Consumer Choice Award (CCA) relied on an external research provider to help determine its award winners. The results arrived as a finished report, leaving CCA with limited visibility into the underlying analysis and little control over how its research process evolved.
ISU Corp built Consumer Choice Research, Data & Insights (CCRDI), a custom AI data platform that brings data collection, sentiment analysis, and business rankings into one system. The platform was delivered in four months. It is now in active use, with ongoing support and further AI capabilities being planned.
Project Snapshot
Industry: Market Research and Consumer Intelligence
Engagement: Custom AI Platform Development, Ongoing Support and Planned AI Expansion
Solution: Consumer Choice Research, Data & Insights (CCRDI)
Technologies: Python, FastAPI, GPT-4o, NumPy, Pandas, NestJS, React, Tailwind CSS, AWS ECS Fargate, RDS PostgreSQL, Google Places API
The Challenge
CCA’s awards depend on identifying businesses that have earned consumer trust. Yet its previous research process depended on purchasing a report from an outside provider. CCA received the outcome without the visibility or control it needed over the data, methodology, and ranking process behind it.
As the award program grew, CCA needed a way to research larger markets, assess consumer feedback consistently, identify suspicious review activity, and explain why a business ranked highly. It also wanted to build that capability into a platform it could develop and use internally, rather than continue relying on an external report.
The Solution: A Custom AI Data Platform
ISU Corp designed and built CCRDI to manage the research workflow from data collection through analysis, rankings, and reporting. The platform gives CCA’s team a central place to examine markets, evaluate businesses, and produce reports supported by the underlying data.
Automated Data Collection
CCRDI gathers business reputation and market data from sources that include Google Places, other online sources, and CCA’s own data. Geographic searches help the team identify businesses within each market. Automated daily, weekly, and monthly data collection reduces manual research effort.
The data pipeline also incorporates signals such as online reputation, digital presence, and business longevity. ISU built it to support analysis across large geographic areas, including provincial markets.
AI Sentiment Analysis and Rankings
The platform uses AI to analyze consumer reviews and identify the factors that matter within a business category, such as service or price. A Python-based ranking engine then combines the relevant inputs to assess businesses within a market.
CCRDI also flags potential review fraud and review-gating anomalies, helping CCA account for activity that could distort a ranking. Instead of receiving only a final result, analysts can examine the factors behind it and use a documented process to explain why a business was recognized.
Dashboards and Reports
CCA’s market analysts and report specialists use a web application to explore rankings, compare businesses, and monitor research activity. The platform includes market views, competitive visualizations, and branded PDF reports.
Those reports give award winners a clearer account of their results and a growth roadmap. They can also show competing businesses where gaps exist and where they may have room to improve.
Business Impact
In four months, ISU Corp delivered an operational platform that brought CCA’s research and ranking workflow in-house. CCA can now examine the data behind its decisions, produce supporting reports, and continue developing the platform as its research needs change.
CCRDI has enabled CCA to:
Bring research in-house: Replace a previously outsourced research process with an internal platform.
Scale market analysis: Process data for entire provincial markets in a weekend.
Explain rankings: Examine the factors behind results and produce supporting reports.
Strengthen review analysis: Identify suspicious review patterns that could affect award integrity.
Improve analyst visibility: Give the team direct access to market and competitive insights.
ISU Corp continues to provide ongoing software maintenance and support, while planning a new development phase to expand the platform’s AI-powered analysis capabilities.
Looking to Bring a Critical Process In-House?
When an external provider controls the data or process behind a core business decision, it can be difficult to adapt the methodology, explain the results, or build on the work over time.
ISU Corp builds custom software and AI platforms for organizations with complex data and operational workflows. If you are considering how to replace an outsourced process, connect fragmented data sources, or give your team better tools to make and explain decisions, we would be happy to discuss your project.
