How measurement of analyst relations programs has evolved to provide clarity in an uncertain world

The business of influencing the influencers has never been straightforward. Just getting agreement in the analyst relations community about what we mean by “influence” has always been the subject of lengthy & sometimes heated debate, but the evolution of new analyst business models, research methodologies and information delivery processes have added further layers of complexity.

AR professionals continue to be challenged by tightened budgets at the same time that the scope of their target audience is growing. Even the most disciplined AR pros who focus tightly on their key influencers sometimes find themselves distracted by their stakeholders pushing new players into the mix, and the deafening noise of others promoting their opinions via social media.

A well-structured targeting & tiering process is a key element in ensuring that you’re focusing on the analysts that matter to your company, however you define influence and however broad or narrow the scope of your AR program. I’ve written previously about why targeting is important and how to go about tiering analysts.

But then you still need to determine whether you’re getting cut-through with these analysts. And that’s a bit harder.

There are a bunch of things that come into play when you’re trying to measure an AR program. Some of them are subjective, some of them are a little more concrete. As I wrote a couple of years ago, there is no single metric which will define success in AR – and counting the number of briefings conducted is certainly not that! – but smart AR pros will use a range of measures to build an overall dashboard.

A big piece of the puzzle is some sort of objective measure of how well your AR program is working, and what it is actually achieving. How better to do this than asking the analysts themselves?

So here comes the self-serving bit. Intelligen has been running AR effectiveness studies since 2003, annually surveying analysts right across the Asia/Pacific & Japan region. Not surprisingly, we think that this is a really important tool for keeping track of the impact of vendor AR vendor programs, and so do many of our clients, who subscribe year after year.

Our study is called Understanding the Influencers, and it has constantly evolved to reflect the changing nature of the analyst business in APJ, plus the changing requirements of our vendor AR clients.

Over the past few months, we have undertaken a complete review & revision of Understanding the Influencers. We have sat down with analysts to understand what’s important to them, and how to make this study more relevant for them. We have talked with AR and marketing pros across the region to understand the sorts of insights they need, and how to deliver them.

So here are the big changes (and what hasn’t changed):

A new survey platform, optimised for today’s web

Although Understanding the Influencers started as a phone survey, we took all the quantitative aspects online fairly early – in 2005 – and since 2006, the study has been hosted by Novagenus. Over the past few months, the outstanding team at Novagenus have built a complete new survey platform for us in HTML5, optimised for modern browsers and tablets. The new layout is clean and simple to use, minimising the amount of time it takes busy analysts to respond. For the first time, analysts will be able to write in the names of vendors not included in our standard segment lists.

A new survey questionnaire which reflects today’s AR world

We’ve tweaked the survey questions many times over the years to expand coverage and address new influences such as social media, but this year we put everything on the table and analysed the value of every question. The core attributes we use to measure AR effectiveness remain (plus one new one), but other questions have been removed, updated, simplified and/or clarified. We believe that this will not only make it easier for analysts to respond, but will also enhance the quality of the results.

Native language support

For the first time, we are effectively running three separate versions of Understanding the Influencers this year – in English, Chinese and Japanese. While analysts in China and Japan generally read & write English fairly well, particularly in the large global firms, we know that it will be easier and less time-consuming for them to be able to engage in their native languages. We’re hopeful that this will also increase responsiveness from local research firms where English skills are not so strong.

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Qualitative insights remain important

A significant differentiator for Understanding the Influencers has always been the fact that we overlaid the quantitative survey with qualitative depth interviews with more than 20 senior analysts across the region. This approach has allowed us to provide deeper insight into why specific AR programs are working (or not) and what other issues are important to analysts. We will continue to conduct these interviews with leading analysts who really understand AR, plus capture comments in the online survey in English, Chinese and Japanese.

More tailored analysis for vendors

One of the challenges of this type of study is that every vendor segments its target markets differently, and drives its AR program differently as a result. What’s important to one vendor will be less so to another, and the tools used will vary depending on size, resources and geographic focus. At the end of the day, we have to categorise both vendors and analysts according to their technology & business focus, what we call capture segments. It is impossible to get that 100% right, but we think we’ve improved our ability to map vendors with their target analysts by revising and expanding the capture segments. While we’ve always provided our vendor clients with customised analysis, we’ll be able to add a great deal more precision to that this year.

