It's frustrating when you know your data is available but isn't quite within your reach. To make it easier for you to access and manipulate your data in DSS WorkBench^TM CPM is starting a series, titled JumpStart, a collection of detailed "how-to" documents on the most commonly used portion of the software suite. CPM's DSS WorkBench^TM is an information access and delivery tool.

The series, designed for first-time or infrequent users, will offer exact, step-by-step instructions, including examples of questions a particular action can answer. The documents will be available for CPM customers via the DSS WorkBench^TM site at www.dssworkbench.com. The first in the series is about demographic profile reports.

For example, a health care marketing or planning professional might want to look at the demographics of a target group such as heart patients. Specifically, the user might want to know the age/gender distribution of these individuals in the market. Another user might want an income distribution of potential hip and knee replacement patients.

Users can answer all of these questions on demographic profiling with the Demographic Profile Report, available in the DSS WorkBench^TM Standard Reports application. The report will compute percentages of basic demographic information about a specified population - age and gender breakdowns, household income, marital status, education, occupation, religion, home ownership and ethnicity data. The only requirement is that the user already has a filter defining the group to be profiled. The filter can be of any type--individual, household, or encounter.

Jo Ann Diffenderfer, planning and community relations supervisor at Hannibal Regional Hospital, has used DSS WorkBench^TM for several years, and has found past training to be very beneficial. She uses the software weekly and anticipates that she soon will use it daily to better understand Hannibal's health care consumers.

Diffenderfer says she uses the standard reports and mailing list generator features the most frequently. She uses the demographic profile reports "as a reflective model of successes for the past and a predictive model for the future." Diffenderfer also uses mailing list generator to send mailings, segregate control groups and track campaign ROI.

The JumpStart series complements CPM's two-day in-house and half day virtual DSS WorkBench^TM training offered regularly to help users become more self-sufficient using the application and specific features.

Diffenderfer believes this series further illustrates CPM's continuing commitment to technical and customer support. For more information contact CPM at 1-800-332-2631, ext. 221 or marketing@cpm.com.