Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Forrester, Gartner and Analyst Relations
I find the notion of analyst relations fascinating and would love to see metrics on what percentage of software vendors use this type of service vs. going it on their own...
Duncan Chapple had an interesting blog entry on the notion of a Boardroom. If I were to read into it, it feels like analyst relations only focus on the large guys while not helping software firms understand the value proposition of smaller analyst firms such as RedMonk, ZapThink, Entiva, Elemental Links, Nemertes, The 451 Group and others.
With increasing prices without necessarily seeing the increasing value, now feels like the best time to provide guidance in how small analyst firms could minimally compliment or even fill gaps in coverage. It would seem that analyst relations should have some notion of not just focus of influence any particular analyst or analyst firm but ways that us end customers could learn of your value proposition.
Consider the fact that I personally read James Governor of Redmonk's blog every day. As an end customer of analyst research, I don't have to be annoyed by the notion of a seat and can not only consume but have a dialog that it alot more real-time in nature than the traditional process of scheduling a call. Likewise, I would think there is an advantage to software vendors spending lots of money gaining more visibility into the conversations that us folks in large enterprises are having with folks from analyst firms. I am curious if analyst relations tends to steer software vendors towards analysts who blog.
Actually, my thought above could be further decomposed into multiple things to noodle. Some analyst firms have the notion of a seat which is all about who within the enterprise can initiate a dialog request. The folks over that the Burton Group has figured out that this practice is fugly for us customers and recently came up with a new program entitled Drop a Seat where anyone in the enterprise can initiate a dialog.
One would have to assume that the notion of downstream influence in this model would be a lot deeper in many regards. The first thing that Burton does right is that dialogs tend to be one hour where as other firms have a 1/2 hour conversation. More time the analyst spends talking to end customers, the more influence is afforded. Likewise, for problem spaces that I may have where I need a dialog with an analyst firm, one has to ask themselves which one do you think James McGovern would do first? The one where I have to ask another employee to coordinate on my behalf or the one where I can coordinate myself?
| | View blog reactionsDuncan Chapple had an interesting blog entry on the notion of a Boardroom. If I were to read into it, it feels like analyst relations only focus on the large guys while not helping software firms understand the value proposition of smaller analyst firms such as RedMonk, ZapThink, Entiva, Elemental Links, Nemertes, The 451 Group and others.
With increasing prices without necessarily seeing the increasing value, now feels like the best time to provide guidance in how small analyst firms could minimally compliment or even fill gaps in coverage. It would seem that analyst relations should have some notion of not just focus of influence any particular analyst or analyst firm but ways that us end customers could learn of your value proposition.
Consider the fact that I personally read James Governor of Redmonk's blog every day. As an end customer of analyst research, I don't have to be annoyed by the notion of a seat and can not only consume but have a dialog that it alot more real-time in nature than the traditional process of scheduling a call. Likewise, I would think there is an advantage to software vendors spending lots of money gaining more visibility into the conversations that us folks in large enterprises are having with folks from analyst firms. I am curious if analyst relations tends to steer software vendors towards analysts who blog.
Actually, my thought above could be further decomposed into multiple things to noodle. Some analyst firms have the notion of a seat which is all about who within the enterprise can initiate a dialog request. The folks over that the Burton Group has figured out that this practice is fugly for us customers and recently came up with a new program entitled Drop a Seat where anyone in the enterprise can initiate a dialog.
One would have to assume that the notion of downstream influence in this model would be a lot deeper in many regards. The first thing that Burton does right is that dialogs tend to be one hour where as other firms have a 1/2 hour conversation. More time the analyst spends talking to end customers, the more influence is afforded. Likewise, for problem spaces that I may have where I need a dialog with an analyst firm, one has to ask themselves which one do you think James McGovern would do first? The one where I have to ask another employee to coordinate on my behalf or the one where I can coordinate myself?