Earlier timescale for research & deliverables

We got a lot of feedback from analysts that our November/December schedule for fieldwork often conflicted with their need to finish research projects by the end of the year, so we’ve moved the start date to early October. This means that not only can we leave the analysts to finish their research in peace, but we can also deliver results for our vendor clients a month earlier. This ties in more neatly with typical planning stages which often take place in January.

Understanding the Influencers 2014 goes live next Tuesday October 7. We’re confident that all the changes we’ve made will drive up response rates and provide our vendor clients with deeper & more detailed insights on how to engage more effectively with the growing group of influential analysts in the APJ region.

If you’d like to know more, send me an email.

Cheers,

Dave

 

New firms sprout roots in the Asia/Pacific IT analyst landscape

Like the markets it supports, the IT industry analyst landscape is in a constant state of change. Firms come and go, research agendas shift to new technologies, business models are tweaked & redirected, deliverables metamorphose to reflect changed information consumption habits.

The last few years has seen quite a bit of consolidation at the “top end of town” as larger players have bought up smaller firms which provide them with access to new markets or opportunities. Forrester acquired home-grown APJ firm, Springboard Research three years ago, and Gartner soaked up IDEAS International in 2012. More recently, 451 Research picked up Yankee Group, a shadow of its former self, and Informa Telecoms transmogrified into Ovum, which it had acquired a few years ago.

These deals have been well reported, but just as interesting is what has been happening at the other end of the market. The analyst business is a classic “long tail” industry – there are hundreds of companies which fit the broad definition of “analyst firm” – and there are few barriers to entry, so there are always new players.

Over the past couple of years, quite a number of new seeds have been sown in the Asia/Pacific region. Some of these have already borne fruit, some are still quite nascent. They all have different business models, different focus areas, different capabilities, and how well they perform remains to be seen.

But they all have something to offer. As we’ve noted before, any analyst firm can give you insights into a market or technology – how important that is to a vendor depends on its own market focus, information needs, budget availability & many other factors.

Very few analyst firms have true influence over end-user purchasing decisions, but many influence around the edges, or can help create exposure for vendors to build awareness or help them better address their market opportunities. These are all valid outcomes of an analyst relations program, just addressed differently.

We thought it worthwhile to profile some of the “new” firms which have come on to our radar in APJ over the last couple of years. There are also a couple of firms which are relatively new on the scene that didn’t want to be included in our coverage at this point, but we’ll likely hear more of them as they get themselves established. We make no judgment on the capabilities or likely success of these firms, and to avoid any allegations of bias, they’re listed alphabetically.

 BigInsights (Australia)

Big data is a big topic, and that’s all that BigInsights covers, offering research, consulting, go-to-market services & training. The firm was founded by a former HP colleague of mine, Raj Dalal, who also spent some time covering emerging technologies for IDC Asia/Pacific. Also on board is another ex-HPer, David Triggs – as CTO – and former IDC Australia software analyst, Shayum Rahim – as research director – while the advisory board includes Ramin Marzbani, who in the 1990s built the internet research firm, www.consult, before selling it to ACNielsen; and Vikram Mehta, who rolled the blade server business out of Nortel to create Blade Network Technologies, later selling it to IBM.

BigInsights’ business model is fairly “traditional” and primarily focused on vendors with specific big data products, but includes some end-user services including discovery workshops & training. Key research studies include an annual technology & vendor landscape, and demand-side research on big data technology adoption, both covering the Asia/Pacific region.

 capioIT (Australia)

It’s been nearly four years since Phil Hassey set up capioIT, so he probably has more visibility than some of the newer firms, but still merits inclusion on this list. For a one-man band, Phil covers a lot of ground within his focus area of emerging technologies & emerging markets – recent studies have included topics as diverse as BI & analytics, infrastructure services, Chinese tier 2 & 3 cities, and natural resources IT solutions – but broadly his strength is around IT services & enterprise software.

