Looks like the summer analyst job market is in full swing (see previous post
David, him again, lists a few more in this other post:
David summs up various movements in this post: Analyst Insight: Various analyst changes.
In brief, Quocirca finally signed up a new analyst, Butler loses another analyst (fed-up with compiling door-wedges-reports?) and Forrester shrinks too. It looks like the latter still has some open headcounts to cover consumer markets and applications to further enrich their "molten core". Quite why they missed the train of departing soon-to-be-ex-META analysts still puzzles us...
Stinky wanted to know how much a Gartner analyst makes...
The ARmadgeddon staff estimates (.3 probability) this to a range starting from £60k for a junior to £120k for a senior analyst.
Has anyone got comments?
I have found a fascinating page at Topix. It tracks mentions of META Group. Interestingly, even though Gartner announced the purchase of that firm in 2004, there are some.
A great example is this story from May this year, in which a META Group analyst comments on Dell's performance.
How serious are journalists' conversations with analysts if they don't even check the name of the analyst firm they are citing?
In the wake of SageCircle and Kensington Group, we can now report at Serendipp, a UK analyst relations consultancy, has also closed.
Readers might recall that last December we had some criticisms and harsh comments about that company. In Serendipp's opinion, "Analysts only do two things: size markets and do case studies".
Our comments was this: "This is so far from being right, it's not even worth calling wrong. Sizing markets and writing case studies is what gets outsourced to India. The real work of analysts is quite different: and that is why analysts have substantial advisory, consulting and custom research businesses. If an AR advisor doesn't realize this, then heaven help their clients."
Indeed, the company has now closed. A posting on the firm's blog explains that those the firm's partners have taken employment elsewhere. Rest in peace.
However, this story has a little tickle are the end. Our chiding of Serendipp last years ended this this comment which, in hindsight, is amazing prescient: "It would be far better to understand one's limitations and keep only do what you know how to do. In that respect, kudos to Hill & Knowlton. If Duncan's latest post is correct (my Norwegian is rusty) their European AR is led by their partner agency in Oslo, Gambit, which hired a former IBM AR manager in 1999."
What's interesting is that one of Serendipp's partners has been hired by H&K to work on its European analyst relations. Let's hope his boss in Oslo doesn't let her analyst relations business go the same way as Serendipp.
David posted those links recently:
IDC analyst going blonde (Analyst Insight: Mobile analyst goes blonde for charity)
and this briefing 101 from a Yankee analyst, well worth a read even if you've been doing AR for a while [The Human Capitalist:] The Vendor Pitch
The summer was going to pass by whitout major events (apart from the World Cup of course) when Gartner suddlenly headbutted Redmonk:
James Governor's MonkChips: My First Gartner Cease And Desist: the missing link
Now, this is quite funny -the only thing James did was to post this link on his blog, there. And Gartner issued a cease and desist, for deep linking probably?
Although we have great respect for some Gartner analysts, it's probably fair to say that the Borg behaves itself like a bully. It was until now confined to vendor relations but this Borgian trait seems to be spreading....
17/7 update: commenting on a subsequent post where James publishes the incriminating email, Allison from the Borg Vendor Police apologises for their bullying. Borg 0 - Blogosphere 1.
Witty comparison from Cambashi between market numbers and sausages:
Everyone likes sausages Jun 2006
Ovum, which has recently IPO'ed (read this) is buying
Summit Strategies, a US firm doing business mostly with IT vendors (consulting and commissionned white papers).
Ovum had already forayed across the pond with the RHK purchase, however this time they're targeting IT vendors and not IT users: although Ovum is indeed selling research and advisory services (RAS, in plain English consulting days and access to a research library) it does not typically accepts commissionned white papers from vendors -which is Summit's business.
It will be interesting to see how Ovum deals with the integrity issue (for memory, Gartner killed META Group's white papers offering when it took it over).
Bottom line: Ducan seems to think Ovum is doing well but
we still are reserved as to whether they are capable to position themselves as a credible alternative to the Gartner Borg outside a few markets such as telcos.
Perhaps Hugo Chavez will be the new face of Hugo Boss, but that would not surprise me more than a comment on Catherine Heltzerman's blog. This post includes a fascinating comment about us: Armadgeddon excited me to start with, but I am increasingly surprised at how pro Gartner all their analysis is especially given they go under a nom de plumes.
This is a fascinating comment from James Governor. The idea that this blog is pro-Gartner will be a shock to post readers, especialy those who have read this series here.
What's eating James? Does he really think we are pro-Gartner stooge, or is it just than we don't really rate his firm on a par with them?
