There is a pretty good summing up of the ‘rebels versus dinosaurs’ debate over on ARmadgeddon here. As part of this, the point was made that AR people should maybe think about the influence of analyst firms in specific markets or domains, and prioritise the way they focus their efforts based on this matched against business priorities, rather than on the basis of more broad brush tiering.
What this boils down to is more of a matrix view of the world when classifying analysts, though it wasn’t exactly described in that way. Anyway, it got me thinking about what such a matrix might look like.
I have in my mind a table with columns across the top representing the relevant audiences you are trying to reach (e.g. based on markets, territories, constituencies, technology domains, etc), then a series of rows that could be labelled something like:
1. Direct sales influence
2. Sell side community influence
3. Buy side community influence
4. Internal community influence
5. Media influence
Category 1 represents the players that directly impact the sales cycle (based in the traditional view of influence). These guys deliver consulting and/or material that help people choose between vendors or solutions in the lead up to an investment decision. This area is well understood so I won’t dwell on it.
Categories 2 and 3 are the guys that influence the shaping of thoughts and the nature of the ‘buzz’ within various communities. Get enough of these saying that something is a good idea, and you drive the market forward in that direction – particularly important, for example, if meeting the sales number is based on getting an emerging idea or concept accepted by a particular community. Also important for managing sentiment and perception within a community (the ‘buzz’ factor) – get enough saying your company (or client) is trailing and you undermine sales; get them talking you up and you end up on more long lists and the sales cycle becomes easier because minds have been set in your favour.
The difference between 2 and 3 is that the first influences the channel, partners, competitors, etc, and the second influences buying communities – CIOs, Architects, Developers, Banks, Telcos – however you want to define it (this is where defining the columns in a way that is relevant to your business comes in).
Category 4 is one that I have heard discussed subjectively through feedback such as “We like putting analysts from this firm in front of our execs because they are not afraid to tell us what they think, and what they think is often challenging, stimulating and helpful”. Put simply, the analysts within this category are the ones that you brief as much because you know their feedback will help to shape what you do as anything else.
The last category is self-explanatory.
How you implement the matrix is a level of detail that depends on what you are doing. You could complete one for each firm, giving them a ranking in each cell on the grid to understand where and how they matter to you. You could alternatively list the ones that are key within each cell to provide an overview for targeting and prioritisation of who you brief on what or attempt to build long term relationships with.
Anyway, I am sure I have missed something obvious, so perhaps one of the AR professionals out there could develop it further – unless you have one you prepared earlier :-)
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Community Oriented Analysis
There is an argument to say that an analyst firm with partnership and community principles at its core can never be as powerful as one that puts everything behind exclusively driving its own brand and authority. It is a line of reasoning that I heard frequently in the last company I worked in and it was a contributing factor to me ultimately moving on.
There is a difference, you see, between analysts being pleasant to each other on ‘the circuit’ and actually collaborating – by which I mean at the very minimum having an open and trusted exchange of information and ideas. Those who know Freeform Dynamics will be aware that it was built with collaboration as a founding principle from the outset, and we have maintained our commitment to this approach as we have grown and developed.
Now I know that some have had a snipe at us for our collaborative approach, saying the only reason for working with other firms when we started out was because we didn’t have the capability to go it alone. The reality is, though, that having spent over a decade as a business development professional in the tech sector, I formed the view many years ago that the partnership approach to doing business generally represents the next level of maturity after the traditional closed and defensive model.
Coming to the point of this post, the community or ecosystem model then takes maturity to the next level again, as illustrated by the three words that are most important to success for companies going down this route – confidence, trust and respect.
To me, and others like Redmonk, MWD, TekPlus and a few others, it made sense to bypass the intermediate steps that most businesses go through, the ‘growing up’ process if you like, and jump straight in at the highest maturity level. Ambitious, risky? Well not really if you have confidence in your own capability, have a naturally trusting mindset, and genuine respect for others.