With a background leading IT services research for Springboard and IDC Asia/Pacific, Phil delivers research & consulting services to vendors, but also undertakes custom consulting projects for end-user organisations in Australia as well as in other countries in APJ. Unlike many analysts, he also invests a lot of time & some of his own money doing on-the-ground research in many countries.

 Greyhound Research (India)

Former Forrester/Springboard analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia started Greyhound just over a year ago, positioning it as an IT & telecom research & advisory firm, focused on emerging markets. While many of the pages on its website remain incomplete, Sanchit told us that the firm targeted three audiences – IT decision-makers, IT vendors & partners, and venture capital funds – and revenue was reasonably balanced across the three, with clients in India, ASEAN and the Middle East.

Greyhound’s services include free & paid research, custom research, role-based advisory, toolkits & speaking engagements, with broad technology coverage focused on five business themes. Sanchit is also fairly visible through his blog, AsDisruptiveAsITGets, and on Twitter.

 Progessive Digital Media Group (UK)

Datamonitor founder, Michael Danson, who sold his business to Informa in 2007, has recently been rolling up a range of publishing & research businesses across a range of industries. The firm most relevant to this space is Kable, which does detailed primary research on ICT usage in 14 industries in 33 markets, and which also owns telco research & advisory firm, Pyramid, and Strategic Defence Intelligence, which tracks the global defence business.

For the past few months, former IDC Australia & Datamonitor sales director, Paul Hodges, has been ramping up the APJ sales operation in Sydney, and is planning to add country & regional analysts over coming months. Collectively, the PDM businesses have an enormous amount of data on technology consumption & usage, so the potential to further develop services of interest to both vendors & users is high.

 Specialist Computing (Australia)

After covering data centre technology for more than a decade with Gartner & a long career in marketing/technical roles with major IT vendors such as HDS, Phil Sargeant established Specialist Computing last year to focus on storage technologies, as well as server & desktop virtualisation.

While strictly speaking a consultancy rather than an analyst firm as there is no regular cycle of research, Specialist’s services are primarily focused on end-users, including creating & evaluating storage RFT/RFPs and creating storage & virtualisation plans.

 Tech Research Asia (Australia & Japan)

Tim Dillon had an extensive background as an analyst – leading IDC Asia/Pacific’s mobility practice, establishing Current Analysis’ European analyst operation& heading up Asia/Pacific research for Current Analysis, among other roles – before setting up TRA two years ago. Tokyo-based Trevor Clarke, formerly IDC Australia’s lead infrastructure analyst and a former editor of Computerworld Australia, joined the team as a partner a few months later, with former Corporate Express/Staples CIO, Garry Whatley, coming on board more recently.

While TRA positions itself as able to assist end-user executives – and many of its engagements are with CxOs and CIOs across the region – the majority of its revenues are derived from ICT vendors and service providers.TRA has broad technology coverage – although its published research has a strong focus on mobility and the future of work – and says its primary focus is analysing the business outcomes from technology, rather than technology per se. All of its team are active on the regional speaking circuit.

Generally speaking, all of these firms have chosen to focus on market niches where they can compete effectively with some of the bigger players. Key advantages they enjoy include nimbleness & flexibility, unconstrained by the business models, research methodologies & market taxonomies of the more established firms.

Of course, they lack the reach & scale that give some of the leaders a certain amount of market muscle, and scaling up requires adding quality analysts, who are often hard to find. And while some of them will be capable of producing quality research across the APJ region, they will understandably be stronger in their home markets, simply because no amount of travel can compensate for having feet on the street.

From an AR perspective, vendors should be thinking about how, when & why to engage with these firms. Some will make more sense than others, but they’re certainly worth exploring further.

Have we missed anyone? Let us know if there are other new players we should be looking at.

Cheers,

Dave

It’s all about the conversation – why Gartner Symposium works at so many levels

As Gartner Symposium season draws to a close this week in Barcelona, it’s worth reflecting on what a powerhouse this event has become right around the world & why it’s become so important – for users, for vendors and – most particularly – for AR professionals. Regardless of your attitude about Gartner, you can’t ignore Symposium.

