Doakio Software Comparison Methodology
The Need for Software Research
Software has fully proliferated the global marketplace. There is a huge amount of overlap and duplication in the products, platforms and tools available in almost every category of software. This presents a real challenge for everyone who wants to be more efficient when working on a computer: from individual professionals and hobbyists to large businesses and enterprises. How can you tell which platform is the right one for your needs?
There is a very real need for a central repository of information on any given software category to capture both the similarities found across software solutions, and the unique differentiators that make each solution stand out. Vendors in these spaces will simply never engage in the kind of hyper-objective, comprehensive analysis that buyers need to fully understand all offerings because the vendors would inadvertently end up referring a huge number of people to their competitors.
The Solution to Software Procurement
That’s where Doakio comes in. We carefully select software categories and rigorously collect and process all that juicy software data. We then present our findings in a way that makes it easy as possible to come to a rational conclusion for software procurement. Here are just some of the methodologies that we follow for each publication:
Exhaustive Research
We always want to get the absolute widest range of options in each category. We list literally everything we could find through an exhaustive search, using multiple search engines. If the list gets too large (usually more than ~100 tools) we usually will narrow our research principles to a smaller, well-defined sub-category.
Company’s Business Details
We gather a range of various data points to gauge the business standing for each software vendor including domain authority, age of the software, thought leadership contributions, free trial or demo accessibility, video summaries, and so forth.
All Advertised Software Features
All relevant, advertised features found in our comparative research are included in the final publication. We cut out the esoteric or unimportant features when a software solution is overly broad to ensure we are comparing apples to apples for the category under consideration. This feature summarization can be very important not only for buyers, but also for the vendors who need to consider their own position in the marketplace.
Direct Links to Sources
Our high-quality links give you easy access to all relevant sources of information (main URL links, pricing pages, feature pages, blog links, image links, video links). We put forth effort to ensure our links are in context and easy to understand. No need to jump through any hoops to dig deeper into any points of interest.
Images & Video
Representative images and video links are gathered into one location for every tool in the category making it incredibly easy to see and hear a quick summary, and often see the software in action, as you are considering your options.
Internal Evidence Archive for Claims
All assertive claims are backed up by our own internal proprietary evidence archiving process. We welcome corrections or new information, and we are poised to quickly review the prior evidence gathered to see how the new information does, or does not, change our reporting on that particular data point.
Responsive & Evergreen
Baring intermittent downtimes for servicing, our reports are always live, dynamic, and subject to revision or updates. These reports grow better with time, and will never become obsolete unless an entire category is disrupted out of the marketplace altogether. We have our own proprietary publishing framework that allows us to very quickly and easily republish our research articles whenever any information changes.
Proprietary Comparative Analyses
Software Similarity
What other tools in this category are most similar to tool X in terms of features? Now you know with our special algorithm that looks at all advertised features and performs a comparative analysis automatically.Feature Popularity
Which features does this tool have that are the most popular? We show you each one, in order, for every item in our software research.Feature Rarity
Which features does this tool have that are the least popular? Another important question to ask, that can uncover some unique capabilities. We answer this question as well, in our research.
Subjective Scoring Layer
Not all business and feature attributes carry the same importance in every organization. We recognize this fact, and have a customizable bias layer for both business and feature dimensions. For our public reporting, we apply our own subjective scoring, but we encourage organizations to reach out to us for consultation in applying their own bespoke weights to the data points we’ve already collected.
Aggregated Dimensions
Summary business and feature scores are calculated for every tool since those are the two most common groupings used in considering software vendor suitability. Depending on the buyer, one of those two dimensions may be of little to no importance, and our scatter plots allow for easy identification of the best performers in either dimension, or a combination of both dimensions.
Rank Ordering of All Software
Rank ordering of all tools for certain key attributes are provided, usually: Domain Authority, Age of Platform, Feature Score, Business Score, and Feature Count. This let’s buyers see other ranking methods beyond what is seen in the scatter plots.
Interactive Scatter Plot
Our scatter plots show relative positioning of every tool in both business and feature dimensions. They are interactive, allowing you to hover to see the specific scores clicking on any data point will show the home URL along with the video URL for that software tool.
Interactive Filters
Our scatter plots also have many relevant filters to help you select must-have features to further narrow down your selection process. You can combine as many filters as you need, and we are open to adding more filters if you find that they are necessary for your software considerations. Just add a comment on the publication itself, or contact us directly with your suggestions.
Spinoff Articles
Spinoff articles make it much easier to digest data for important filter categories. Due to the nature of how search engines work, these concise articles are often more accessible to a specific audience. The well thought-out article layout is very reader friendly and contains helpful links within each tool listed, for further research. Our goal is to be consistent in providing a well-balanced publication.
Easy On Page Linking
On-page anchor links abound, so it is easy for you to share and store references to, the parts of our research that matter the most to you. A high percentage of businesses rank ease of use as a high priority and that is what our links provide. End users wanting to complete their “due diligence” research will enjoy our professional on-page linking.
Open Comments for Community Feedback
Fully moderated comments are open to community involvement and feedback. We want to hear from you, and we want you to be able to engage with other members of the software procurement community in a safe, productive and professional manner. We are happy to provide this kind of social environment for the purposes of finding the best software for your needs.
Research Principles
We openly publish our research principles for every research project we undertake. There are no hidden agendas or confusing categories. The research principles are found in the opening paragraphs of the research itself for absolute clarity.
Detailed Feature Descriptions
We draft our own full descriptions of every feature that we captured across all tools along with a small representative icon. This gives you a common basis for understanding how different key features typically behave across all the software solutions in a publication. Most of the time software vendors work very hard to communicate their features in a way that makes them seem totally unique. But in any comparative analysis it is critical to also understand the similarities. Our feature descriptions make this possible.
Integrations
We list all advertised integrations for any research projects where this information is relevant. Not all software solutions, tools or platforms have integrations with other systems. But when they do appear in the research, we present them, as well, as another important point of consideration for buyers.
Free from Fake Ratings
With the rise of automatic text generation algorithms, fake reviews are an ever-increasing problem. Even before GPT-2 and GPT-3 made fake text trivial, it was very easy for companies to over-incentivize customers into leaving glowing reviews (or negative reviews for competitors). Our research avoids these pitfalls, and our results are not subject to subjective reviews or paid, five-star ratings.
Paid Engagement Options for Software Procurement
We can take the underlying research even further with a paid consulting engagement to ensure the results align closely with any organization's goals. We take Software Procurement to the Nth degree. Contact us to learn more.
Transparent Disclosures
Our business model includes ad revenue, link affiliate programs, and consultation fees. All of these relationships are publicly disclosed to ensure readers have complete insight into how our results are obtained and what pressures could potentially affect our analysis. Affiliated software vendors have no prioritization whatsoever in any of our meaningful rankings, feature scores, business scores, spinoff articles or scatter plots. But affiliates do appear first on page, in order of when we became affiliated with them. Without affiliate status, tools are listed in random order on page.
Reports are Free
All our public reports are free, and cover more attributes, more detail and more tools than even Forrester Wave Reports. Our reports are published in web format on our blog.
Mobile Friendly Presentation
We worked very hard to create a mobile-friendly method of presenting this information to ensure ease of use for all visitors, especially on mobile devices. We have huge data sets that presented special challenges when trying to show the impact of that data on very small screens. Spreadsheets don’t play well on mobile devices, sadly.
Video Summaries
Video summaries of each research project are published on YouTube to allow for even easier digestion of the salient points found in the research. You can engage with us there, subscribe, and share our channel to your colleagues who are almost certainly going to need to find the right software tool for the job at some point in the future.