Master Class in San Jose on April 15

On April 15 Louis Columbus and I will host an AR Master Class in San Jose, CA. This unique event focuses on defending and extending corporate support for AR. It discusses the role of goals, measurement and reporting in establishing the right framework for AR. It also allows AR leaders the opportunity to discuss different approaches for developing sponsorship, visibility and active support for strategic AR.

April’s session will have three novel features:

• Some senior AR managers will join the class for our annual boardroom discussion over a working lunch. Those discussions are conducted using the Chatham House Rule: attendees are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of participants may be revealed.
• The master class also provides a unique opportunity for participants to book one-to-one sessions with Louis or I for in-depth discussions of particular interest.
• Master class participants will receive a hardback copy of Efrem Mallach’s book, which has been substantially expanded from under 200 pages to over 330.

It’s the first time we’ll run the event in California: it has been held annually in Boston or New York for the last few years. Subscribers to Lighthouse’s AR Intranet get free seats at the event; otherwise the master class costs $1250.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

Thursday’s webinar focusses on information channels

Most AR managers focus on content: the information that they think analysts need for their work. However, very few have a confident idea of channels: what specific ways of providing that information to analysts is most effective in different regions.

This Thursday’s webinar discusses the wide range of information channels, and connect them up to attitude factors with analysts, the inbound value of analysts to your firm and the growing importance of the “consultant difference”.

Introduced by Professor Efrem Mallach, this webinar will discuss:

• Eleven different information channels for reaching analysts
• The different types of analyst, and how theyir need for each channel differs
• ‘Best practices’ for providing information via each channel.

The webinar will be on Thursday 13 April at 8 am Pacific, 4 pm GMT and 5 pm CET. The event is free for subscribers to Lighthouse’s AR Intranet. Others can register online here.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

IIAR’s blog weighs in on ethics

The IIAR’s blog has a new post on ethics, referencing an article on this blog which is one part of a developing discussion.

Since the IIAR’s blog has an consensual editorial process, it’s a powerful signal of mainstream thinking in the profession’s leading AR community. I recommend it.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

Analysts vs. Bloggers: the discussion develops

Since writing on analysts and bloggers I’ve had some more thoughts and a lot of feedback, some of which is incorporated below. This blog has stimulated quite a few reactions, and I encourage readers to look at Dean and Dan’s comments here.

Pretty much everyone agrees that vendor-oriented market exposure is the primary motive for the analyst blogging going on today, and that firms with a large end-user client base like Gartner are being rational — for a number of substantive reasons — for not jumping in. However, there are additional thoughts for analysts’ motives on blogging –

• 1) Declarative living. For example, it’s a coincidence that the blogger happens to be an analyst, he’s really blogging to whinge about how much he hates business travel.
• 2) Professional peer networking. For example, trading technical thinking with a small group of peers in IT, vendors, or academia who flourish in their technical niche. Those motives of the analyst-cum-blogger are personal, not driven by the firm’s agenda.
• 3] Defensive motives. Where firms ‘blogwash’ themselves to avoid being erroneously labelled as a ‘social media laggard’ by small-scale competitors who can only advance their own agendas by taking the incumbents down a notch. These would be faux-blogs, not serious contributions to discourse.

I’ve also been involved in a fascinating discussion about blogger relations, and been pointed to a few articles which tie into some of these themes. They are best read in the following, chronological, order.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=438
http://redmonk.com/jgovernor/2006/11/01/blogger-relations-at-adobe-oracle-and-sap-and-a-bit-of-ibm-microsoft-sun/
http://www.johnsimonds.com/2006/11/more-on-blogger-relations/

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

Are Industry Analysts Objective? Or what?

Nancy Shapira-Aronovic, a Tel Aviv partner of Knowledge Capital Group, has triggered an interesting discussion on her blog. She asks readers what they think of KCG’s view that vendors cannot buy the opinions of Forrester and Gartner’s research and advisory services. The discussion is here.

She’s cites KCG’s Bill Hopkins making the comment in respect to what the firm calls ‘Deal makers and Breakers’. Ygel has nice chart on his blog to show who those firms are.

Her title, Are Industry Analysts Objective?, reposes the question very nicely. It would be mistaken to suggest that one can simply buy the views of top analyst firms. But it would be too sweeping to suggest that vendors’ commercial relationships with analyst firms, even the top ones, have no impact. Vendors are not buying opinions the way they buy advertising space, but they are buying an opportunity to shift bias and change the sources of information from which analysts are reaching their conclusions. As Carter comments in that thread, there is bias even in the top firms.