Events have become a serious business for Gartner. Although accounting for just 11 per cent – $US174 million – of Gartner’s 2012 revenues, they were the highest growth area at 17 per cent. The firm now runs close to 70 events around the world, some of them technology-specific, but Symposium is still the big kahuna, with eight locations globally.

The numbers are big – in terms of delegates, exhibitors, sessions and analysts. And dollars. What separates Symposium/ITXpo from every other IT industry event is that everyone pays to play – in Australia, delegates pay about $3,500 each (sometimes included in contracts), vendors pay $50,000 and upwards to buy a piece of real estate on the ITXpo showfloor, and cheapskates like me pay a few hundred bucks just to hang around the showfloor chatting to exhibitors, analysts  & delegates.

But the interesting thing is that it delivers value for everyone – it’s symbiotic. I’ve written before about how AR professionals should plan to get value out of Symposium, but let’s summarise how this works:

• AR folks get to connect with analysts through 1:1s & informal discussions, as well as introduce spokespeople
• AR folks get to hear about what analysts are saying about their companies & their competitors
• Vendor salespeople get to pitch to high quality prospects, including CIOs
• Vendor sales & marketing folks get to hear what Gartner really thinks about them, 1:1 or in audience
• Gartner analysts get rich insights about hot button issues from conducting back-to-back 1:1s with the country’s leading technology users
• Gartner salespeople get to pitch their services to users & vendors alike
• Everyone gets to hang out & talk about technology, business & stuff….

In this video I talk with a few AR-savvy vendors about why they commit so much time & money to Symposium. It’s obvious that all of them go there with some very clear objectives.

It’s all about the conversation. If you can’t get some value out of Symposium/ITXpo, you’re probably not trying hard enough…

Cheers,

Dave

Why LinkedIn is now more important than Twitter for tech analysts in APJ

While LinkedIn has long been popular with tech industry analysts in Asia/Pacific for some types of social media engagement, it has recently bypassed Twitter as the preferred platform for just about everything, as analysts focus more on how effective each platform is for engaging with their specific audiences.

It’s not to say that analysts have fallen out of love with Twitter – that’s certainly not the case – but it seems that they are less infatuated than they were. They are spending more time with their old flame, LinkedIn, and their new dalliance – a little surprisingly – is YouTube.

Why this has happened makes for some interesting discussion, and I’ll get to that a little further on.

First, some context around these conclusions

For the past 10 years, Intelligen has conducted a survey of industry analysts in APJ, primarily focused on analyst perceptions of specific vendor AR programs, but also exploring analyst preferences and attitudes on a range of issues. The most recent iteration of our Understanding the Influencers study was conducted in late 2012, and yielded responses from 132 analysts at 19 firms in 10 countries, overlaid with 20 in-depth qualitative interviews with senior analysts.

For the past two years, we’ve asked some specific questions about analyst use of social media, so we now have some comparative data to analyse. In short, we asked analysts to tell us whether they use key social media platforms for research and promotion “often”, “sometimes”, “rarely” or “never”. For simplicity’s sake, we equate the aggregate of “often” and “sometimes” to “regular” usage.

From a research perspective, analysts are using LinkedIn to search for subject matter experts (both users & vendors) and raise questions about user experiences in the many discussion groups; posting questions and testing hypotheses on Twitter; reading vendor and commentator blogs to gain insight into product and technology directions; watching YouTube videos to update on products, technologies and strategies; and many other ways of gathering information.

From a promotion perspective, analysts are posting links to research and events on Twitter and LinkedIn; earnestly expanding their networks on LinkedIn; building their personal brands through ongoing “news” commentary on Twitter; writing blogs which detail their research and/or opinions; and many other ways of raising their profile and building awareness of their capabilities.

The 2011 results were discussed in detail in this blog post, but in summary what we found was interesting and relatively unsurprising, confirming what we knew anecdotally. Nearly all analysts were using some form of social media, but fewer of them were using SM “regularly”, with analysts in India the greatest proponents. For research, analysts preferred LinkedIn & blogs over Twitter, while for promotion, analysts preferred Twitter over LinkedIn.

What’s changed in 2012?

