Enterprise Architecture: From Incite comes Insight...

I find it fascinating how vendors continually make the wrong mistakes in selecting which industry analyst firms to work with and figured I would share some perspectives not written about elsewhere...



Let's face it, while industry analysts believe their value proposition is more than just being a way to generate leads, that's kinda the reason most vendors shell out lots of money for their services. I suspect that many vendors are simply trusting the metrics received from analyst firms and not asking the hard questions regarding influence and lead generation.

So, the next software purchase I am considering didn't come from me initiating a dialog with an industry analyst, but it did come from an industry analyst who participates on a few mailing lists that I subscribe to where they responded to a question I had. In this scenario, the industry analyst and my employer had no prior relationship.

I gain insight (and become a lead) from folks such as James Governor of Redmonk and Brenda Michelson of Elemental Links via Twitter and get frequent unsolicited gems from the folks over at The 451 Group and Burton Group. Now, does anyone want to take a guess on when the last time I received an unsolicited lead from say Gartner?

So, if you are a software vendor who has only one analyst firm relationship and this isn't being translated into meeting me or my peers, then are you crazy for spending lots of money? Would you rather be prominently featured on published research and encouraged to spend even more or would you prefer to be actually generating revenue? Wouldn't it be cool if Barbara French of Tekrati and others could uncover the value proposition I speak of in a way that is credible, measurable and transparent...