Now as an analyst firm, if you extend the collaborative community idea to the way in which you interact with your various audiences, then you are taking the process of ‘analysis’ to the next level of maturity too. Firms like Redmonk and MWD were way ahead of us in this area, and when Freeform came into being, we just joined the party. I like to think that we added some elements into the mix with our community research model and Freeform methodology, but hat tip to James Governor in particular as an early pioneer of ‘community oriented analysis’ – he didn’t call it that, but I think this is a better description than the handle ‘open source analysis’, which has caused a bit of confusion.
Anyway, it is no surprise that the words confidence, trust and respect come into the equation here too, and there is a fundamental difference in mindset between community oriented analysts and traditional ‘old school’ analyst firms – the main one being that rather than adopting the role of ‘elite authority’, the community oriented guys think of themselves more as peers of the people they are advising or providing insight to. Their role then becomes that of a ‘catalyst’ rather than ‘preacher’, and their advice is as much based on aggregating, analysing and adding value to input from the buying and using community, as it is on more traditional means.
To underline the difference, if you really want insight into the real practicalities of managing a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, for example, the person who is likely to know best is the one managing a 2,000 user BlackBerry installation day in day out – not some analyst that has sat through two days of briefings in shiny offices in Canada or has made RIM fill out reams of paperwork so they can be placed on a subjective and theoretical assessment framework. Community oriented analysts acknowledge and respect that the real experts are often out there in the community, so the real value comes from harnessing community experience, combining it with sound analysis, and deriving insight and guidance that is grounded in the real world. All of the community oriented firms I have mentioned do this in one way or another in their various domains of coverage and expertise.
The proof of the pudding, of course, is in the eating, and I have to say that we receive a lot of feedback telling us that the community oriented model makes a refreshing change to the ‘market making’ approach of the big analyst incumbents, who tend to maintain one eye on end user needs and the other on inventing the next pseudo-disruptive concept and accompanying jargon to stimulate the coming quarter’s research renewals and consulting sales. Now don’t get me wrong, I respect what the big incumbent’s do, and acknowledge the need for organisations with a huge critical mass of resource to do all of the nitty gritty detailed product comparisons and hand hold certain customers during the buying cycle, but in a world in which most organisations have enough change to deal with already, let’s not pretend that the introduction of disruption motivated mostly by the disrupter’s business agenda rather than the customer’s is always beneficial to the buying community.
I’ll leave it at that for now and round off by saying that community oriented analysis, which by definition has the buyer and user community interests and priorities at its foundation, has an important and complementary role to play, which I predict will become relatively more important over time. It is, after all, a much more mature and empathetic approach.
There is a difference, you see, between analysts being pleasant to each other on ‘the circuit’ and actually collaborating – by which I mean at the very minimum having an open and trusted exchange of information and ideas. Those who know Freeform Dynamics will be aware that it was built with collaboration as a founding principle from the outset, and we have maintained our commitment to this approach as we have grown and developed.
Now I know that some have had a snipe at us for our collaborative approach, saying the only reason for working with other firms when we started out was because we didn’t have the capability to go it alone. The reality is, though, that having spent over a decade as a business development professional in the tech sector, I formed the view many years ago that the partnership approach to doing business generally represents the next level of maturity after the traditional closed and defensive model.
Coming to the point of this post, the community or ecosystem model then takes maturity to the next level again, as illustrated by the three words that are most important to success for companies going down this route – confidence, trust and respect.
To me, and others like Redmonk, MWD, TekPlus and a few others, it made sense to bypass the intermediate steps that most businesses go through, the ‘growing up’ process if you like, and jump straight in at the highest maturity level. Ambitious, risky? Well not really if you have confidence in your own capability, have a naturally trusting mindset, and genuine respect for others.
Now as an analyst firm, if you extend the collaborative community idea to the way in which you interact with your various audiences, then you are taking the process of ‘analysis’ to the next level of maturity too. Firms like Redmonk and MWD were way ahead of us in this area, and when Freeform came into being, we just joined the party. I like to think that we added some elements into the mix with our community research model and Freeform methodology, but hat tip to James Governor in particular as an early pioneer of ‘community oriented analysis’ – he didn’t call it that, but I think this is a better description than the handle ‘open source analysis’, which has caused a bit of confusion.
