Why the AR community is a global as the tech industry

The chart on the left shows the location of 500 frequent visitors to this blog. As you can imagine, in conurbations quite a few of the dots are covered by other dots. However, the chart is still a good illustration of how widely distributed the industry analysis community is.

Most of our readers don’t come from any one country. They are in Texas and in Delhi; in Massachussets and in Ho Chi Minh City; in Munich and in Madrid. In that respect, they are much like the technology industry itself, and like many of the analyst firms.

Maps like this should remind us to ensure that analyst relations outreach crosses borders. Your competitors are building relationships with analysts and technology suppliers in a wide range of locations. If you know that the best informed and most professional analyst following your firm is on your doorstep, don’t assume that in some other country analysts and clients with his firm will defer to him, or even consult him, on a deal your company hopes to win. Influence within analyst firms is not as tightly centralised as they might like to pretend.

As we pointed out many years ago, in our paper called “Industry analysts are all in the US, aren’t they?“, allocating AR effort internationally isn’t the same as allocating AR budgets. Bulding relationships with analysts outside your domestic market may take widely differing expenditures of effort and money.

Duncan Chapple

Duncan Chapple is the preeminent consultant on optimising international analyst relations and the value created by analyst firms. As SageCircle research director, Chapple directs programs that assess and increase the business value of relationships with industry analysts and sourcing advisors.