When we compare the 2012 results with 2011, we can see that the usage patterns are fairly similar, whether we view them from a geographic or platform perspective. As there was a significant correlation between the response sample in both years, this gives us confidence that the differences are fairly real, not a result of sample differences.

In the case of the research results, there is a very strong correlation between 2011 and 2012, with a couple of minor variances. What is interesting is that the percentage of analysts using LinkedIn for research has increased slightly, while use of blogs & Twitter dropped at a similar rate, and use of YouTube increased sharply (although the volumes are lower).

From a promotion perspective, use of LinkedIn decreased slightly, but the decline in use of Twitter and blogs was much greater, meaning that more analysts are now using LinkedIn for promotion than Twitter. LinkedIn is the preferred platform for promotion in India and Greater China, while analysts in Australia use both LinkedIn & Twitter equally, and ASEAN analysts still have a slight preference for Twitter.

So not only is LinkedIn the preferred platform among APJ analysts for both research and promotion, but Twitter is now used by more analysts for research than for promotion. The delta between research and promotion use has grown – analysts are now more focused on gathering information via social media than just pushing out their opinions.

Why is this so?

There is a strong likelihood that LinkedIn’s decision to stop supporting Twitter last year has changed analyst behaviour – analysts who were previously posting to LinkedIn via their Twitter accounts are now using LinkedIn as a primary platform, often pushing updates out to Twitter. But many analysts are still using these platforms separately.

What has taken place over the past couple of years is a better understanding among analysts of these platforms, and which ones yield the best results – and it has a lot to do with audience.

For analysts, Twitter undoubtedly has many benefits. It is quick, it is real-time, and through the use of hashtags, retweets & searches it allows analysts to reach people they couldn’t otherwise even identify. But engagement is relatively casual & ill-defined, and there continue to be doubts about how influential it is in enterprise B2B purchasing decisions – this post from Influencer Marketing Review last week provides some interesting insights into how sheer volume of tweets has a very limited relationship with influence over enterprise software buyers.

LinkedIn is more “formal”, but it has the advantage of a known audience. LinkedIn members have detailed public profiles which allow analysts to determine how relevant they are to their research areas (and assess credibility), connections are made in a more structured way, and discussion groups bring like-minded individuals together in generally more substantial conversations.

Both platforms have something to offer analysts and will continue to do so, but it’s hard to see how LinkedIn will not remain the partner of choice. Analysts are focused on depth, detail, specifics & context, and that’s what they get through LinkedIn. But analysts are also opportunistic and self-promoters, so they’re not going to walk away from Twitter any time soon.

Personally, I find the increased uptake of YouTube just as interesting. Once upon a time, you could never have engaged the analyst community with video, but the fact is that they are watching more, and YouTube is an extremely simple & accessible platform. Done well, done smart & done in moderation, it has a lot to offer.

What does this mean for AR?

While we’ve seen changes in how analysts are using social media, the fundamentals from an AR perspective haven’t changed. When I wrote about this topic last year, I provided this advice to AR professionals, and I think the guidelines are pretty much the same.

But what do you think?

I’ve relied on both quantitative data and qualitative feedback to draw my conclusions, but what do you think? Social media is still an evolving area, so I’d be really interested to hear experiences from AR pros & analysts alike, plus answer any questions. Let me know – you know how to do it!

Cheers,

Dave

Constellation links with ITR to enter Japanese research market

Constellation Research has continued its foray into the APJ region with the signing of a research partnership with highly-regarded Japanese end-user advisory firm, ITR, which recently dissolved its long-standing association with Forrester Research.

Under the agreement, ITR will have access to Constellation’s full portfolio of research, which focuses on innovation & disruptive technologies, including digital marketing transformation, the future of work, consumerisation of IT, big data & analytics, and matrix commerce.

According to Constellation CEO & principal analyst, R “Ray” Wang, ITR will highlight Constellation’s Research in translated Japanese-language summaries for its monthly report ITR Review. From there,“we will work with them to provide the right package and access for the market,” he said.

Joint research projects are not out of the question, although Wang declined to provide details at this stage, saying only that they would “align with Constellation’s research themes.”

The choice of ITR as a Japanese partner is an interesting, but unsurprising choice.

