November’s AR Forum discussed Gartner’s prediction that 40% of analyst relations teams will transform their role so much that they will drop the AR label. My take-aways from the discussion were:
- Leading-edge AR teams are starting to create their own ‘meta-analysis’, relating analysts’ comments to the immediate goals of AR’s closest partners, but also to validate/inform corporate goals and relate them to external dynamics.
- This leading-edge analysis is already more than the IIAR’s recommendation for AR teams to start packaging up analysts’ comments that relate to the core priorities of AR’s core internal stakeholders (that’s a good thing, but it’s repackaging rather than using judgement or analytical thinking).
- What analysts don’t say and don’t think can also be notable, especially as topics like GRC and CSR rise in importance. On the call I praised the Spotlight AR five-point perception framework for organising analysts’ comments, and in practice at CCgroup (where we have a similar six-box grid) our AR team sees that the empty spaces are priorities for messaging and content development.
- As with Dave Eckert’s guidance on building partnerships for AR-sales enablement, the keys are to start small and to start only after freeing up the resources needed to do it. Sarah Shamouelean and Robin Schaffer, the Analyst Observatory researchers who spoke on the call, note that this tends to develop in AR teams that are not only large but also tend to be more centralised, because those teams are better set up to resource ‘proof of concept’ projects to test this consultative messaging and proactive analysis approach.
Many thanks to the Analyst Observatory’s Sarah Shamouelian and Robin Schaffer, who organized the AR Forum and made it successful, and to colleagues from Gartner for stimulating the transform discussion.
To finding out about future AR Forum webinars, visit https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4787643/
