Factworks has been able to cut the turnaround time on their open-ended analyses in half.

Pia Helen Kampf, Research Consultant @ Factworks

Factworks is a boutique market research agency, that helps the world’s top forward-looking tech and finance companies answer their strategic questions. With offices in Berlin and Silicon Valley, they are trusted with the most intricate product, pricing and loyalty questions by brands like Facebook, Visa or eBay.

Challenge

Quantitative research is Factworks’ strong suit: They have sensed the possibilities that advanced analytics and automation in the field of open-ended feedback can provide early on and won innovation awards for research on unstructured text data. With innovation as one of their core values, Factworks is always on the lookout for smart and efficient solutions to make the researcher’s life easier.

"Since 2002 Factworks has grown from a three-person garage startup to a thriving company with over 60 research experts who love crunching numbers. All research at Factworks is precisely tailored to their client’s needs, ensuring excellence throughout the entire process."

Solution

Since mid 2018, Factworks employs Caplena as their main verbatim coding solution – making them one of our oldest customers 👵😊. Since then, they have continuously increased the usage scope of Caplena.

Caplena: Pia, which other software did you consider before choosing Caplena?

Pia (Factworks): We looked at both, long-term established NLP solutions that have been widely used in the space as well as entrance solutions with more modern approaches. We found that they either lacked user friendliness/collaboration features or didn’t have sufficient analysis capabilities. Most of the tools lacked in the ability to match responses with the required accuracy required to match manual coding. Caplena showed high responsiveness on change requests and offers a competitive pricing.

Caplena: What is your favorite feature on Caplena?

Pia (Factworks): There are three major game-changers for us:

1. How the AI is constantly improving with any new data reducing the time to finalize coding, especially for tracking projects where the speed and accuracy of the coding process keeps increasing without additional effort on our end.

2. Collaboration and access management: We appreciate that project members have one point of truth and can see or edit the latest version allowing for seamless collaboration (according to their permissions).

3. Flexibility in adjusting and optimizing code frames: It is easy to make changes and refine changes quickly.

Industry Event at the University of Pforzheim

Selina (2nd from right) and Maurice (2nd from left) had the pleasure of both speaking at an Industry Event at the University of Pforzheim in 2019

Results

Through Caplena, Factworks has been able to significantly reduce the turnaround time on their open-ended analyses by cutting it in half. This enables Factworks to deliver insights faster which is increasingly important with their fast-paced technology clients. At the same time, they would have a much higher spend on verbatim coding if employing external manual coding agencies for the job instead of using Caplena.

Caplena: Do you have any recommendations for other teams looking to setup an automated feedback analysis pipeline?

Pia (Factworks):

1. Start small, scale quickly - test on single projects, then continuously expand

2. Test and learn – run manual coding in parallel to fully understand how the AI works and where potential strengths and weaknesses are and adjust were needed

3. Push the limits – collaborate/engage in conversations with your software provider to improve capabilities with the tool and optimize your workflow, e.g., integrate R workflows with Caplena via their API

4. Shift from spending time on coding to spending time on insights generation and use the capabilities of the tool to better explore the data and extract relevant insights.

We chose Caplena as our coding tool after carefully comparing alternatives back in 2018. It is great to witness the development of the platform over the past 3 years - making us happier customers with each update. Maurice and Pascal provide amazing support for their product. They are responsive and listen to our needs, making this partnership very valuable for us.