Established in 1994, ITR has a long history of partnering with global research firms. Six months after incorporation, it entered into an agreement with Gartner, acting as its Japan research centre. This relationship lasted until December 1997, when the principals decided to revert to independent status, focused on research & consulting for the Japanese market.

A year later, ITR entered into a sales & research agreement with META Group, but this ended a few months after META was acquired by Gartner in December 2004 (perhaps not surprising). In June 2005, ITR developed a business relationship with Forrester, which largely revolved around translating & repackaging Forrester content for its local clients, as Forrester also had its own sales office in the country.

Initially, the Constellation arrangement looks quite similar, though it is likely that the relationship will evolve further.

ITR is an interesting firm because it has always operated as a buy-side advisory firm in a market where external advice is not always valued. It has a comparatively small roster of analysts (relative to Gartner & IDC in Japan), but they are generally considered knowledgeable, experienced & solid. Its penetration of end-user accounts is pretty much blue-chip in Japanese terms, and preceded Gartner’s more recent deeper engagement outside the technology manufacturing sector in Japan.

“ITR has a history of pioneering the IT research space.  We are honored to be their partner in Japan. Constellation’s focus on how to apply disruptive technologies to new business models and ITR’s sterling reputation, give clients an opportunity to collaborate on how new technologies will transform business models. We look forward to working with ITR to create new opportunities for companies in Japan to take advantage of disruptive technologies and business models,” said Wang in the firm’s press release.

The alliance is the latest in a series of forays outside Constellation’s US base, with the establishment of a market presence in India in 2012 and the appointment of an Australian analyst, Gavin Heaton, to lead the firm’s digital marketing transformation research only a few months ago. Wang said Constellation would continue to look for opportunities in the APJ region, as well as expanding into Latin America this year.

Like the previous moves, this announcement is not hugely significant in of itself. Rather, it is another indication of the subtle changes occurring in the analyst business, and plays to two key trends we’ve highlighted in previous posts – the huge opportunity that still exists in the APJ market, and the shift to focus on non-traditional IT buyers, as highlighted by Forrester’s push into APJ with its marketing & strategy programs.

One of Constellation’s key differentiators – which has both supporters and detractors – is its strong focus on engagement via social media, and it is unlikely that will translate well into a non-English market where social media usage patterns are starkly different. It will be interesting to watch how Constellation & ITR adapt these new business models in a mature IT market which still has a fairly conservative approach to analyst research.

Cheers,

Dave

Forrester eyes marketing & strategy opportunity in Asia/Pacific

As ICT vendors begin to focus more on the increasing proportion of enterprise technology spending which is not controlled by the CIO, Forrester Research has been quietly building out a program targeting the “new breed” of budget-owners in the Asia/Pacific region. Not surprisingly, China figures prominently.

While Forrester’s focus on delivering digital marketing & strategy services to line-of-business technology buyers in North America and Europe is well-known and now well-established, it has primarily concentrated on its mainstream technology services in APJ, particularly following the acquisition of Springboard Research in May 2011.

Although a long way behind Gartner, and despite only having a small number of buy-side analysts located in APJ, Forrester has been relatively successful in building up a client base among the IT departments of banks, retailers, government departments, FMCG suppliers and other large enterprises.

With the Springboard acquisition consolidated, Forrester is now eyeing the opportunity to tap into the wallets of large enterprises across the Asia/Pacific region that need help developing digital marketing strategies which will allow those organisations to more effectively sell their products & services to the world’s largest consumer markets.

Lead by a 12-year Forrester veteran, vice president Andrew Stockwell, the firm is well down the path of tailoring its services to meet the different needs of sales & marketing organisations in APJ. Stockwell relocated to Beijing in March 2012, a location which was chosen because “it’s the hardest place to find & recruit talent, it’s the hardest place to navigate the business, and it offers the biggest growth opportunity.”

“We did an analysis of our own research – what markets have the highest online population, the greatest levels of disposable income, the highest adoption of technology, the greatest opportunity for our clients? China came out number one in almost every one of these categories,” he said.

