Every year, I carve out time to create a guiding principle for the business that serves as the north star for everyone that works at PureSpectrum. In years past the missions were clear and easily remembered. In 2016, it was “Live in July”, which meant that we wanted to have our first live survey transaction before the end of July. In 2017, it was about hitting our first break-even month. 2018 was about growth without equity capital, and 2019 was simply an epic revenue goal.
Heading into my 2020, I spent a lot of time thinking about the importance of quality. This one word can apply to so many different areas of business and life in general. Quality service, quality life, quality products, quality experiences, quality employees, and the list goes on. Sometimes quality is nothing more than a constructed mirage designed by branding and marketing teams. It entices you to purchase the product and it isn’t until you’ve paid the premium that you realize it wasn’t worth it.
In my 17 years in the insights industry, I’ve struggled with the idealistic desires and practical realities of delivering quality data. Given that surveys are incentivized with a payout, there will always be bad actors who will try and cheat the system for their own gain. Suppliers are in a constant battle to fight this fraud and provide quality respondents, and it is difficult to combat all these issues constantly. We would love to eliminate fraud completely, but it is unrealistic to believe in this sample utopia. Yet we have to try.
We would love to eliminate fraud completely, but it is unrealistic to believe in this sample utopia. Yet we have to try.
We recognize that it is an audacious goal to try to lift the standard of quality for the entire industry, yet PureSpectrum’s 2020 focus will be quality. It takes courage to take on this uphill battle; the pursuit is righteous. We have just rolled out PureScore, our advanced machine learning model-based product, and will continue to invest in technology that enhances the quality of data delivered through our platform. We are still taking our commitment to quality three steps further. We are taking a microscope to every aspect of our business to strive for the highest standards of quality. This will apply to our products and every experience in our company: employee, client, respondent and supplier. We call it “PSX,” the PureSpectrum Experience. I am excited and curious to see how the relentless pursuit of quality impacts our business, our lives, and our industry. It begs the question, what does quality mean to you, and how far are you willing to go to achieve it?