Trusted competitive analysis expertise
Discover how a single engagement for a Big Five technology client grew into a multiyear accessibility competitive analysis partnership — and why iSoftStone developed a reputation as a trusted and go-to vendor.
The client is a household-name global company renowned for its innovative solutions and services. You’ll know its productivity software and may even be using its browser to read this article. To date, iSoftStone’s team has delivered more than 20 in-depth competitive analysis reports across our client’s suite of software, cloud computing, and hardware products.
It was word of mouth. Other product teams started hearing about how useful the competitive analyses were, and they started saying, ‘Oh! We want to do this too.’
Jenia Walker
Director, Global Accessibility Delivery | iSoftStone
Why accessibility competitive analysis?
Competitive analysis is used across industries in product development and marketing to inform strategy, mitigate legal risks, and make choices that benefit customers.
From software and hardware technology products to retail website features like search, carts, and customer service scenarios, a competitive analysis offers a picture for an enterprise-level business of its true position in the market. Whether the focus of the analysis is explicitly on accessibility or another facet, a best-in-class report highlights what the company is already doing well and informs strategic conversations about how to do more for customers.
In short, accessibility competitive analysis isn’t only about identifying gaps. It’s about maintaining your edge too.
It was this unique blend of advantages that motivated our client to engage us.
Identifying new opportunities to delight users
We initially worked with a principal program manager on our client’s legal team. As someone who uses a screen reader, she was passionate about finding new ways to support product teams. Her aim wasn’t just to meet the company’s accessibility compliance obligations, but to uncover opportunities to surprise and delight every user.
To achieve those goals, she required any insights from the analysis to be thorough, specific, and — above all else — actionable. iSoftStone was ready to help.
In our approach to competitive analysis, we offer our clients the advantages of a fixed-cost model combined with a service tailored to their needs.
First, iSoftStone partners with a client to analyze the landscape and identify three to five top competitors. Then a dedicated team performs an extensive and unbiased study, drilling right down into specifics. For example, the keyboard interaction on a single component. Our final deliverable is typically a report that runs to 60 pages or more of robust, richly detailed insights.
Articulating issues, driving improvement decisions
Our Big Five client’s product portfolio is so varied that we begin every new analysis with them by listening to the needs of the individual product team and building the scope accordingly. Says Jenia Walker, director of global accessibility delivery at iSoftStone, “We tailor our process to each product and the stakeholders’ goals and objectives. There’s always something unique to a product and every stakeholder needs to see something a little bit different.”
Take, for example, our client’s mixed reality solution. It focuses on 3D immersive spaces that allow remote coworkers to interact. Consequently, accessibility tools for users with visual disabilities are limited. iSoftStone’s experts instead helped the product team focus on optimizing mixed reality for users who are hard of hearing or those with mobility issues.
Conversely, our client’s business intelligence and analytics team discovered more ways to serve users who are color-blind and others with visual disabilities. Our report pointed them towards opportunities like color contrast improvements, the introduction of patterns in the data visualizations, and cutting-edge solutions like sonification. We also alerted them to a competitor product that could be parsed by a screen reader and was fully keyboard accessible.
Of course, we’ve also been able to highlight and celebrate where our client leads the market. Sometimes, even where its teams may not have realized that was the case. For example, our client’s productivity software was the only one on the market with automatic tools to help users identify potential accessibility issues with their content.
Informative insights and executive-level summaries
Finally, while the reports are extensive, our experts always present the information in a reader-friendly way that enables our client to review the research and act on it.
To facilitate conversations with the highest-level stakeholders and decision-makers, we also provide a PowerPoint presentation of high-level findings that comes complete with charts, key highlights, and read-at-a-glance number rankings.
Examples of the summary and executive overview slides iSoftStone’s accessibility experts will typically provide to clients.
A trusted relationship built on results
It was consistency, quality, and clarity that won our client’s long-term trust.
Says Walker, “iSoftStone knows accessibility. We stay on top of updates and whatever new comes up. Our people are truly knowledgeable and passionate about accessibility. We dig into every detail.”