While cagey about revealing too much detail about headcount, Stockwell is actively recruiting local analysts, initially focusing on China and Australia – firstly to replace e-business analyst Steven Noble (no relation) who left to kick off his own tech start-up a few months ago, and potentially another Australian analyst. Singapore and India are also likely locations for marketing & strategy analysts, while Stockwell can also draw on existing resources in the US.

“We have been collecting data from consumers in APJ since 2007 – covering South Korea, Japan, China, Australia and India,” said Stockwell. “We have a good base of understanding about the customer, but the research we have been writing has been out of West, about the East, so we want to get a lot more localised about our strategy.”

While Stockwell doesn’t see Forrester replicating Ovum’s recent move to begin translating selected global research into Chinese, he does see local language capability as a key skill, with enquiries and consulting to be delivered by local staff to provide context around English research content.

“We can take a piece of research which has been written globally, spin it and add customer case studies and examples about what that means locally, and translate that piece if necessary,” he said.

“It goes back to who we are trying to serve – at the level we’re targeting, these people generally can read English .…  Our focus in the short term is not selling to the local Chinese companies, but on developing the content, the insight, the data, the analysis and the consulting that we can use to help the local representatives of multinational companies, or the clients who are sitting in North America or Europe or Australia or Singapore who don’t know how to get into China.”

From one perspective, Forrester’s strategy is not that different to that of firms such as Gartner and IDC, which initially built their China – and some other APJ country – operations to support the market entry strategies of multinational IT vendors. Those operations have since broadened significantly, with Gartner generating growing revenue from the IT organisations of Chinese companies and IDC now boasting a full complement of analysts across all of its Insights vertical market research practices.

That Forrester will gain initial success in China with companies with which it already does business in North America and Europe is undoubted – it has a global reputation, if a more limited global presence. The number of prospects is considerable, but ultimately Forrester will need to turn its attention to local companies in China and other country markets, a long-term objective which Stockwell acknowledged.

It will also have to deepen its local research, and that is much closer on the horizon. Forrester currently surveys about 10,000 consumers in the top 10 to 12 cities in China (the largest cities known as Tier 1 & 2), but Stockwell wants to extend that research to Tiers 3 through 6 – there are more than 160 cities in China with populations of more than one million, which is why companies selling to consumers are so eager to invest in China. There are also plans to extend the consumer research into other countries in the region, including Indonesia – which has the third-largest population in the region after China & India, and a growing middle class.

That these companies are also buying technology outside of the conventional IT frameworks is also without doubt. Non-IT buyers have become a significant focus for vendors such as IBM and SAP over the past couple of years, a period which has also seen the emergence of specialist analyst firms focused on the digital marketing space, such as Altimeter and Constellation, which recently appointed Gavin Heaton to lead digital marketing research from Australia.

“Companies are now seeking competitive advantage from new areas, which means they need a better understanding of the customer, to provide a better customer experience. So we want to focus on where the decisions are being made, where the budgets are being held,” said Stockwell.

“We have been saying for a long time that you don’t want to choose your technology, then define your objectives. You figure out the people you want to target, then determine your business objectives, then work out your strategy, and then decide on the technology.”

That all of the key current technology trends – cloud, big data, mobility & social media – play directly to the marketing & strategy space adds another layer of interest around this gradual shift away from IT departments being the owners of all technology spending, and how analyst firms are dealing with that shift.

It is still early days, but it will be interesting to watch & see if Forrester’s foray is successful. And just as interesting to see who else follows…. What do you think?

Cheers,

Dave

10 things I’ve learned about AR & the analyst business – and that you should know too…

It’s that time of year when just about everyone in the analyst business and the broader technology industry comes up with their prognostications and predictions for the year ahead. Inevitably, many of those will prove wildly inaccurate, overly optimistic or simply embarrassing.

So rather than fall into that trap, I decided to cast my mind back and consider what I have learned about analyst relations and the analyst business in APJ over 10 years of running the only independent AR consultancy in the region (that milestone ticked over in November), working with dozens of vendor clients and engaging with hundreds of analysts.

Here’s my list. I’ve written about some of these issues before at length – you’ll find more detail on previous posts. And while I’ve thought a bit about the rankings, this is just my perspective. Don’t be afraid to give me your thoughts.