Answers on a postcard please to ARmadgeddon, PO Box 666, Stamford, 06902. Or post your comments below.
According to Berkeley's heartthrob analyst, "The hottest rumor in recent weeks among analysts was that Oracle’s head of analyst relations had lost her head in a power struggle".
Josh's article explains that vice-president Peggy O'Neill was thought to have been ousted because of growing frustration with Oracle's highly controlled analyst relations.
We are scratching our heads at that idea. Here on the ARmadgeddon campus, there's general agreement that agressive management of AR is more likely to be rewarded at Oracle than punished. Remember, it's hard-nosed Oracle that bought the PeopleSoft hippies, not the other way around.
If Oracle didn't intent to play to win, then they had the opportunity to change course in 2003. The evidence suggests to us that Peggy's tactics are fair, but people still asked Oracle to mellow and cut analysts more slack. They have not, and we don't see a growing demand inside Oracle for the firm to loosen up, even if Larry's main interest is his Japanese garden.
Mind you, the very idea of Peggy leaving Oracle is interesting. If she was to switch career, what would she be well suited to? Answers on a postcard, please.
During a teleconference yesterday, Gartner's head of research Peter Sondergaard (or is it Dale Kutnick?) announced a reshuffle to accomodate the new role-based research structure. The new execs and their research groups:
Looks like the UK analyst scene never stays still (see Is there an afterlife for analysts?, Becoming an analyst, getting it right and being paid for it! and Making it up While Drinking)
as we learn today that Tony "fancy ties" Lock is transferring from Bloor FC to Sageza Dynamo for an undisclosed sum this month.
Tony will probably play in the infrastructure frontline and continue to press for the formation of a European league together with his new colleague Joyce Becknell. Other clubs in the league are of course MWD and Freeform Dynamics, with more rumoured.
The coach Clay Ryder is said to be delighted with this new addition to his squad. Poor old Justin though...
Well, if you're an analyst you might stand a good chance. Following suit from a few ex-colleagues (read Microsoft boosts its AR and Microsoft hires from Gartner, right, left and centre!), we have heard a rumour that Larry Velez is leaving Forrester for Microsoft.
Larry might need to do something about hairstyle... (compare him vs them)
Duncan publishes a glowing report on the latest Borgference here:
ANALYST EQUITY: Gartner's Outsourcing Summit spotlights opportunities:
So the content was good (we agree) and we found the audience was good. Location was the Royal Lancaster again (as some others and the upcoming Datacenter Summit), however there are two caveats.
While many AR professionals are not yet prepared to take the bold step Duncan discusses here (Should AR run Influencer Relations?), it remains that they should go outside their comfort zone and address the following challenges:
David reports a comment from Richard Stiennon on Bitter Andy's blog here:
Analyst Insight: Using customers to win credibility with Gartner?
It assumes that, since Gartner analysts speak to few clients each week, AR professionals have a good chance to influence them by getting clients to call them.
ARmadgeddon's take: this indirect approach is interesting but IT vendors should be careful and not risk the assumption that (all) Gartner analysts would be daft enough not to smell something fishy going on. Covert AR operations often back-fire and vendors should be advising to call specific analysts only if they add value both to the end user with clear and insightful recommendations (only minority of analysts achieve this, even at Gartner).
AR managers should concentrate on providing relevant and unfettered customer references -this being one of the top analyst requests.
We recived an email this morning from some recruiter looking for a US based AR Director asking us if we could post the following job ad. Hey, why not? Here you are...
Nothing better than some fun reading when coming back from a four-day bank holiday week-end.
Borgmember Andy (Bitterer) has kindly obliged, after seeing red for a Gartner Magic Quadrant on Business Intelligence (is that not an oxymoron?) had been criticised by a certain David Stodder from Intelligent Enterprise.
Of course, David's has Beotian views on the Borgian Tragic Quadrant and Andy is right to put things in their place. His A3Q (Andy's Advanced Automobile Quadrant) is funny and a good metaphor, but Gartner and the overall ecosystem would nevertheless benefit from disclosing methodologies behind the Magic Quadrants.
PS: to Andy's credit, he's one of the few Borg analysts to comment and blog.
Links:
bit blue blog: Show me your Quadrant and I show you mine
Step Outside the Magic Kingdom
(AR) has evolved into a critical function due to the industry analyst’s ability to impact a firm’s shareholder price, strategic position and overall mindshare buzz.
