SOCHA/GELBMANN CORRECTIONS

George Socha and Thomas Gelbmann have issued corrections to their 2007 Socha/Gelbmann EDD Survey (August LTN). Here's the 411:

Each year, in compiling the results of our survey, we take great care to double check our work, both before and after publication.

This year, we discovered two errors in the course of a follow-up review after the initial publication. A series of interlinked PivotTables were not properly refreshed; and we had not incorporated completed data from three providers.

We have corrected those errors and as a result are issuing revised software and services provider rankings.
The revised overview information is at www.sochaconsulting.com/ 2007survey.htm and the details are at www.sochaconsulting.com/ 2007surveyresults.php. 

OUR METHODOLOGY

This year we started with data from or about 115 provider and consumer organizations. For each organization, we created a spreadsheet file containing between 35 and 38 worksheets, each worksheet representing a top-level category information, such as Capacity, Experience/Reputation, Revenue, etc.  From these spreadsheets, we created 93 consolidated spreadsheets. These files are organized by topic, such as software usage, electronic discovery work volume, geographic coverage, project sizes and the like. We use these spreadsheets for the hundreds of  analyses we perform to examine areas such as the differing views held by consumers and providers.

To perform the analyses, we use a variety of Excel tools such as filters (ways of working with subsets of data); analytic functions such as IF, vlookup , average, max and countif; and PivotTables reports (interactive reports that combine and compare large amounts of data).

We also use the information in the consolidated spreadsheets to rank providers. We use two ranking models, one for services providers and the other for software providers. Each ranking model consists of four levels of factors. The top level factors for services providers, for example, are experience/reputation, capacity, types of services, software usage, consumer ranking — law firms, consumer ranking — corporations, and revenue. We assign a weight to each factor, 10% for experience/reputation, for example. The weights for the factors at each level add up to 100%.  In all, we evaluate about 300 factors.

For each factor, we develop a rating scale. We base the rating scale on information we have gathered in connection with that factor. For many of the factors we use a range of scales, choosing the best fit for each factor — such as a relatively granular scale of 1-7 to an elementary 0-1 scale.

We multiply the weightings by the ratings to arrive a numeric scores for providers.  The higher the score for a provider, the higher the provider’s ranking.

NEW RANKINGS

As a result of the revised data, here are the new rankings: (alphabetical order, changes in bold)

Overall Service Providers:
6-11: Electronic Evidence Discovery Inc.; Encore Legal Solutions; Ernst & Young; Fios Inc.; KPMG; Renew Data Corp.  (Third group is now 12-20).


Overall Software Providers:
6-11: Cataphora Inc.; Clearwell Systems Inc.; DocuLex; Isys Search Software; Oracle Corp. Zantaz Inc.

Top Service Providers:
Processing: Fios Inc. moves up to Top 6 list. (Second group is now 7-10.)

Top Software Providers:
Identification and processing categories: Add DocuLex and LexisNexis.

Review, Analysis, Preservation, Collection and Presentiation categories: Add LexisNexis.

Production: Add DocuLex.


-- George Socha Jr.
-- Thomas Gelbmann
   St. Paul, Minn.