Anyway, it is no surprise that the words confidence, trust and respect come into the equation here too, and there is a fundamental difference in mindset between community oriented analysts and traditional ‘old school’ analyst firms – the main one being that rather than adopting the role of ‘elite authority’, the community oriented guys think of themselves more as peers of the people they are advising or providing insight to. Their role then becomes that of a ‘catalyst’ rather than ‘preacher’, and their advice is as much based on aggregating, analysing and adding value to input from the buying and using community, as it is on more traditional means.
To underline the difference, if you really want insight into the real practicalities of managing a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, for example, the person who is likely to know best is the one managing a 2,000 user BlackBerry installation day in day out – not some analyst that has sat through two days of briefings in shiny offices in Canada or has made RIM fill out reams of paperwork so they can be placed on a subjective and theoretical assessment framework. Community oriented analysts acknowledge and respect that the real experts are often out there in the community, so the real value comes from harnessing community experience, combining it with sound analysis, and deriving insight and guidance that is grounded in the real world. All of the community oriented firms I have mentioned do this in one way or another in their various domains of coverage and expertise.
The proof of the pudding, of course, is in the eating, and I have to say that we receive a lot of feedback telling us that the community oriented model makes a refreshing change to the ‘market making’ approach of the big analyst incumbents, who tend to maintain one eye on end user needs and the other on inventing the next pseudo-disruptive concept and accompanying jargon to stimulate the coming quarter’s research renewals and consulting sales. Now don’t get me wrong, I respect what the big incumbent’s do, and acknowledge the need for organisations with a huge critical mass of resource to do all of the nitty gritty detailed product comparisons and hand hold certain customers during the buying cycle, but in a world in which most organisations have enough change to deal with already, let’s not pretend that the introduction of disruption motivated mostly by the disrupter’s business agenda rather than the customer’s is always beneficial to the buying community.
I’ll leave it at that for now and round off by saying that community oriented analysis, which by definition has the buyer and user community interests and priorities at its foundation, has an important and complementary role to play, which I predict will become relatively more important over time. It is, after all, a much more mature and empathetic approach.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
What does analyst relations have in common with the Telco industry?
Back in 2000/2001, I was heading a team of highly experienced consultants at Nortel Networks that was put together to assist cellular operators in the development of their plans and activities in the brave new world of mobile data services. The interesting thing about this team is that it was deliberately devoid of telco industry specialists. My own background was in business software, having previously worked at firms like SAP, JD Edwards, Oracle and Sybase. The guys working with me ranged from an ex-Sony product manager, with years of experience bringing top titles to market in the electronic games space, to a consumer marketing specialist that had lived and breathed disciplines such as lifestyle based segmentation and aspirational messaging in the drinks and other industries. We also had human factors people in the mix to take care of situational analysis (e.g. based on the ‘day in the life’ approach) and usability.
The reason for assembling such a mixed bag of people was because the telcos we were working with were massively encumbered with their traditional view of the world, and needed help to appreciate that the changes taking place in the broader context meant success in the future was dependent on developing a new perspective, rather than maintaining or even extending the old one.
So what do I mean by this?
Well if you look at the traditional telco industry, the network operators had been used to being the all-powerful head of their supply chains, and even had power over a lot of the demand chain too (e.g. resellers of minutes in the high street). Basically, they called the shots in their world, and it could be argued for good reason – they were expected to deliver dial-tone with a 5 nines level of reliability so understandably wanted to control everything that was required to do that. It is also understandable that with this kind of culture and perspective, the aforementioned cellular operators tried to apply the same thinking and approach when they moved into mobile data services, viewing media companies and ISV’s, for example, as simply another form of supplier to control in the same way they were used to.