Opinions come from experiences. By buying analysts time, vendors can directing the analysts’ work and focus them on particular topics and viewpoints. There are many reasons to do that, and one is the common-sense observation that we tend towards the opinions of those we know more than to the opinions of those we do not know.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

A new look for Analyst Equity?

We are playing around with a new template for the blog, and would love your feedback.

Take a look here, and tell us what you think. The major feature of the blog is the improved use at categories to organise the different topics used in the blog. Over the years there’s a lot of content in the blog – our hope is to make it more accessible.

The template also draws more attention to comments, flagging them up on the front page and, in doing so, encouraging discussion and critique. However, that exposes us to more risk from comment spam. As a result, we’re turning on comment moderation. The alternative, registration, would prevent the many anonymous comments we get.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

Analysts don’t all follow each others’ research

One big difference between different analysts is the attitude they take towards each others’ research. Lighthouse’s free research tracking service, the Spotlight, includes our selection of the most notable research published in our four focus areas: telecoms, systems, services and software. Some analysts love the idea; other don’t.

Linda and Doreen, two of our research assistants, are on the phones this month to find out what analysts think about the Spotlights, and to offer free subscriptions to analysts that don’t currently subscribe. It’s a very uneven experience for them calling out to these analysts. Most analysts are very interested in reading what other analysts have to say; other analysts are a bit offended. You’d think they’d rather have their eyes poked out than read what their peers have to say.

Neither group is right or wrong. Many analyst firms have good reasons for discouraging analysts for follow the research of other analysts: the firms want to generate unique IP, and want to avoid using some of the proprietary vocabulary of their competitors. Other firms work through a process of reflecting and developing their ideas with an external peer community. Of course some of the analysts in the first group do subscribe to the Spotlight, but as a form of competitive intelligence.

It’s useful for AR managers to think about this difference too. Analysts in the same firm often won’t pool information with each other, and many analysts have little or no interest in what other analysts say. It’s a well accepted faux pas to try to use the opinions of one analyst to change the opinions of another. But if you find an analyst who is interested in what their peers are saying, it’s worth thinking about ways to raise the general direction of analyst research with analysts, and even find ways to bring open-minded analysts together. If they are reading our Spotlight, then they may already know each others’ names.

If you want to subscribe to the Spotlight service, just send an email to Linda at lighthousear dot com, with a note to pick your choice from the four available: telecoms, systems, services and software.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

Unisys "leads the pack" in the Lighthouse Services Index

Unisys has finally dethroned Accenture as the number 1 firm in the Lighthouse Services Index. Apart from being mentioned very positively in a case study relating to the outsourcing efforts of US Department of Health and Human Services, the firm has also won new contracts to jump up 4 positions and claim the number 1 spot. It will be interesting to see if Unisys manages to hold onto this spot against its rivals in this category.

Lockheed Martin, the winner of the NASA’s highest award for quality has jumped up 11 spots and holds the distinction of being the biggest gainer in this month’s Services Index. The firm has been mentioned prominently this month due to the rare incidence of destroying an errant space satellite and it is not hard to predict that it will find it difficult to hold onto this position next month. SAIC has also gained 8 positions and is now ranked at the 24th position. The firm has just won a major contract from the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment and along with Lockheed Martin is the new entrant to the list of top 25 Services firms monitored in the Lighthouse Services Index.

Cognizant was the biggest high profile loser this month as it dropped down 4 positions. The firm has announced excellent results for the year 2007 but has failed to maintain its share of analyst mentions. BearingPoint did also slide down 4 positions and is now ranked at 21 spot. Orange Business Services, the biggest gainer last month, and Fujitsu Services are the 2 firms that have dropped out of the top 25 this month.

If you wish to be sent the top 25 firms in Services Index each month, email us at analysts at lighthousear dot com. You can also read how we do our Analyst Index rankings, subscribe to our Spotlight service for new and interesting analyst research or register for our monthly Advisor Spotlight Webinars.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

Our friends need a Global Product Manager, and more

CoreMedia, my first client here at Lighthouse, is hiring. It’s an amazing chance to experience an inspiring and quite open organisational culture, and to live in one of the world’s best cities – Hamburg, Germany.

