2. ERI vs. Competitors

QUESTION: How does your data compare with other firms who provide cost-of-living or wage and salary data?

ERI's research analysts know of no other single source that offers both wage and salary information and cost-of-living information.

For cost-of-living data, due to the continued use of data collection techniques of the 1940s, our competitors have to charge more for one report than ERI charges for an annual subscription to the Relocation Assessor® software and databases. One traveling research team in one city for one week requires about $5,000 in expenses. This multiplied by 10,000 cities amounts to $500 million in annual costs. ERI collects cost-of-living data more efficiently and inexpensively and passes those savings on to subscribers.

For salary and wage data, you could purchase individual survey sources and conduct an in-house analysis of those sources, or you could purchase compiled wage data from a third-party supplier via a hardcopy report or Internet download. However, ERI offers advantages over both of these options.

Purchasing one of our competitors' surveys is almost always more expensive; one survey can cost as much as an annual subscription to an Assessor Series® application that allows for an unlimited number of analyses. Our competitors' individual surveys profile only a fraction of the data available for any given position or area, and they report neither the large number of job titles included in ERI's databases nor adjustments for the number of industries and areas available to Assessor Series subscribers.

Another source of salary and wage data is to purchase compiled wage data reports from a third party. Quite often these third-party suppliers of wage data reports require an annual or multi-year contract. ERI's Assessors Series offers the advantages of more wage data and more features, at a fraction of the cost. (Please see "How do you keep your costs so low?" for related information.)

What distinguishes ERI from its competitors is not only the lower cost of our products, but the approach ERI takes to produce and present our data. Like ERI, other companies may utilize market pricing and statistical analysis. The reliability of ERI's data has been established through peer review and further confirmed by its acceptance in legal proceedings. Few other competitors can make this claim. If you wish to check the reliability of a third-party supplier of wage data, ask whether the data being used can be used in a court of law or legal documents (thus meeting Daubert Challenge standards). If courts won't trust it, why should your management?

As a research firm (engaged in research, not marketing/sales), ERI has been collecting and analyzing data from thousands of salary surveys for 20 years. Most of the third-party suppliers on the Internet have only been in business for a few years.

ERI senior research staff members have doctorate degrees, have served in compensation management positions for major US corporations and/or been professors at major universities, and have been published extensively in peer-reviewed professional journals (not merely in marketing promotional pieces) on the subject of compensation. (Click here for biographies of ERI senior staff members.)

ERI's approach to evaluating survey data for validity as well as the analyses we use to compile data also differ from our competitors. ERI utilizes a completely different set of position titles, position descriptions, geographic areas, industries and even types of company/organization size when compared to other companies. The detailed way in which we report data varies greatly from our competitors.

ERI's Assessors Series offer many advantages when compared to third-party compilers of wage data.

•	ERI provides names of survey sources, standard errors and survey population information.

•	ERI provides job code information for each position as well as job code/industry crosswalks.

•	ERI provides information for more than 5,000 position titles in more than 7,500 geographic areas, including the U.S., Canada, the UK and several members of the European Union. One Internet-based firm that ERI knows of only provides data for 1,400 jobs in 185 (+34) metropolitan areas.

•	ERI provides survey description briefs (one-paragraph summaries) and detailed position descriptions based on the format of the original DOT.

•	ERI recognizes the greater complexities involved in determining executive compensation vs. non-executive compensation, and provides the added benefit of quickly downloading full proxies and 10-K's for comparable companies (for greater defensibility and illustration of identifiable practices).

ERI has found that the complex coding, job matching and user interface required for the Assessor Series applications far exceed the capabilities currently allowed by the Web. Our analyses involve 100,000's of lines of code and have been found to be far more powerful and accurate than what is provided by other companies. It is our understanding that the products of Internet-based firms are all entirely Web based because they are created with simple linear equations or percentage increases/decreases and use broad simplified descriptions.