Webservice Integration

The Survey Analytics Platform is the On-Demand framework that powers SurveyAnalytics. Integrating back-office systems like CRM, Trouble-Ticketing etc. with your survey database is achieved via open and secure standards like SOAP, SSL, XML and HTTP.

The Need
Integration with other systems is often necessary to maintain a unified system-of-record. CRM Systems like Salesforce.com, Siebel etc. are the system-of-record for customer data for many companies and different business functions rely on that. It is important for IT departments to have a cohesive dataset as part of the overarching company-wide strategy. The Survey Analytics Platform enables marketing departments to create and deploy surveys easily without the need for IT and relieve strapped resources but at the same time being compliant with the overarching company-wide data-warehousing strategy.

Survey Analytics Platform Architecture

Transactional System Integration
Recording and maintaining transactional customer interactions is one of the functions of almost all CRM systems. Examples of transactional record-keeping include :-

• New Customer Added to the Database
• Customer Trouble Ticket Closed
• Customer finished training course

1. Define the scope of the trigger . does the CRM system have .Plug-Points. that can trigger an email?
2. Execute an XMLRPC or SOAP Call to the Survey Analytics Platform API to get the survey URL for an individual email address. This is useful for tracking who has responded to the survey and who has not and the ability to send reminders etc.
3. Send out the Email
4. Survey Analytics Platform collects the data and is available for immediate analysis via survey portal online.
5. Execute batch process API to get the Raw Data back into the CRM system (Nightly/Weekly etc.)

Implementation Details

Step 1: Email Trigger
This is the first step that needs to be identified. Ideally it is at a point in your customer.s lifecycle where it makes sense to collect feedback. Consult with your CRM vendor if they provide .plug-points. to execute code or if you can provide email templates for delivering email.

Step 2: Tracking URL
Using the SOAP or the XMLRPC web service API, a unique URL can be generated for every email address. This tracking URL can be embedded as part of an email delivered to the survey respondent. Additional parameters (Employee ID, Campaign ID etc.) can also be added to the URL to capture along with the survey data.

Step 3: Email Delivery
In this scenario, the email invitation will be handled by your CRM system.

Step 4: Data-Collection
When respondents click on the link, they.ll be directed to SurveyAnalytics to take the surveys. SurveyAnalytics will collected the data and store it as part of your survey data.

Step 5: Periodic Data Dump
Using the SOAP or the XMLRPC web service API, a data-dump of all the data collected can be produced for importing into your CRM system.