Which analysts are most influential
The IIAR’s new research on international AR has prompted an interesting question: how big are the analyst and analyst relations communities outside North America? It’s a useful question, because some vendors have not allocated their effort in the way that the analyst firms (and their competitors) have done. You still see organisations where nine out…
If the business model was broken then top analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester would underperform their competitors: that’s the key point underpinning our recent defence of analysts. In fact, the top firms are increasing their lead. Their approach is producing unhappy customers (See the comment here) but any resulting loss in customers is much…
Industry analysts don’t need to have more industry experience than their clients – any more than accountants, management consultants or any other professionals – in order to add value. James Gardner and David Rossiter, who recently criticised analyst firms along these lines, ignore the glaring reality that analysts firms have continued to perform well. That…
Where do analyst firms get their money from? As this chart shows, there’s a big difference between different firms, and many people assume that has an impact on independence. On average, analyst firms get 37% of their revenue from vendors. However, the data are not normally distributed.
A new benchmarking study of business-to-business vendors in North America shows very different responses to the recession. 44% of firms will cut marketing while 31% will increase by more. Former Gartner country manager Ally Motz writes that “the average spend changes for the entire group was actually slightly positive, increasing by 0.4% – especially on…
The first issue of PAC in Focus seems to have gone down well, since the newsletter from PAC is now on a quartely schedule. I always feel that AR managers should pay special attention to the newslatters from analyst firms when looking for models for the newsletters they want to send to analysts.
Tekrati founder Barbara French and Forrester’s Kevin Lucas have different views on the alignment of AR to sales. Forrester argues that even though many AR professionals say that their focus is facilitating sales, instead their goal should be whatever the business finds to be of value: that could be sales, or not.
Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), one of Europe’s oldest analyst and consulting companies, is increasingly under the spotlight as it expands from its French and German heartlands. The IIAR interviewed PAC this week, and Lighthouse is taking a more critical look at the firm in our webinar on December 18th.