We help you to find the right customers for your product.

We use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human Intelligence to recommend software products.

AI because humans can be biased and humans because AI is not yet intelligent enough to automatically recommend products on its own. Hence, we use both humans and AI to recommend software products.

Our AI-driven algorithm uses a combination of sub-algorithms that are made-up of text analysis, vocabulary analysis, machine data and user-behaviour data. These algorithms effectively analyse B2B software products on the web and look at over 236,000 nodes. This, purely data-led intelligence is the foundation of our recommendation engine. Allowing our recommendations to be personalised for each software buyer.

On the human side of things, we speak with software buyers to understand their experience of researching software products. We have surveyed software buyers at events and exhibitions in London and Manchester. We have digitally chatted with different types of software buyers – interns, analysts, admins, super users, operational decision-makers and C-Level decision-makers. We have also spoken with software buyers over the phone who have contacted us for software recommendations.

On the human-side, we also regularly speak with software vendors. Each product that is listed on our platform is listed after we’ve personally viewed their product demo from their product team. This helps us to understand and validate almost every feature of every software product before listing it.

With software vendors, their product demos to us last for about 2 to 3 hours. We typically interact with product managers, pre-sales engineers, sales teams and account managers to fully understand the strengths and the weaknesses of a software product.

Since we do not use reviews and Ads, our recommendation is purely based on data that is collected using AI, software buyer’s requirements and software vendor’s product strengths. The outcome is 73% of software buyers who use Comparesoft end-up communicating with at least one of our recommended software vendors.

There are 106 reasons why we don’t do reviews. But, for the sake of quickness, here’re our top 3 reasons for not doing reviews on B2B software products. (We hope you are not thinking about the 106 reasons)

1. Software buyers do not buy software products based on reviews.

IBM doesn’t have reviews on their website, neither does SAP nor Salesforce. Microsoft, Oracle, PaloAlto Networks…you get it, the biggest software companies don’t do reviews. Yet more and more customers are using their software products. So, clearly reviews don’t convince software users to use a product.

But, what the big companies mentioned above do have, is testimonials. (Just to be clear, Reviews have stars in front of them. Whereas Testimonials have simple and clear statements instead of stars.)

Taking a deeper look at reviews for software products, we found that it is difficult to review a software product. For example; we see ‘ease-of-use’ as a parameter for reviews. But, ‘ease-of-use’ is a very subjective attribute. What’s easy for a developer may not be easy for a salesperson. What’s easy for a small group of users may not be easy for a large group of users.

The other key element that we found when speaking with hundreds of software buyers is the most important thing that they care about is the match between their requirements and the features/capabilities of software products.

The one area where we found reviews could be useful is when the software buying decision is made by one person. If you are looking for an App for a small team or if you are looking to spend less than £500 on a software purchase, then reviews can be useful.

(Just like people don’t buy houses based on reviews, businesses don’t buy software products based on reviews)

2. Reviews of B2B software products are statistically insignificant.

IBM Maximo has more than 100,000 users. Yet, we were only able to find 112 reviews for it. That’s 0.00112 (or 0.112%) of total users of Maximo sharing their reviews. Similarly, we found huge gaps between the users of software products and the number of reviews available for most software products.

Based on this data-led observation, we found reviews of software products are currently statistically insignificant.

In our opinion, at the very least, reviews should represent 40% of the users of a software product. Anything below that simply does not relay the right information about a software product.

3. It is very hard (like pain in the …) to find genuine reviews.
In our opinion, Amazon invented reviews. Everyone else just copied it. On Amazon, you have to buy a product to review it. For a B2B software, you buy the product from a software vendor and post a review somewhere else. That’s mind-boggling, right? Yes, for us too.

Most of the websites that host reviews of software products have not seen proof of purchase from the reviewers.

The second big element is reviews can be faked; people give (and take) money to game the reviews of any product. Even Amazon, TripAdvisor and many other big companies face the issue of fake reviews. Here is an article that you might find useful: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52771913

In the B2B Software World, review websites actually pay anywhere between $5 to $100 for reviews. (It’s just not good to name the websites that pay for reviews, so we will avoid it here.)

If you pay somebody to review a software product, what are the chances of getting a real review?

Based on the above data-led reasons, we have decided not to do reviews.

To give the right confidence to software users, we publish testimonials. We publish testimonials that are verified. Either the testimonial needs to come from a software buyer who has used Comparesoft and has bought software from our recommended vendors. Or the testimonial needs to come from the software vendors (who can prove the sale to us).

Below are the 4 key stages that B2B software buyers typically tend to go through. We would like to emphasise that while the stages are laid out sequentially, B2B software buyers tend to move from one stage to another and not necessarily in a structured manner.

In analysing over 1600 leads and 150+ sales, we have found that there is no one single structure or approach that buyers use. Enterprise businesses who have procurement teams buy differently to medium businesses who tend to involve operational managers. In the case of small businesses, where owners tend to get involved, the focus is on value.

The 4 key stages that most B2B software buyers go through are:

1. Awareness – High level needs explicitly or implicitly identified.

Typical behaviours include:

1. Identification of pain points.

2. Generally not very clear with how to solve their pain points.

3. Typically explore solutions with unclear requirements.

4. Hardly interact with suppliers at this stage.

5. Typically not very clear with budgets. Yet, they may seek to understand costs to build their budget and get an idea of the costs.

6. If the buyer is mature, then the requirements are typically very clear.

7. If the buyer is looking to renew or replace their existing software, then their requirements tend to be very granular and feature based.

2. Consideration – Buyers look to shortlist 3 to 5 software products.

Typical behaviors include:

1. Requirements are much clearer at this stage. There is considerable clarity on high-level requirements. However, details of the requirements can be unstructured and unclear.

2. Explore software products and build requirements, as well as build requirements and then explore software products. (In other words, they can look at product demos to build requirements or build requirements to look at product demos)

3. Explore demos of software products online.

4. Shortlist 3 to 5 software products to engage.

5. Most B2B software buyers opt for 1 Free Trial.

6. Engagement with software vendors happens nearer the end of the consideration stage/early at the intent stage.

7. Buyers will seek quotes/pricing at this stage.

3. Intent – The focus is to select the best product for their needs.

Typical behaviors include:

1. Engagement with selected vendors.

2. Deeper demos with software vendors.

3. Typically more than one person is involved at this stage.

4. Second demos can be done with multiple people. Quite often decision makers are directly or indirectly involved.

5. Pricing is further investigated.

6. Deeper cost-benefit analysis and return on investment scenarios are internally discussed.

7. Post-sale activities like implementation and support are clearly understood by experienced software buyers.

4. Purchase – Decision Makers are directly or indirectly involved.

Typical behaviours include:

1. Mature buyers always tend to do reference checks.

2. Amateur buyers typically don’t do reference checks.

3. Final decision makers may get involved during negotiations.

4. Questions surrounding implementation and go-live are more deeper.

New customers do not pay us anything until our leads add value to their sales pipeline.

Furthermore, we do not bill you until our leads start to deliver.

Our service starts from £199 per month.