Back in the 1990s, when people spoke about effective analyst relations they typically focused on organization, process and technique. Lots of companies had very disorganized analyst relations: today AR is better administered but one weakness has principally survived: many vendors are so focused on their messages that they are failing to anticipate or answer analysts…
Lighthouse is offering firms the opportunity to benchmark their analyst relations against the best in the industry, for free. Regular readers of this blog will know about Lighthouse’s IDEAL methodology, which specifies the five key stages of the AR process: Identify, Drive, Engage, Alignment and Leverage. Over the last few months we have been working…
Both analysts and analyst relations managers will benefit if they increase their understanding of how ICT buyers find analysts to be useful and influential. We place a great emphasis on research quality, partly because it was beaten into us as analysts. The most influential analysts are able not only to research, but to assimilate and…
Most vendors think that analyst influence is highly concentrated. Our annual surveys of vendor executives typically suggest that they feel that just two analyst firms (Gartner and Forrester) hold around 60% of all analyst influence on buyers worldwide: the number rises to over 90% when we add in AMR Research, Burton Group, Current Analysis, IDC,…
[Update: Some people found this article misleading. Two new posts now clarify the value of free research and the sources of analyst influence. Web traffic contributes to the influence of analyst firms, but that measurement by itself is a weak predictor of the comparative influence of analyst firms. Since web traffic data are easily available,…
During the 1990s Kensington Group and SageCircle made the foundation of analyst relations systematic and understood. However, SageCircle closed in 2003 for reasons we reviewed at that time in a note which is still available, here. We have not been able to confirm the reports that Kensington Group is out of business. The business built…
My colleague John Moroney, formerly Associate Director at Gartner [pictured right], and Duncan Chapple are reviewing Gartner’s evolution in a conference call. Gartner has always been one of the most reliable sources of IT research news. Over the years, it has built a solid reputation for itself. With its double digit growth in consulting business…
The observations of an English friend in Texas seem to counter some of the observations in our annual survey of CIOs. Our research found that the reach of industry analysts extends deep down into the mid-market. Around two-thirds of companies with over 1,000 employees have CIOs using analyst research. Our correspondent repeats many of the…