“Import.io gives us access to a continuous supply of high-quality data for market intelligence.”
XiKO provides market intelligence around what consumers say online about brands and products. This information allows marketers to increase the efficacy of their programs and advertising. The key to XiKO’s success lies in its ability to apply linguistic modeling to vast amounts of data collected from websites.
Need for Increased Data Volume and Quality
To provide its clients with the information they need, XiKO must gather and process enormous amounts of data from thousands of sites. XiKO had been using a home-grown tool, but as data volume and quality requirements increased, it was clear that a more robust solution was required.
“We evaluated a number of solutions to extract data from websites. Import.io was, by far, the easiest and most flexible,” said Marguerite Leenhardt, CEO and co-founder of XiKO. “Import.io also offered precision extraction, which is critical to the accuracy of our consumer insights.”
According to XiKO CTO Julien Piquot, “A big part of our decision to outsource was that we were losing production time to data extraction work that is not our core competency. Selecting the right partner to help with data extraction was a big thing for us, because if we don’t have quality data, we don’t have a business. After reviewing a number of data extraction solutions, it was clear that Import.io was the best of breed solution.”
Supplemental Source of Data Available Continuously
XiKO engaged Import.io to deliver customer sentiment data and supplement what was being collected in house. “Our core skill set is natural language processing, not data extraction. Partnering with Import.io has taken pressure off our internal team and allows them to focus on the areas where they excel,” said Leenhardt.
“Import.io gives us access to a continuous supply of high-quality data,” said Piquot. “With Import.io we are able to leverage both internal and external data sources, which allows the team to work faster. It also lets us be very responsive to client requests for content from new sites.”
Return on Investment
“Since using Import.io, we have we have been able to keep the same prediction base without adding more people. This would not have been possible without Import.io. In fact, even if I added staff for data extraction, we still would not be able to match what we are getting with Import.io,” said Piquot.
“The ROI we have achieved, with Import.io, is more than the savings of not adding staff. We also avoid the drain on resources caused by technical issues that inevitably arise. Import.io allows us to work faster without expanding the team,” said Leenhardt.
Quick Response from Customer Service
“We have been very impressed with Import.io’s customer service. The Import.io team pays a lot of attention to customers’ needs,” said Piquot. “When our team has feedback or updates that we need, the Import.io team is quite reactive,” Import.io offers dedicated one-to-one support from its customer success team as well as a community forum where members are always willing to help one another.
Data Quality with Agility and Speed
In addition to requiring high-quality data, XiKO needed to be able to add new sites and domains as well as adapt extractions to collect different types of data, including images from more complex sites. “Import.io’s gives us the ability to be extremely agile while collecting data, which is key to the survival of our company. New sites pop up all of the time and we must start capturing that data as quickly as possible,” said Piquot. “Because the data we get from Import.io is so comprehensive and delivered continuously, we are able to focus our efforts on the end solution.”
Ability to Increase Sources
A couple of years ago, XiKO had to limit clients to 15 website sources. “With Import.io, we can tell clients that there is no limit to sources. Import.io allows us to offer a huge variety of sources, because it lets us do batch integration from lots of sources,” said Leenhardt. “Using Import.io, we have jumped from 10-15 sources per client to more than 50-100.”
Ease of Use
“Another benefit of Import.io is how easy it is to use. Our team understood it immediately. It’s easy for everyone. Even the non-techies can use Import.io to collect data,” said Piquot. “The person in charge of configuring new domains can now do this it in just a few minutes, with Import.io.”
Piquot continued, “Despite its ease of use, Import.io is a very powerful tool. When you first look at Import.io, it looks like a toy, but when you use it you realize how powerful it is. We have integrated Import.io into our processes and automated the import functions. And, Import.io works great at scale with a lot of batches as well as big batches.”
Empowering Team to Help Grow Market Intellegence Business
“It is very nice to have a platform that is easy and appealing to non-techies and can be used at a deeper level by developers. Import.io can be put in hands of all of our team members. Everyone can manage it and use it. Import.io really is versatile, scalable and easy. The result is that our team is able to get the data they need quickly and focus on doing the work that keeps our customers happy and attracts new ones,” said Piquot.
Leenhardt concluded, “While the actual cost savings are difficult for us to measure, what I can surely say is that without Import.io we wouldn’t have been able to keep our big clients and grow at the rate we are. We have been more than pleased with the results that Import.io has delivered and are looking forward to increasing our use of Import.io.”