VARBusiness 500 Methodology

Harte-Hanks conducted initial telephone interviews in April. Concurrently, the firm e-mailed a survey site link to last year's VARBusiness 500 companies, plus more than 10,000 other prospects, including candidates from VARBusiness' circulation file. VARBusiness publicized the Web survey on its home page; several leading technology vendors posted links to the survey on their partner sites.

All survey responses were analyzed for each company's ability to meet this year's VARBusiness 500 rankings. Missing data was obtained in a follow-up telephone interview or via the Internet. For public companies, research included going through all available financial statements and SEC documents to identify the appropriate revenue. For private firms, research included Internet searches, interviews, confirmation letters and e-mail from company executives.

Finalists were ranked according to their fiscal year 2002 revenue, calculated by factoring out non-solution-provider and non-computer-related revenue. Fifty-one percent of the interviews were Web surveys. Thirty percent were collected by phone, and 19 percent were Internet-researched.

Bonnie Markowitz is editorial research director and Marilyn O'Hara is associate research director at VARBusiness.