Clutch.co is a portal dedicated to helping companies find the most suitable software developer. Clutch has earned the trust of IT decision makers with its extensively researched rating of hundreds of development companies. To take their rating system a step further, Clutch will start visiting company offices to meet with their employees face-to-face. Having one of the highest ratings in the custom software development category, Clutch visited our offices to review Intellectsoft.
In our conversation with Mike Beares, the founder of Clutch, we strengthened our belief that the quality and success of an endeavour relies as much on the skill, knowledge, and hard work that goes on behind the scenes as it does on the human element—the love and dedication a team has towards their project. We talked about this with Mike, and he shared his vision for Clutch, teased a few significant service updates, and outlined the ways in which Clutch focuses on making their rating system an accurate representation of the developers and experts behind software development companies.
You have recently changed your rating system, what was the thought process behind that?
As with most startups, we are constantly learning and testing new approaches. We rolled out a major algorithm at the start of the year and have another one scheduled for the end of February.
The first change centered around the recency of reviews. Prior to the update, we were not accounting for the date of the client feedback. However, we believe that more recent client feedback is more indicative of current performance vs feedback provided a year or two ago. We tested and refined an update during the last few months of 2016 and rolled it out the first week of January.
A second update, to be completed in late February, adjusts how we account for company size. The adjustment will help smaller firms better compete on our platform in their chosen area of focus, and at the same time allow larger firms to better represent their full range of services. We are excited about both of these updates and believe they will better help buyers find the right service provider on our platform.
How do you think your practice of visiting company offices will help your reputable grading?
We are evaluating a number of additional ways we can help buyers understand the capabilities of services firms on our platform. One option could be physically visiting company offices and meeting with key resources. Content from these visits (e.g. video) could be uploaded to the service provider profiles and could provide additional, meaningful insight for prospective buyers. We will be evaluating the feasibility of this and other new services during the first half of 2017.
Do you have any plans to display the financial information of the companies on your platform? How will that affect your rating system?
We are currently evaluating whether it is feasible to add financial data (e.g. annual revenue) to our summaries of firms. We believe this will provide value to prospective buyers, but also recognize that many firms are sensitive to sharing this data. We will make a decision in the coming months if and how to collect this data and what impact it will have on our ranking algorithm.
Does Clutch.Co plan to host industry-specific events?
We see our broader purpose as connecting companies and helping them be more successful together. Industry events would fit well within this purpose. The challenge is we already have a lot on our plate so it will be 2018 before we host any significant events.
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We were impressed by how thoroughly the Clutch team considers every aspect of their services, and how each improvement aligns with their long-term goal of making Clutch a ubiquitous, go-to source for businesses in need of a qualified review about their ideal software development company.