What's new in research? Online surveys.

• Position: Financial Executives Research Foundation

Over the past year, Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) has invited FEI members to participate in a number of online surveys. FERF incoming Chair Robert R. (Bob) Walker says these polls can function as a sort of virtual networking.

"Surveys provide another opportunity for networking, based on the commonality of our members, who have highly relevant demographics as senior financial executives." (See "Trustee Spotlight" on page 2.)

Bill Overell, vice chair of FEI's Committee on Finance & Information Technology (CFIT), and president of Overell Solutions, adds: "FEI members can benefit themselves and their companies by responding to these surveys, which provide key reference points that can assist them in priority setting and decision making."

With a comprehensive set of survey responses, he says, "it is possible to provide deeper analysis, making the survey results even more valuable."

FERF has found the resulting reports from the surveys have been popular. For example, since July 2008, FERF's Financial Executive Compensation Surveys have had the most number of pdf downloads--436, for 2009, and 332, for 2008,--and PayCheck, FERF's interactive online benchmarking tool, has had the most number of unique views (4,102) of any of FERF's products or services. (PayCheck can be found under "Products & Services" at www.ferf.org.)

PayCheck includes the 990 qualifying responses to FERF's 2009 Financial Executive Compensation Survey. This interactive benchmarking tool features a series of filters that can be highlighted to narrow the total survey responses by title, industry, company type, location and size by either revenue or number of employees. Using these filters to eliminate unwanted responses, the tool provides comparable base salaries, percentage salary increases, bonuses and long-term incentives.

Other popular publications include FERF's annual audit fee surveys. New this year is AuditFeeCheck (also found under "Products & Services" at www.ferf.org.), an online benchmarking tool that includes the 365 responses to FERF's 2009 Audit Fee Survey.

This benchmarking tool uses a series of filters that can be highlighted to narrow the total responses by size, filing status, industry and auditor. Using these filters, responses can be narrowed to provide relevant and comparable data on total audit fees, the percentage change from last year, billable hours, blended rates per hour, statutory audit fees and expectations for the rate for next...