The panel explained that AR is a sales job with no quota and no typical day. As with PR, AR influences the mindshare of a key audience by educating them about the company’s business and marketing strategy, key messages and by freely exchanging information. The panel felt AR provides a good return on investment because of its ability to understand the competitive landscape, its positive impact on a company’s strategy and message development, and its ability to give management an honest viewpoint about what’s happening in the marketplace.
A panelist commented that PR tends to take a short-term view, while AR has a more long-term perspective and relationship-building function. This comment made me wonder if AR’s exposure to PR is not to its strategic planning and execution functions, but rather only to the tactical, short-term PR projects such as product intros, new programs and initiatives and crisis response.
What Makes An AR Program Successful? The panel emphasized that support from senior management—their provision of time, financial resources and staff --- are all crucial for the long-term success of an AR program. The panelist’s AR departments averaged between two and 20 people, and all utilized some type of “home grown” contact database solution to keep track of analyst contacts.
While it was mentioned that Cisco offers an annual two-day analyst conference that is a combo of AR and Investor Relations (IR), the panel cautioned that it’s not a good idea to do a large mixed-analyst briefing for a new product or company initiative, especially with tier one analysts. One-on-one briefings are best. However, a large briefing of analysts from one firm can be a cost-effective way to communicate.
Similar to the way many of us set up our press relations, HP tiers their analysts. Level one analysts receive one-on-one briefings and more direct contact, while levels two and three are updated mainly through teleconferences. The panel also noted that because analysts know the market and the players, they can be used to bulletproof presentations, messages and to fine-tune company or product positioning. The AR department can help PR select the appropriate analysts for these types of briefings.
AR’s Biggest Challenge: The analyst landscape is constantly changing. With so many mergers and acquisitions, customer solutions are expanding, so there is a real need to balance corporate vs. technology messages to the analysts. One panelist mentioned, “...many don’t know where the industry is going, so we’re all hedging our bets with strategy/product solutions.”
Key Points to Remember: In AR, you can never rest on your laurels. AR is only one data point for the analysts to secure information about a company’s strategy, technologies or products. It takes hard work to continue to be viewed as an important and knowledgeable resource to the analysts and to reinforce your company’s mindshare and analyst relationships. Also, there must be a strong synergy between the AR/PR/IR functions, as all are important partners in the communications effort. It’s critical to keep everyone updated on goals, strategies, programs, and the competitive and internal issues that might impact the audience.
I never thought I'd say this. It's time to cut Rob Enderle some slack.
As his resume reminds us, Rob Enderle is one of the most referenced analysts (according to analysis of the US media by long-dead Kensington Group, whose data reflected his years with Giga). He will comment to the media on almost anything. He is the analyst industry's answer of the Hollywood star who turns up if she's invited to the opening of an envelope.
An article in 'The Register', Sun zinged by rent-a-quote analyst, mentions that Enderle is not only critical of Sun, but is also paid by Sun's competitors. The Register's premise is the idea that Enderle's comments are swayed against Sun because his customers include competitors of Sun. The article describes Enderle as a 'rent-a-quote' analyst: they feel Enderlie has been rented by Sun's competitors to be critical of that fim.
Here on the ARmadgeddon campus we take a neutral view towards Sun and its fortunes. We know that many of its customers have remained fans of the firm for good reasons. However, it's a bit like being a fan of the Seattle Seahawks. There are few victories that attract fairweather friends. Indeed, even rehirings are seen as a victory -- a sign that things are at least not as bad as they were recently.
It has to be admitted that you don't need to rent analysts to get them to criticize Sun. It's a technical and evangelical organization, facing an analyst community that is increasingly disinterested in technology - almost to the point of naïveté. Sun sells to tech-savvy companies more easily than most. Analysts increasingly dismiss strong technology as 'speeds and feeds', sometime for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons
On the same Register web page was an advert for one of Sun's competitors. It seems unfair for 'The Register' to not judge others by its own standards. How can it assume that Enderle has been 'rented', when we are sure they they would say that they have not been. How come analysts' are corrupted by vendor money, in their view, when The Register is not?
Of course, these are ridiculous standards: analysts are able to comment on technology vendors partly because they are paid by multiple competitors, without being corrupted. Many analysts are paid by Sun's competitors -- and by Sun. The idea that are 'rented' simply by being consulted by these organizations is lazy and untrue.
If 'The Register' was to make these charges against a large analyst house, like Gartner, then lawyers would be involved right now. Rob and his partner don't have in-house legal staff, but they must surely be considering it.