What our little team at Nortel was trying to do was get them to think less in terms of supply chains and adopt more of an ecosystem perspective. This was on the basis that the walls between their hitherto discrete telephony pond and the sea of activity in the media and applications sectors were disintegrating, and there were both bigger fish out there who weren’t going to fall in line, and smaller more nimble creatures that would sneak in and steal their lunch before they even noticed their existence.
Of course all this is very obvious today and operators like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, etc have now largely understood the imperative to take an ecosystem view of the world, but it has taken at least 5 years for this mindset transformation to take place, and many in the sector still struggle with it.
So what has all this got to do with analyst relations?
The challenge in the analyst relations community at the moment is that at aggregate level, at least, it is encumbered by a perspective and accompanying mindset that has its roots in history, just like the mobile operators of 5 years ago. Of course the specifics are different, but the general problem is the same. There was previously a discrete pond in which the analyst fish were swimming, with clear boundaries that everyone understood – and if you wanted advice and guidance on IT procurements, you would pay a visit to that pond. Now, however, the boundaries around the analyst pond are being compromised and the broader sea of influence is washing in. As a result of this, the notion that big analyst firms will continue to control the decisions that are made by the IT buying community is even sillier than it has ever been. Electronic media in all its forms, and let’s not forget traditional printed media too, are all part of the mix, and the decoupling of sources from delivery mechanisms, with analysts propagating opinions through the media, via communities of interest, and so on, is undermining those neat little taxonomies that AR professionals have historically gravitated towards to understand how they should be focusing their efforts.
If Freeform Dynamics is publishing research through Computing or The Register, for example, is it more appropriate to compare the influence of Freeform Dynamics with that of Gartner, or compare Gartner with the influence of analyst content delivered via Computing or The Register? I am making no claims here as a lot depends on who the influencee is and where they are in the buying cycle, just trying to point out that you need an ecosystem view of the world to make sense of this, as you cannot compare apples with apples any longer.
With an ecosystem view of the world, you also have to consider relationships within the influencing community itself. Let me take a simple example to illustrate this. If you are major SAP user and you are looking to make an investment that has a touch point with your core business systems, you are very likely to ask SAP’s opinion before making a decision. Now I happen to know that Redmonk has been doing quite a bit of consulting and ecosystem support work with SAP recently, and from direct conversations with people at SAP myself, I know that Redmonk has a lot of influence with that vendor. It is inconceivable that such influence is not going to bleed over into the way SAP interacts with and advises its customers.
There are lots of other examples of the ecosystem at work – e.g. analyst firms such as Freeform, MWD, Quocirca, and so on that work with the press and are routinely helping journalists shape their thoughts. Another example is our own Jon Collins, who is delivering educational presentations and facilitating workshops with the IBM architect community one week, and the Microsoft equivalent the next. And, of course, analysts are constantly moving and interacting within the IT supplier community itself – vendors, resellers, integrators, service providers and the like – and it is naïve to think that conversations taking place within this context do not influence who invites who into their deal when there is a big IT sales opportunity being worked in the field.
My bottom line on this is that there is more to analyst influence than directly sold advice, consulting and research subscriptions. I am not disputing the value or, indeed, necessity of such things, but I am challenging whether this should be the focal point for discussion and assessment of influence as it is only part of the equation. So while I applaud efforts such as the ARmadgeddon piece to unravel what’s going on in the space, the opening paragraph focusing on history and traditional business models underlines the all too common point of reference for many AR professionals.
I’ll get onto the specific question I was asked by ARmadgeddon to address on open source and sponsored research in a future post, but that is just a detail in the broader context I have been discussing here. Meanwhile, while I never thought I would ever be pointing to the telco sector for lessons on how to do stuff, I do think the change to an ecosystem perspective that telcos are going through is similar to the mindset change that needs to take place in the AR community. The transformation has started, and there are some great forward thinking beginning to emerge in AR circles, but there is still a long way to go.
The reason for assembling such a mixed bag of people was because the telcos we were working with were massively encumbered with their traditional view of the world, and needed help to appreciate that the changes taking place in the broader context meant success in the future was dependent on developing a new perspective, rather than maintaining or even extending the old one.
