In today’s hyper-competitive landscape, it’s not enough for a business to simply sustain or survive. It needs to thrive. This is one of the core principles on which Aspire was founded.
As a company, they pride themselves on taking a data-driven, collaborative approach to business consulting and development.
Discover how Aspire uses Keatext to create a powerful competitive advantage, boosting their efficiency by nearly 600% while providing the company a scalable solution that allows them to take on more projects.
Problem: Sentiment Analysis Slowdown
Aspire was originally established strictly as a training and development firm, but has since evolved to offer a diverse range of services, including leadership coaching and strategic planning.
As part of their typical client process, Aspire carries out extensive organizational research. Some of the data they collect, such as key performance metrics, is entirely quantitative and thus easily analyzed and digested. However, the bulk of their work involves qualitative data gathered from multiple stakeholders and perspectives.
“For us, the most important factor in working with any vendor is the strength of the partnership. We didn’t just want software that was a match for Aspire on paper, we wanted a company that would actively engage with us from onboarding through to post-deployment.” – Chris McNiven, Founder & Opportunity Architect
Originally, the team at Aspire managed this research entirely by hand, largely through the use of spreadsheets. As one might expect, this created considerable bottlenecks, particularly early in the client relationship. Worse, sifting through these massive datasets bogged down the company’s consultants with busywork.
As part of their ongoing initiative to evolve and improve how they manage qualitative data, Aspire set out in search of a solution that they could use to reduce workloads for their consultants. They ultimately opted for a blend of automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence — unfortunately, here was where they encountered another considerable problem.
Although the company evaluated several different vendors, none of them were up to standard.
“I identified a number of ‘freemium’ tools that claimed to offer text and sentiment analysis,” explains Aspire Founder & Opportunity Architect Chris McNiven. “Unfortunately, most of the metrics they put out told me very little. They were mostly focused on measuring word frequency.”
Aspire needed a solution that would allow them to take a deeper dive into text and sentiment analysis, going beyond simple word clouds. Such a platform also needed to be easy to use, without much of a learning curve. Most importantly, however, the software needed to be supported by a vendor as invested in Aspire’s success as Aspire is in their own clients.
“For us, the most important factor in working with any vendor is the strength of the partnership,” says McNiven. “The quality of the team, how dedicated that team is to its clients, and how the business handles personnel transitions. We didn’t just want software that was a match for Aspire on paper, we wanted a company that would actively engage with us from onboarding through to post-deployment.”
Aspire found this in Keatext.
Solution: Scalable Qualitative Data Analysis
Aspire partnered with Keatext to deploy our powerful, scalable AI-based text and qualitative data analysis solution to research and evaluate their clients on a case-by-case basis. The platform’s sentiment scoring functionality has proved particularly useful for Aspire, boosting the company’s efficiency by nearly 600%.
The firm has also made extensive use of heatmap visualization, while positive/negative ratios offer another excellent means of categorization. Other key functionality offered by Keatext includes:
“Keatext is a huge time saver for us. It’s made customer reporting considerably easier, as it gives us a ton of different options in terms of how we can present insights to our customers, and lets us do data collection in a deeper, more personalized, more tailored way.” – Chris McNiven, Founder & Opportunity Architect
- Multichannel Analysis: Aspire can evaluate multiple channels and stakeholders simultaneously, providing it with a complete picture of a customer’s organization.
- Deep Intent & Sentiment Monitoring: Comprehensive insights into what both customers and employees say and feel about a client’s brand allows for more effective identification of both bottlenecks and opportunities.
- Simplified Onboarding: Consultants can quickly start using Keatext, ensuring they aren’t losing out on client interactions while training.
- Advanced Reporting: Extensive visualization and granular reporting provides a wealth of options for Aspire when it comes time to provide data to clients.
- Feedback Automation: Data is collected, evaluated, and orchestrated automatically through a unified solution.
- Advanced Data Filtering: Through specialized filters, Aspire can organize data based on criteria such as department, region, marketplace, and more.
Outcome: More Deals, New Competitive Advantage
Keatext has significantly improved the efficiency of Aspire’s client research process, something which McNiven says ultimately translates to a considerable competitive advantage. McNiven believes Keatext has allowed the company to close 60% more deals due to the powerful insights the platform provides.
“Compared to tackling things manually, Keatext is a huge time saver for us,” says McNiven. “It really allows us to pull out these high-level themes, then go back and drill down into individual data points. It’s also made customer reporting considerably easier, as it gives us a ton of different options in terms of how we can present insights to our customers, and lets us do data collection in a deeper, more personalized, more tailored way.”
[Further reading: Top 5 insights you can learn from sentiment analysis]
Keatext has already been identified as a competitive differentiator by several of Aspire’s clients. According to McNiven, they love that Aspire uses the solution, and are intrigued by the depth of analysis it provides. The platform has also integrated seamlessly with Aspire’s data collection process, which primarily leverages Microsoft Forms. McNiven believes Keatext has resulted in a 600% increase in process efficiency.
“Through Keatext, employee productivity at Aspire has gone up,” McNiven concludes. “Profitability has gone up, and deal flow has increased. And it’s been super easy to deploy and use, especially with how Keatext’s technical team has partnered with us throughout the entire process.”
Aspire is currently exploring how Keatext could be used by their clients to measure their own customer satisfaction and customer engagement initiatives.
