Why is MRDCL more expensive than many other tabulation software packages?

If you are considering purchasing MRDCL, you will likely ask yourself: Why is MRDCL more expensive than many other tabulation software packages? And is it worth the expenditure? The honest and simple answer to those questions, in my opinion, is that it depends on your goals and skills you have or plan to have.

What this article will explore

This article will explore many vital questions. Firstly, it will examine why MRDCL is expensive and then try to help you decide whether it is costly or saves you money. Finally, the article will help you decide whether a more expensive product like MRDCL is good value or a cheaper alternative will be better.

What does expensive mean?

This might sound like a daft question, but what does expensive mean when it comes to MRDCL as a software tool? These are the key points:

• Does buying MRDCL constitute using a significant part of your budget? Only you can decide what significant means – it could be 5% or 95%. However, it is worth considering this.
• What are the risks of spending money on MRDCL? High, medium or low?
• Are you in a position to make the most (or sufficient use) of MRDCL?
• What will MRDCL save you? For example, will it reduce staff time?
• Does buying MRDCL improve business? For instance, serving customers better, handling more complex work, automating processes, competing faster/better/more cheaply, etc.

These are all critical business decisions, not unlike other expenditures you may need to consider for other parts of your operation.

How expensive is MRDCL?

Compared to some of the top-end online platforms, MRDCL is moderately priced. Compared to products with rudimentary tools for handling survey data, (maybe) generating variables and producing basic crosstabs, MRDCL is generally more expensive. Two things separate MRDCL from most other crosstab software:

• The software can handle any complexity of variables and crosstabs, including large-scale projects
• The software has everything you need to do this efficiently, productively and, where applicable, with automation

These things can make the difference between delivering a client’s needs and not delivering or doing something in two hours rather than twenty hours.

What does that mean when you partner with us?

 

I think this is a big point. When you partner with us and use MRDCL, you will gain access to the most cost-effective data analysis platform available. You can be assured that MRDCL will be constantly developed and improved to meet changing market needs. In a fast-moving world, that’s important. We have proved this with our productivity and automation tools, which constantly improve. Does this mean MRDCL is right for you? No, it doesn’t. So, let’s explore further.

Can anyone use MRDCL?

The simple truth is that MRDCL requires application, skill and regular use to benefit you. As someone with no DIY skills, I could be given the biggest and best-equipped toolbox in the world, but it would not mean I could suddenly build an extension to my home. If all I can use effectively is a screwdriver and a hammer, there is a limit to what I can achieve. Similarly, the biggest and best-equipped toolbox in the world is of no value if the most challenging task is to hang a picture on a wall.

Why can’t anyone use MRDCL?

MRDCL is a scripting language that takes time to become proficient in using. Users usually need to spend a third or more of their time using MRDCL to become highly efficient. And that’s where MRDCL offers a real advantage. Someone who knows how to use the MRDCL tools may be able to complete a task in as little as 10% of the time compared to someone using a lesser product. It can be even more extreme than that. We have known customers who handled tracking studies in MRDCL in less than 5% of the time (yes, over 95% less time) than they did in an alternative product simply because MRDCL has the right tools.

But, isn’t this evading the question of expensive?

Actually, it does explain why MRDCL is more expensive, and it’s all about what goes with the actual software licence that MRDCL users buy. These things break into two groups – what we do to the software and how we make it most beneficial to you. To take the first of these – what we do: –

• We constantly improve the software so you get as close to 100% efficiency and flexibility as possible
• We move to meet the current demands of the marketplace – for example, automation, connecting to other systems seamlessly, and automating reports.

How do we make MRDCL as beneficial as we can for you:

• Free induction training for new users
• First-class support
• Training videos
• A whole library of topic-based videos with free working downloadable examples
• Free critiquing of your work to ensure you are making the most of MRDCL

Who gets the most benefit from MRDCL?

Earlier in the article, I discussed the need to get value from MRDCL as it’s not an inexpensive product where you want to take a risk to ‘see if it makes a difference’. Here are some examples of the types of clients I believe get the most from MRDCL. These clients have one or more of the following types of work:

• A high volume of projects (simple or complex)
• Complex analysis/complex variables/complex data
• A need to link processes – maybe, from data collection to reporting/charts/dashboards
• Tracking studies, particularly ones with regular changes
• Projects with opportunities to automate processes
• A high volume of crosstabs
• Large datasets
• Staff with scripting language or programming experience

Do you have a high volume of mostly straightforward work?

I have seen some potential clients stick with less efficient software because moving to something more challenging is too scary. It is right to be cautious sometimes, of course, but there are ways in MRDCL to build templates so that using MRDCL is much easier. I am particularly thinking of potential customers with easy tabulations but high volumes. It’s easy to say that another software package is cheaper and does what you need, but if it takes even four times longer to produce, this comes at a cost in terms of labour and possibly in terms of business when you can’t deliver as fast as your client would like. This is a classic case of ‘not biting the bullet’ when you can save money by buying an MRDCL licence.

The more committed you are, the bigger the payback

Like many leisure pursuits, one thing you will find about MRDCL is that the more you put in, the more you will get back. MRDCL allows you to build efficient systems to process your work like no other tabulation software package. Even the more expensive ones, which we often consider over-priced, leave you to program your own solutions rather than having off-the-shelf solutions that can automate or semi-automate most tabulations you want. There is a big difference between software that does everything and software that can be programmed using an external programming language to do ‘extra things’. You need to be cautious of this flaw in software that allows you to use an external language. I have seen programmers develop systems with external programming capabilities that cannot be maintained or used if they are on holiday, ill or, worse still, leave the company.

Exponential labour costs are a reality

Business owners sometimes do not understand that software users are unlike many other staff. Let’s take a market research executive. It is likely or, at least, possible that one research executive can handle the same task in, say, 50% of the time another research executive will take. Suppose the two research executives are earning the same salary. In that case, the more efficient one is operating at 50% of the cost of the other (plus their fixed costs, of course). The same applies to two MRDCL users, except an exponential difference can exist with software. One product might take 50 times longer to achieve than what MRDCL can do. That might be a bit extreme and perhaps relate to a complex tracking study or something similar, but it’s a profound difference, and a factor of five times or ten times is not uncommon. The licence fee for MRDCL then becomes negligible in such cases. We have seen clients whose MRDCL licence is effectively paid for by a single project.

Premium vs. non-premium products

Finally, we consider MRDCL to be a premium product. We believe it to be the most productivity-focused product for tabulations in market research. In our view, selling a premium product means you should get a premium service with all the backup you need to ensure that you are operating as close to 100% efficiency as possible.

If none of this resonates with you…

If the above doesn’t resonate with you, MRDCL is probably not the right product. We are fully aware that MRDCL is not the right product for everyone. However, if you have complex tables, large volumes of tables, manage tracking studies, want to automate your analysis and reporting or find that your data processing costs are high, MRDCL will likely be right for you. In a nutshell, MRDCL is about productivity, automation, handling complexity or larger volumes efficiently and integration.

So, is MRDCL expensive?

Finally, the real question. This article has tried to convey that in the right hands and with the right type of work, MRDCL can save you money and pay for itself many times over. We appreciate that you need to be able to trust us to ensure your investment is right. That can be best achieved by asking direct questions and finding our answers credible. Software suppliers often find it easy to make claims which are hard to substantiate. We would like to demonstrate how MRDCL will benefit you. If you half-think MRDCL is right for you, ask us some questions now. Contact our product consultant, nikki.sunga@mrdcsoftware.com, for more information.