each stage has an on-screen guide to help with data entry. The Project overview screen, shown below, defines the name and scope of the survey, the base language (English or German) and how the project is initialized, either created from scratch or copied from an existing project.

This section is either created during an internal workshop or is based on the results of such a workshop, internal discussions, and or pilot interviews. It is important to include a definition of each attribute to make sure interviewees understand what is being asked. We recommend 10 to 12 attributes as the optimum.

Clicking the + button from the section header displays the Add attribute dialog (shown to the left). Enter a name for the attribute and a definition and press the Add button.

The attribute will then be displayed in the appropriate section of the main screen. Once created, it can be edited in place on the main screen

It is important to define the main competitors you think the interviewees consider. This is partially as a check on the market definition, but also it enables you to cross check your view of the market with who your customers are actively considering.

Click on the + button to add competitors to the list.

This screen is split into 3 sections and defines what is shown in the interview software, and the email configuration if you use the internal mail client to communicate with interviewees. The first section, shown below defines the title shown in the interview software and the introductory text for both the interviewee and, if appropriate, the person carrying out the interview. The second section defines what competitors are “pre-defined” in the input software, and how many blank fields are there (more can be added in the interview software if required). Recommendation:

• For internal interviews within your company to derive the internal perspective all defined competitors are shown
• For external interviews, your business is named with up to 5 blank fields for the interviewee to include the names of competitors they actively consider.

The third section is appropriate if you are using our software to send mails and schedule interviews from within the software. It allows you to add text to the standard mail (which can be edited before sending) and specify a return email address – if you do not specify a return email replies will probably come back to PIMS. By default, mails are sent from the PIMS mail server. However, the last section allows you to specify your own server as the mail source. Note: Whilst this facility is useful, we recommend that, if at all possible, you use your own mail account to send emails as this gives a more personalised approach. We will discuss a relatively easy way to do this in the section on scheduling interviews.