P.S. The comments on this post have encouraged us to clarify our views. Our criticism is that The Register assumes that Enderle is biased against Sun because his clients include competitors of Sun. In our opinion, this is not the right basis on which to be critical of Enderle (Perhaps this is the right basis. We also point readers to the fourth comment here). Other analysts are also hired by Sun's competitors and, of course, The Register also has those firms as clients. In our opinion it is unfair, if not fatuous, for The Register to assume that Enderle is corrupted simply by these commercial links -- especially since The Register has the same links (and presumably feels that it is not biased by its advert revenue).
Fox News certainly is biased. However, the right does not need to pay Fox for it to criticize the left. Fox would do that for free. Similarly, Enderle does not need to be paid to criticize Sun: Enderle will do that for free.
The Register's article aims to discredit Enderle simply because of his commercial ties, and not because of the correctness or falsehood of his views. In our opinion, that is a red herring. It is also dangerous for analyst relations professionals. If analysts are discredited simply because their clients include vendors, then this will make it harder for both users and vendors. Like it or not, analysts are less biased than other sources. That is why businesses trust them. Analyst houses would be not more or less independent if they did not have vendors as clients: but they would be smaller, less economical, more expensive and less effective. That is is no-ones' interest. Specifically for AR professionals, The Register's baiting of analysts also obstructs our work. We want our colleagues to be less anxious towards analysts: The Register simply throws more trash into the sea of putrid cynicism.
Of course, this does not mean that Enderle is right with this -- or any -- comment he gets into the media. However, we do feel that any errors in analysts' views are as much despite close relationship with vendors as they are because of those relationships.
The Registers fires at pointblank on Rob Enderle on the allegation he's a "rent-a-quote analyst" paid by Sun's competitors:
Sun zinged by rent-a-quote analyst | The Register
The article contains some strong language, which seems to be a trademark of Ashlee Vance. But who pays HIM?
Beyond the apparent scandal, this raises again the issue of transparency in the analyst community.
See also:
The Governor, ancient Iraq and Gartner
Briefings under NDA are not only a recurring question for AR newbies but are also the source of ongoing debates among the AR community, see for instance the comments on this SVG post:
The feedback gathered after the latest AR Club meeting in London is interesting. It shows a growing dissatisfaction with the Gartner/Borg commercial practices, value for money and processes. Long gone are the days where most parts of the marketplace were "balanced" thanks to the META techno-utopians and where vendors could implement effective "dual-vendor" policies.
So it seems like the Borg is trying to sweat as much as possible from the resources they refer to as human by increasing analysts' billable time in several ways:
Thinking back over the last few days here at Forrester's GigaWorld conference, the most passionate conversations have been about Gartner.
Every market leader gets a hard time, and Gartner is no exception. Perhaps it's a measure of how bad things are that the troubles people complained of last year are now seen as the good old days. At the AR Council last weekend, they should have shown Jarhead.
If my account manager is like the rest, the performance of Gartner's sales function has been really affected by new policies. There's a move away from the global sales approach. I can see that Gartner has an interest in deepening its relationships with a second line of clients in organizations. Perhaps Gartner think that clients like us, who are centralizing our buying from the analysts, simply increase our power and make things harder for them. That's not our view. When our buying was fragmented, we wasted a lot of money. We used to by a lot of research, sometimes twice or three times over. We didn't have enough scale to buy more advisory seats and more time from analysts. It's only that higher quality that allows us to really show Gartner's quality inside the company. The new approach suggests that Gartner loses the ability to meet the needs of buyers outside the center if it's selling to a global buyer. As a result, it wants to break down the global sales approach.
Decentralizing sales could allow Gartner to sell directly into business units, geographies and subsiduaries. That trend will probably be strongest in enterprises, where Gartner is pushing role-based views. Gartner seems to think that the only way that most of these specialized role-based managers will be able to experience the impact of the new role-based services is if they pay themselves, and that not all central research buyers will care about the new role-based services.
Of course, decentralization will displease a lot of central research buyers. It also poses questions of how to consolidate invoices and orders globally, and of how then to target and bonus local sales staff.
All of this fits with the wider context at Gartner. John Moroney had some interesting things to say about this last month, and Duncan's post gives a flavor of John's conference call. Gartner faces high production costs in its research business and a deep challenge in sales force management. Much of the market is uncovered by Gartner's sales force, who are often remote from key, under-penetrated, market segments.
Whatever happens -- whether the sales strategy is shown to be successful or not -- it will have to be tested by Gartner and then reverted back from. After 2 or 3 years, either clients will have been convinced centrally of the value of these role-based services, or they will have been terminated. So, although the probable fate of Gartner's sales team is a partial break-up, over 3 years we expect we will see it swing back to centralization. It's the classic Gartner scenario of permanent change.
