How Cygnal use Q to slash data processing and analysis times

Challenge

Replacing outdated survey software

As a survey research and data science firm, Cygnal handles dozens of research projects per week. But the software they were using was outdated, and every week they lost hours to tedious, manual processes. Matt Hubbard, Cygnal’s VP of Data and Analytics, knew there must be better alternatives out there.

We were using a really outdated system. It had limited capabilities and was error-prone and time-consuming.
Matt Hubbard, VP Data & Analytics, Cygnal

He began his search by looking at SPSS, but found that it wasn’t intuitive or efficient enough for his company’s needs. Plus, Matt found the data presentation options SPSS offered inelegant. They didn’t match with Cygnal’s brand.

“Some of our competitors were producing presentations out of SPSS that were extremely ugly,” he explains. “And you know, sending that off to clients looked horrible, that wasn’t the brand representation we wanted.”

Matt needed to find a solution that automated the manual processes their current, outdated software didn’t, in order to help his team of analysts save time. But he also needed the new software to have aesthetically-pleasing data visualisation options in order to impress his clients and attract new business.

Solution

Intuitive and efficient market research analysis software with all the features

When Matt first stumbled onto Q while researching SPSS alternatives, he immediately saw the software’s potential.

“Q was powerful,” he explains. “It had all of the features of SPSS that we needed but much more intuitive, user-friendly, and efficient.”

Together with Cygnal’s head analyst, Rac Araña, Matt began testing out Q’s capabilities. Rac was immediately impressed.

“Q is very intuitive,” she says. “The creator of Q really understands what statisticians and data analysts need from reporting software.”

She quickly began using Q for most of their data processing, including generating tables, processing variables, labelling, fixing or gating additional variables, data weighting, and visualizations.

Thanks to Q, Matt and Rac’s team were able to quickly clean up their data and create beautiful presentations for their clients.

Because Cygnal is a political survey research firm, Rac and Matt found Q’s automations particularly invaluable during the last election cycle.

“During the election cycle, we work on lots of projects with similar sets of questions,” she explains. “Q allows us to duplicate these projects easily. And since the variables are similar, we don’t need to do much data processing, we just need to change specifics before we export the tables for reporting.”

Rac says she also appreciated Q’s customer support.

“I emailed them a lot, and they always responded quickly,” she says.

Matt agrees.

“I can’t give enough praise to the Q support team,” he says. “We are huge fans of Q, not only for its capabilities, but also for the level of service that they provide.”

“I can’t give enough praise to the Q support team. We are huge fans of Q, not only for its capabilities, but also for the level of service that they provide.”
Matt Hubbard, VP Data & Analytics, Cygnal

Result

50-75% data processing time saved

Now that they’ve transitioned to using Q, Rac estimates that they save 50-75% of the time they used to spend processing and analyzing data; weighting data is one area in particular where Q has saved them significant amounts of time.

“Before Q, we had to calculate weights manually,” she remembers. “But now that we have Q, it’s easy to create any kind of weight, and it’s also easy to adjust them and see the results immediately.”

Thanks to the time they save, Cygnal was able to increase the amount projects their data analysis team can take on.

Both Matt and Rac are thrilled with the changes Q has allowed Cygnal to make, and Matt doesn’t hesitate to recommend Q to other data intelligence companies.

“We’ve referred a number of peers to them,” he says. “We brag about how much Q has helped us a lot.”