How a SaaS Company Used Data Scraping to Analyze Competitor Features and Improve Product Strategy?
This case study details how 3i Data Scraping helped an enterprise SaaS company scale its business further by analyzing competitor features and improving its product strategy. The client reached out to us for real-time data needs about competitor solutions’ features and USPs. They wanted to analyze the competitor SaaS solutions to improve their own product strategy. We helped them find the competitive edge by providing them with the intelligence they needed by extracting data from all their major competitors’ SaaS products. Our client identified the gaps in features and developed better SaaS products that have extremely high adoption rates.
About Client
Our client is an enterprise SaaS company providing SaaS products such as inventory management software, CRM software, POS software, and project management software. They have clients across the USA, Europe, and Australia. The client wanted to access real-time data on competitor SaaS products (their features, modules, & integrations) to identify product feature gaps, improve features in existing products, and reduce customer churn due to missing features.
Client Requirement
While the company had achieved steady growth in the highly competitive SaaS market, it faced increasing competition from both new entrants in the market, who always came up with new features. Also, changing user preferences leads to demand for feature enhancements in existing SaaS products. Overall, the client wanted to know what features are currently making waves in particular SaaS products and how their product features differ compared to competitors.
Challenges
The project faced several significant challenges during implementation:
Solution
To address these challenges and provide our client with the required data, we implemented a comprehensive data scraping solution:
Custom Web Scraping Framework
We developed custom scrapers for the SaaS product feature data extraction from their top competitor products and solutions. Our scrapers were designed to handle dynamic JavaScript loading and different web/mobile app architectures and frameworks.
Multi-Source Data Integration
The scrapers compiled information from various competitor SaaS platforms, applications, and web apps, and other sources like software documentation, review pages, and user forums.
Automated Monitoring System
We automated our scrapers to track competitor features in an ongoing way. We implemented a properly scheduled scraping activity.
Data Standardization Process
We created a process where all data scraped from SaaS products was categorized into a structured format like CSV, JSON, or Excel.
Legal Compliance Measures
Ensured all data collection followed ethical scraping practices and respected websites’ terms of service.
Impact
The implementation of our data scraping solution delivered significant business benefits. The client identified multiple critical features missing from their product that competitors offered. This eliminated the feature gaps they had with their competitors. With their SaaS products being the most feature-rich with the newest modules and add-ons, our client became the most preferred SaaS provider in multiple SaaS product categories. By addressing feature gaps identified through competitive analysis, the client reduced customer churn by 18% within six months.
