Short history of PP

Proximity Panels was founded by iVOX, a local research facilitator in Belgium, the heart of Europe. iVOX is closely related to Indigov, a spin-off of the University of Leuven that specializes in 360° communication research for the public sector.

iVOX is the nr. 1 in opinion polling and data collection in Belgium since 2005. You can find more information on iVOX on its website.

Like many other local online players, iVOX receives many requests for international data collection projects. In order to supply its national and international clients with a solid, reliable solution iVOX started the idea to join forces with other local online data collection companies that consider quality to be a crucial necessity.

As from March 2008, iVOX started the exploration for the frame work of a an international online data collection integrator:

• Be more than just a another network: it should offer a clear one-stop shopping experience
• It should focus on quality primarily and should use the positive effects of the economies of scale that come along with this network to keep pricing levels highly competitive
• It should be transparent: it needs to indicate clearly where panel members come from, who the sub-contracting parties are, it should give clients control over the entire data collection process: from survey optimization up to being able to monitor the field whenever they want to

After that carefully selected possible partners were contacted, many NDA’s were signed, many interesting discussions took place, many decisions were taken to align the different companies’ cultures & to align the product offer as to make sure that standardized offers could be offered. Standardisation included the alignment of following elements:

• the number of variable categories to represent the national population
  the possibility to control the fieldwork real-time based
• the view on panel & sample quality

At June 30th, 2008 Proximity Panels’ company-members agreed to explore and fine-tune the initiative together and to take next steps for further alignment with clients.

In September 2008, at the Esomar’s Annual Conference, Proximity Panels’ company-members signed a commercial agreement in order to get operational & a letter of Intent (LOI) that iVOX would be the key-player, the main driving force in search for new parties, that iVOX would continue this initiative by suggesting the next steps that have to be taken.

On December 15th 2008, 15 international suppliers of online access panels from around the world participated in a dedicated seminar in order to set-up & expand the Proximity Panels initiative.

From January to July 2009, several international projects were successfully managed via Proximity Panels. This piloting period was used intensively to fine-tune process management, optimise delivery, to get clear insights into client’s needs on this matter.

In July 2009 the website www.proximitypanels.com was conceptualized and in October 2009, Proximity Panels was launched officially.

Since the beginning of 2010 Proximity Panels is bidding on international projects, running international projects and is establishing itself as a quality brand in the world of online data collection.

Every day the networks grows more and more ... for the latest update on panel sizes and countries that are being coverd click on the XXX section.