Australian software developer QSR International is in Delhi, India this week to meet with Dell CEO Michael Dell, and explore potential partnerships to market its ground-breaking NVivo software in the region.
QSR International was awarded the 2009 Dell Small Business Excellence Award in Australia in recognition of its ability to use technology to better serve its global customers. CEO John Owen is in Delhi with other Asia Pacific winners of the global Small Business Excellence Awards program to participate in the Day at Dell event. The program includes presentations by world leading technology experts from Dell, Google and Microsoft, as well as consulting time with Michael Dell.
QSR International won three other awards in 2009 and plans are now underway to release a powerful new version of its NVivo software, cementing the company’s position as the world’s leading qualitative data analysis software developer. While in Delhi, Mr Owen will also meet with Australian Trade Commission to discuss potential Indian partners ahead of the new release.
“2009 was a fantastic year for our business, but 2010 will see us forge ahead with new developments in the data analysis software space,” he said.
“We’re looking forward to discussing those plans with Michael Dell and sharing ideas with the other Dell award winners from the Asia Pacific region.”
QSR’s NVivo 8 software allows researchers and decision makers to import and analyse video, audio, images and text side-by-side in ways that aren’t possible manually. Its powerful analysis tools help users to interrogate their data - testing out theories, identifying trends and cross-examining information.
NVivo is used in more than 150 countries on projects addressing some of the world s most pressing issues, including poverty in Africa, defence-related projects in America, and climate change in Australia. Many of the world s most respected research organisations are QSR clients, including Yale University, Columbia University, the Children s Hospital Boston, and the Chronic Poverty Research Centre.
Recently, NVivo was used by researchers in New Delhi to analyse the findings of a three-year study into India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme. As part of the study, interviews were conducted with large numbers of village leaders, politicians and stakeholders in India to evaluate the success of the program. Project leader Dr. Shylashri Shankar used NVivo to expedite the analysis and gain greater insights.
“Before discovering NVivo, I coded and analysed everything manually. I would have the handwritten notes typed up and then refer to these versions. Because it was such a big task I would prepare each village study separately. But it’s much harder when you do that, because I was working across five states, 40 villages, and 1000 interviews. I’m finding NVivo 8 very useful,” she said.
In October 2010, QSR International will launch NVivo 9, its next generation software. NVivo 9 will contain a range of powerful new features including the ability to work with material stored in databases such as online survey results. In a first for QSR, team members will also be able to work in the same project at the same time.
Mr Owen and his senior executives will join the Dell winners from Japan, China and India at the Day at Dell on 22 and 23 March 2010.
“The chance to meet Mr Dell and swap best practices with one of the world’s leading entrepreneurs will be a personal honour as well as a significant opportunity for QSR,” says Mr Owen.
“It also provides us with an opportunity to fly the flag for Australian technology companies overseas.”
About NVivo
Watch the NVivo 8 video on QSR International s homepage at www.qsrinternational.com