Confirmit 10.5

Confirmit 10.5 has been released on FIRM ASP environments. The Oslo, Norway-based EFM / market research CRM-related software vendor today announced the release of the new version of the program. Confirmit Kiosk will be included in the platform; this program promises the opportunity for offline customer experience measurement.

Also included is Confirmit Rapid Results. Confirmit Rapid Results had actually hit the market about one month ago and with its release came the announcement of its compatibility with Confirmit 10.5. Confirmit Rapid Results is a new complimentary online analysis and collaborative insight application for Confirmit users. Together with the release of Confirmit 10.5, Confirmit Rapid Results promises to enable business executives and other stakeholders to quickly and intuitively access top-line results, conduct analysis, and act on business critical insight. “Critical insight” is a particularly often used expression in the FIRM vocabulary.

As FIRM vice president of marketing Kjell Øksendal says in press material, “Great insight drives great business decisions across initiatives and departments, such as product development, customer service, human resources and marketing.” Øksendal goes on to theorize that “The challenge many companies face is the diluted value of insight.” Øksendal believes that “True Enterprise Feedback Management is about collecting and analyzing attitudinal data in a uniformed manner across the enterprise and driving that data into business processes, turning it into actionable insight,” touting his product as ideal for “experiences and attitudes across the enterprise and in any context to be measured and acted on in a way that powers competitive edge far beyond any other EFM technology.”

Confirmit Kiosk allows offline on-site survey deployment and enterprise feedback gathering for HR, CRM and marketing activities or, as FIRM representatives put it, to “implement enterprise feedback programs on a global scale both on the web and offline in their various locations.” Confirmit is used in customer satisfaction surveys employee satisfaction surveys and market research surveys.

Confirmit Rapid Results in tandem with Confirmit Reportal, seeks to provide the ultimate analysis and insight delivery platform available for market research and enterprise insight management. Confirmit Rapid Results enables users such as marketers and researchers to conduct real-time analysis online in a quick and intuitive interface for tabulation and charting, providing business users with a means to identify target segments and quickly visualize data in a variety of views. Confirmit Reportal enables users to share their findings and insight with an unlimited number of people through secure report portals.

Confirmit users can provide stakeholders with interactive access to reports created in Confirmit Rapid Results. The products are merely the latest in the quite moving FIRM’s line. Earlier this month, then-released first quarter results showed FIRM revenue increase twenty-four percent, up to $4.8 million from last year’s $3.9 million. Adjusted overall growth was posted at twenty-nine percent. Both geographic segments contributed to the strong revenue growth; EMEA 26%, North America 22%. Revenues from licenses and transactions in first quarter 2006 increased by 39% while revenues from consultancy and other were reduced by 44% compared to first quarter 2005. Operating results (EBIT) for the first quarter in 2006 were $334,000 compared to $154,000 in the corresponding quarter of 2005, for a margin of seven percent.

Profit was listed at $308,000, up from last year’s $136,000. FIRM total assets were posted at $20.8 million, with fixed assets representing $7.7 million and total current assets $13.2 million. FIRM’s total equity ratio at first quarter’s end was $16.5 million. FIRM CEO Henning Hansen opined that “The first quarter illustrates that FIRM is well equipped to deliver a strong performance for 2006. We are pleased with the performance in both Europe and USA, and are excited that even more leading companies have started using and standardizing on our strong software platform.”

FIRM analysis cited new contracts as a primary reason for the increases. In the first quarter of 2006, Taylor Nelson Sofres, British Council and MARC Research all renewed their contracts with FIRM. FIRM also signed new contracts with several Market Research companies and enterprises such as Data Development Worldwide and Intrawest. Also contributing to the success was FIRM’s partnership with the NPD Group to develop a new panel management and sample selection platform. This partnership seeks to combine the market leading survey, panel and reporting technology resources from FIRM with NPD’s market leading domain expertise in panel management. The vision of the joint initiative is to create and introduce the next generation platform to the market research industry as well as to large enterprise customers.