They are hiring a Product Marketing Manager, User Experience Designer and a Global Product Manager. This is what they have to say about the last of these vacancies…

Are you passionate about software and technology and love being involved in the development of innovative products?

Do you know which products and topics are going to be hot in the future and you already have your own ideas about making these a reality?

CoreMedia, the leader in innovative people-centric social software, is looking for a Global Product Manager with a solid technical background who can bring new and compelling products for enterprise customers to market. You’ll be given exciting challenges, a high level of responsibility and personal autonomy, and , respect and individual esteem. A great team, attractive pay conditions and many chances to further your career await you.

CoreMedia was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. With offices in Chicago, London and Singapore, it employs around 150 staff worldwide. If you’d like to be part of CoreMedia’s success, please contact doerthe.kleine-pollmann at coremedia.com, enclosing your resume in PDF format.

If you’re on the CeBIT show floor, stop by and ask for Gunnar.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.

The fundamentals for analyst relations that supports the business

Carter’s comments on how AR should respond to budget cuts should encourage AR directors to take a fundamental look at their AR programmes. We still think that most analyst relations effort is wasted. From top-to-bottom, AR professionals should review the goals, the challenges and the solutions – and take a realistic assessment of the internal support they can in obtaining the difference resources that AR programmes need to succeed.

Many AR managers struggle to show the measurable benefits of analyst relations:

• The increasing of analysts’ propensity to recommend the firm, which we measure though our multi-client Analyst Attitude Surveys. Other methods can be executed through your business development function, such as win-loss analysis and surveys of prospective clients.
• The profile of your firm in analysts’ research is strongly indicative of analysts’ confidence in recommending vendors, and can be shown through the Analyst Index.
• Mentions of your firm by analysts cited in the media are tracked in many ways. None are perfect, but our forthcoming QuickTier service will combine desk research with numerous third-party resources.
• Analysts’ guidance to your executives can give an undoubted boost to your firm’s operations. It’s easy to use analysts’ billing rates to monetize the value of the time analysts use to give you their insight. What’s harder is to measure the value their insight helps your executives to unlock.

However, there are a number of obstacles that many AR programmes struggle to overcome. These obstacles tend to flow from a common root. Generally, the subset of industry analysts that vendors-side staff come into most contact with is the set of analysts who obtain most of their revenue from vendors, and are highly focussed on a particular technology. Most vendor executives will find these analysts more satisfying to speak with than others with more customer influence.

• Often, AR professionals’ colleagues overstate vendor-centric analysts’ importance whose niche revenues comes mainly from vendors.
• The challenge for many AR managers is to find the analysts that clients will approach over the problem that the vendors’ technology solves. Often these will not be analysts specialised in the technology. For example, we could cite the example of a major bank looking to integrate credit card systems across state boundaries. The bank might speak to an analyst who follows financial systems in Europe generally, and might have no deep knowledge of very large databases.
• Vendors often can’t see the limits of ‘incumbents’ . The vendor might have a protected ‘cash cow’ niche, for example, in which analyst influence is weak, and under-estimate analyst influence in more competitive high-growth markets. Similarly, they might have strong relationships with an analyst house in their domestic market, but not understand that a different analyst house in influential in an attractive export market.

Our experience is that our IDEAL methodology is a powerful tool to help managers responsible for AR to ensure balance and focus in their work.

• Identifying analysts is essential if firms are to target their effort.
• To drive and develop AR, firms need to have a benchmark to show where they are, and how they can get to where they want to be.
• Engaging analysts requires a lot more use of resource-light ‘broadband’ communications with less influential analysts. Newsletters, spotlights, events, extranets, webinars, and conference calls can cover off a large number of less-important analysts. That frees up time to provide highly personalised, continuous, discussions with influential analysts.
• Alignment with the rest of the business is crucial. Existing resources need to used at every opportunity. Many more AR managers need to consider coaching and training for colleagues and agency staff who need to independently develop relationships with second or third-tier analysts. Spokespeople at every level need to be develop, and need to understand that the business wants to say to analysts.
• Leverage is where the programme stresses support for business development. AR managers need to see how they can feed back the results of the AR programme to the rest of the business. Support for press releases, white papers, ’silver bullets’ for salespeople, research spotlights and analysts attending events are effective routines that can grow into more strategic programmes of sales support.

© Lighthouse AR, 2008.