So what do I mean by this?
Well if you look at the traditional telco industry, the network operators had been used to being the all-powerful head of their supply chains, and even had power over a lot of the demand chain too (e.g. resellers of minutes in the high street). Basically, they called the shots in their world, and it could be argued for good reason – they were expected to deliver dial-tone with a 5 nines level of reliability so understandably wanted to control everything that was required to do that. It is also understandable that with this kind of culture and perspective, the aforementioned cellular operators tried to apply the same thinking and approach when they moved into mobile data services, viewing media companies and ISV’s, for example, as simply another form of supplier to control in the same way they were used to.
What our little team at Nortel was trying to do was get them to think less in terms of supply chains and adopt more of an ecosystem perspective. This was on the basis that the walls between their hitherto discrete telephony pond and the sea of activity in the media and applications sectors were disintegrating, and there were both bigger fish out there who weren’t going to fall in line, and smaller more nimble creatures that would sneak in and steal their lunch before they even noticed their existence.
Of course all this is very obvious today and operators like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, etc have now largely understood the imperative to take an ecosystem view of the world, but it has taken at least 5 years for this mindset transformation to take place, and many in the sector still struggle with it.
So what has all this got to do with analyst relations?
The challenge in the analyst relations community at the moment is that at aggregate level, at least, it is encumbered by a perspective and accompanying mindset that has its roots in history, just like the mobile operators of 5 years ago. Of course the specifics are different, but the general problem is the same. There was previously a discrete pond in which the analyst fish were swimming, with clear boundaries that everyone understood – and if you wanted advice and guidance on IT procurements, you would pay a visit to that pond. Now, however, the boundaries around the analyst pond are being compromised and the broader sea of influence is washing in. As a result of this, the notion that big analyst firms will continue to control the decisions that are made by the IT buying community is even sillier than it has ever been. Electronic media in all its forms, and let’s not forget traditional printed media too, are all part of the mix, and the decoupling of sources from delivery mechanisms, with analysts propagating opinions through the media, via communities of interest, and so on, is undermining those neat little taxonomies that AR professionals have historically gravitated towards to understand how they should be focusing their efforts.
If Freeform Dynamics is publishing research through Computing or The Register, for example, is it more appropriate to compare the influence of Freeform Dynamics with that of Gartner, or compare Gartner with the influence of analyst content delivered via Computing or The Register? I am making no claims here as a lot depends on who the influencee is and where they are in the buying cycle, just trying to point out that you need an ecosystem view of the world to make sense of this, as you cannot compare apples with apples any longer.
With an ecosystem view of the world, you also have to consider relationships within the influencing community itself. Let me take a simple example to illustrate this. If you are major SAP user and you are looking to make an investment that has a touch point with your core business systems, you are very likely to ask SAP’s opinion before making a decision. Now I happen to know that Redmonk has been doing quite a bit of consulting and ecosystem support work with SAP recently, and from direct conversations with people at SAP myself, I know that Redmonk has a lot of influence with that vendor. It is inconceivable that such influence is not going to bleed over into the way SAP interacts with and advises its customers.
There are lots of other examples of the ecosystem at work – e.g. analyst firms such as Freeform, MWD, Quocirca, and so on that work with the press and are routinely helping journalists shape their thoughts. Another example is our own Jon Collins, who is delivering educational presentations and facilitating workshops with the IBM architect community one week, and the Microsoft equivalent the next. And, of course, analysts are constantly moving and interacting within the IT supplier community itself – vendors, resellers, integrators, service providers and the like – and it is naïve to think that conversations taking place within this context do not influence who invites who into their deal when there is a big IT sales opportunity being worked in the field.
My bottom line on this is that there is more to analyst influence than directly sold advice, consulting and research subscriptions. I am not disputing the value or, indeed, necessity of such things, but I am challenging whether this should be the focal point for discussion and assessment of influence as it is only part of the equation. So while I applaud efforts such as the ARmadgeddon piece to unravel what’s going on in the space, the opening paragraph focusing on history and traditional business models underlines the all too common point of reference for many AR professionals.