As we announced before, Ovum has now gone through their IPO on the 10th at 190 pence. Their stock shot up to 219 on the 12th and went back to 198 on the 24th in small volumes.
Some in the industry have been speculating on what may happen next:
In response to the success of our popular AR 101 series, we've introduced a specific feed, with a number of subscription options below. Note that any input and suggestions for upcoming topics is welcome.
James, Jon and Andy kindly provided quite a lot of (free) advice on how to brief IT Analysts.
Here are six simple steps to get your briefing right (tell us if we forget anything guys).
1. Synch briefings with research agendas
A good briefing should be prepared before to make sure that the information given to analysts match their research agendas and interests. This is of course easier done for one-on-one briefings (some simple filtering questions at the start help). For one-to-many briefings (not the preferred briefing for most analysts but often the most practical compromise to update analysts on announcements in a short timeframe) it is good practice to send 2-3 questions to key analysts before the call.
Read AR 101 series: the research process for more. Jon made the following remark:
Vinnie has a special talent for finding the sweet spot and sharp comments.
In this post, [deal architect:] Credibility of Analysts, he comments on the Borg IP police: the Gartner Ombudsman blog.
They posted a lame rebuttal to the Information Week article on Analyst Credibility. The comments on that post (the Borg must be congratulated, yes congratulated, for having a real blog) are worth a read.
Carter Lusher, the HP (HPQ) AR head argues for greater separation and transparency.
Chris Carter (?) asks two penetrating questions, only to find deafening silence. Follow-on through to Vinnie's blog for more....
We were hoping that Joe, Duncan or Dave would write a take on Wednesday's Gartner call as it was really quite dull... The only really funny thing was that Pamela Miranda referred to the Miranda act, so she must have read this Gartner Watch post.
Laura McLellan, Gartner Research VP was first to speak. She covers vendor (IT providers) marketing strategies research. She started to say Gartner was not going to start to analyse AR (as the Oracle AR VP pointed out, this would be a conflict of interest) and compete with KGC.
She had an interesting take on analyst taxonomy, depicting it as an inverted triangle: on top analyst which are end users focussed (advise buyers), in the middle market watchers (who look at forecasts and trends) and on the bottom (tip) the vendor focussed analysts (advise sellers). Quite why the triangle is inverted, we don't know -there may be more user facing analysts in Gartner but in the overall analyst landscape the vendor facing analysts outnumber them by far. ARmadgeddon will be publishing an official Analyst Taxonomy soon. She then said that you need to adapt your approach to the kind of analysts. Not exactly new news but maybe a useful reminder.
She then further continued to explain grandmas (AR professionals listening into the call) how to suck eggs: one needs to segment the communication type to audience. Laura also plans to research which AR comms are effective or not and why. That would indeed make up for an interesting and more specific call.
She gave a quick round up on what analysts love most: face time, AR contact list (inc. responsibilities), announcement advance notice / pre-briefing and email opt-out.
She gave some insight on analyst psychology (gives a new meaning to analysing the analysts): they are motivated by influence and knowledge (explains the ego side) and turned off by community and reprocity (not sure what James will have to say on this).
These other points were on her charts:
Probably worth a reminder indeed. She finished by saying what makes a good AR person: being a good relationship builder. What does the R in AR stand for again?
She gave the following good and bad for AR managers:
She finally hinted that Gartner might create a research role to look at vendor marketing.
The call then moved on to Pamela Miranda, Head of Vendor Briefings who spoke about briefings. She did not really cover the points that were on her agenda:
Joe commented on the scheduling process here: Gartner's briefing on their briefing policy (Gartner Watch). As we've commented before, this process is lengthy and time consuming. One of the reasons that was
Read also:
As we previously wrote, AR is NOT an outbound tactic: briefing analysts and expecting them to write something is called PR and does only harness a small part of the value AR can deliver. However, few AR people feel confident selling the value of AR back to other stakeholders, such as sales and marketing.
Here are a simple 5 steps guide to getting it right.
Step 1: establishing AR
AR often grows out of media relations and tend to have communication as a reporting line (this seems to be the prevalent model for small organisations). AR practitioners should seek to clearly differentiate their audience (read AR 101: Analyst vs. press) as it will impact management and stakeholders expectations.
In this post (AR 101: Measuring Analyst Relations), we lay out three models for AR:
In an email today, the Gartner Vendor Relations (briefing police) and Ombudsman (IP police) appear to have read ARmadgeddon's posts on briefing length:
hits!
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