Louis Columbus, formerly an analyst at AMR Research, has joined Lighthouse as an adjunct consultant. Louis is leading a long-term project helping Lighthouse clients to track and understand analyst research about their firms. Adjunct consultants work alongside the core team, helping to clarify and develop specific clients’ opportunities to better conduct their analyst relations. Lighthouse’s…
META refugees Meton Group have rebranded, as we anticipated in a post last week, under threat from Gartner’s lawyers. Today the firm is announcing that it has relaunched as Experton Group. The firm’s website is online at http://www.experton-group.de/. P.S. Experton’s website is now online in the English language under www.experton group.com In a German-language announcement…
Each summer Lighthouse does a major update of its analysis of the analyst industry. I’m working with my colleague Ahmed Waqas on the project, which involves liaising with over 500 analyst firms to make sure we have a better understanding of their firm. Of course, we are leveraging the lessons that Lighthouse’s consultants learnt during…
Gartner, aided by what legally remains of META, has won a provisional order in the Hamburg regional court against Meton Group. Amongst other things, Meton is forbidden from using its web domains and probably will need to change its name. This is an outcome that no-one could have imagined. After Gartner bought META, that business…
Mobile data specialist Mako Analysis is approaching its second birthday. Mako is a great example of the ‘Analyst Firm Cycle’: the process through which analyst firms are formed and accumulates that is similar to the natural ‘Water Cycle‘. Mako was precipitated in 2003, when co-founder Tom Byrd departed the super-caffeinated Mobile Lifestreams boutique. Today, the…
As even IDC admits in a recent article, analysts’ research and advisory work isn’t the only influence on buyers. However, analysts are the key external influencer on tech buyers (outside the buyers own peer group). That’s why it’s no surprise that our analyst relations process model, IDEAL, starts with I – for identifying the analysts….
Gartner’s Robin Kranich is speaking to Lighthouse and similar folk about the firm’s product strategy. As former analysts, we have seen how our own firms sometimes struggle to follow the marketing advice that analysts give to vendors. The general line of the conversation is this: How Gartner is organizing product and content organizations — The…
Weber Shandwick has published an article outlining five practical steps for navigating the world of AR: Build a rigorous contact strategy and plan Nominate and negotiate an interactor team Train the interactors in AR Integrate with the sales team Measure the results. Compared to the observations of most agencies, these show much greater understanding of…