I’ll get onto the specific question I was asked by ARmadgeddon to address on open source and sponsored research in a future post, but that is just a detail in the broader context I have been discussing here. Meanwhile, while I never thought I would ever be pointing to the telco sector for lessons on how to do stuff, I do think the change to an ecosystem perspective that telcos are going through is similar to the mindset change that needs to take place in the AR community. The transformation has started, and there are some great forward thinking beginning to emerge in AR circles, but there is still a long way to go.
What is this blog about and why was it created?
This blog is designed primarily as a vehicle to provide insight and commentary on the workings of the industry analyst community, particularly the community of smaller players in the market that live alongside the large global firms such as Gartner, Forrester, IDC, etc. As the broader nature of influence within the IT and communications industry provides an important context for the activities of all analyst firms, large and small, I also anticipate getting into that topic quite a bit as we move forward.
The blog itself was prompted by an invitation for me personally to reply to a point raised during a review of the industry analyst market that appeared on the analyst relations (AR) blog ARmadgeddon. This got me thinking about the need to balance the views being expressed on such blogs in a more structured manner, as input via comments attached to a blog post tend to be defined and categorised by the title and nature of the original post itself. Using a separate vehicle allows a discussion point or, indeed, a direct challenge (which is not uncommon in AR circles), to be dealt with by coming at the topic from a different angle. This is often necessary in a changing world when trying to counter preconceptions based on history, traditionally accepted wisdom, and/or the personal experience and position of others participating in a debate.
I have chosen not to use my main blog, Keeping IT Grounded, to deal with the topic described above for two reasons. Firstly, that blog is aimed squarely at the IT user and buyer audience, with posts reproduced in a number of online publications, so there is a need to keep it coherent and focused. It would not be appropriate to confuse things by mixing it up with content aimed at a different audience – i.e. people within the IT and media sectors.
The second reason for a separate blog is make room for other contributors. I’ll get it going with just me, but if there are any other analysts out there that would like to join in, just drop me a line and I’ll give you direct access. There will be no censorship and the only condition is that you write under your own name. While I appreciate the need for pseudonyms if you are working for a large organisation and do not want to be constrained in the way you express yourself, it is not a practice I want to encourage.
I’ll make one last point, and that is to say that maintaining this blog is going to be more of a sideline rather than a core activity, so you’ll have to forgive me if there are extended gaps between postings.
Better to get my apologies in at the beginning :-)
The blog itself was prompted by an invitation for me personally to reply to a point raised during a review of the industry analyst market that appeared on the analyst relations (AR) blog ARmadgeddon. This got me thinking about the need to balance the views being expressed on such blogs in a more structured manner, as input via comments attached to a blog post tend to be defined and categorised by the title and nature of the original post itself. Using a separate vehicle allows a discussion point or, indeed, a direct challenge (which is not uncommon in AR circles), to be dealt with by coming at the topic from a different angle. This is often necessary in a changing world when trying to counter preconceptions based on history, traditionally accepted wisdom, and/or the personal experience and position of others participating in a debate.
I have chosen not to use my main blog, Keeping IT Grounded, to deal with the topic described above for two reasons. Firstly, that blog is aimed squarely at the IT user and buyer audience, with posts reproduced in a number of online publications, so there is a need to keep it coherent and focused. It would not be appropriate to confuse things by mixing it up with content aimed at a different audience – i.e. people within the IT and media sectors.
The second reason for a separate blog is make room for other contributors. I’ll get it going with just me, but if there are any other analysts out there that would like to join in, just drop me a line and I’ll give you direct access. There will be no censorship and the only condition is that you write under your own name. While I appreciate the need for pseudonyms if you are working for a large organisation and do not want to be constrained in the way you express yourself, it is not a practice I want to encourage.
I’ll make one last point, and that is to say that maintaining this blog is going to be more of a sideline rather than a core activity, so you’ll have to forgive me if there are extended gaps between postings.
Better to get my apologies in at the beginning :-)
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