Data collection.

• Position: TechnologyTools - SRI World Group CSR Platform - Brief Article

SRI World Group has brought out a Web-based application that it says is a boon to companies facing reams of questionnaires designed to give institutional investors information about their environmental or social policies as criteria for investment.

The SRI World Group CSR Platform is "exclusively designed to compile, analyze and distribute information across and beyond departments of the corporation," the company says. "The results are lowered cost, higher efficiency, saved time and greater transparency."

Major corporations have been bombarded in the past few years with as many as 30 to 40 annual information requests from different providers, says SRI World Group President Jay Falk. Most companies currently seeking such information are targeting money managers and institutional investors as end users, though some might also sell to brokers or financial planners.

"These surveys arrive in different formats; some are on paper, some are Web-based," Falk said in an interview. "They go to different people at different desks, and they're answered differently. The overlap is substantial. We've heard the term 'survey fatigue'...