1.         It’s the relationship, stupid

AR is all about creating a two-way dialogue between a vendor and an analyst. Relationship builders take the time to understand the analyst’s interests & needs, and personalise the engagement accordingly, but they’re also pretty good at creating internal executive support for AR, which is when the magic happens. A good relationship builder with a weak story and/or content will mostly do better than an average engager with great content

2.         Most analysts are decent human beings

Yes, some are arrogant, anally-retentive or just downright difficult, but 99% of the time they’re trying to do the right thing for their clients. An engagement approach that recognises this can turn an adversary into an advocate. Analysts also need to have some relationship skills, and dickheads just don’t last.

3.         Vendors will continue to under-invest in APJ

I’ve written about this before, and sadly it’s just a reality of the technology business in this region – it applies as much to overall marketing & sales investment as it does specifically to AR. Vendors have a poor track record of making decisions at HQ which don’t take into account the growth & needs in emerging markets, and the current global economic situation isn’t going to change that. (But reading the goat entrails available to me, I feel cautiously optimistic that the needle is swinging back a little in 2013, after a very lacklustre 2012).

4.         Many vendors just don’t “get” AR – nor do some analysts

Some vendors will never “get” AR, simply because they don’t try to understand the value that analysts provide, or how they are differentiated from other influence communities. Their loss. On the flip side, some analysts fail to see that most AR professionals are advocates for analysts, not gatekeepers – despite all the evidence to contrary. It’s not a perfect world…

5.         Analyst targeting is the most important element of any AR program

Full stop. Understanding your audience is the cornerstone of any marketing or influence program, and AR is no different. Targeting is the first step, tiering is the second, engagement approach follows. All analysts have different needs & require different approaches, regardless of their prioritisation.

6.         Influence is global/regional, but engagement is local

Many analysts engage with clients right across the world, not just in their home countries or cities, and it’s important to understand where individual analysts have impact. But it’s much more important to engage with analysts in their own timezones. Regardless of how you manage that, you can’t assume that information will trickle down to an influential analyst who’s sleeping when you decide to run a briefing.

7.         Training spokespeople to engage with analysts is a no-brainer

Why wouldn’t you want to give your executives the best possible preparation for engaging with key influencers? Dealing with analysts is not that complex, but it is not innate, and spending a few hours upfront demystifying the analyst business yields immediate benefits and also avoids embarrassing outcomes.

8.         Measuring results is critical to AR success

You might consider this a bit self-serving, considering I provide a measurement program, but really – if you’re not measuring what you’re doing, then what are you doing? Don’t try to measure everything, and focus on measuring where you’ve actually influenced analyst perceptions – this is where you’ll demonstrate value to your internal stakeholders (and holders of the purse-strings).

9.         Some vendors will continue to confuse running analyst summits with an AR program

Sad, but true. An analyst summit is a one or two-day event which provides the opportunity to showcase your key messages, introduce some key customers, dig into some nitty-gritty around technology or go-to-market strategy, and develop relationships between key executives and analysts. An AR program is a day-to-day interaction process which ensures that analysts get the information they need, when they need it – and ensures those relationships prosper. To do the first without the second is a waste of time, effort & money.

10.       Change in the analyst landscape is a natural state

It is for every other business, so why not analysts? Firms will continue to grow & prosper. Some will be acquired because they offer something different, others because they have lost focus but retain analyst value and/or an interesting client base. Analysts will continue to become disgruntled with their employers, then quit to explore new markets, business approaches and delivery models. And so the cycle continues…

Just one more thing, which doesn’t require a number of its own…

In 2013, doing AR will continue to be fun/challenging/rewarding/ frustrating/boring/exciting/bloody hard work/just a breeze… Pick your adjective – it will be all of the above, and more, but the one thing I hope is that for AR pros and analysts alike : it will be worthwhile!! And fun, of course…

So tell me what you think. Have I missed anything? Would you rank these points differently?

Cheers,

Dave

Ovum’s three-pronged strategy to increase its relevance in Asia/Pacific

Ovum is planning to up its commitment to the Asia/Pacific region with a three-pronged strategy – translating current research into Chinese; increasing the level of primary research conducted at a country level; and selective recruitment of analysts and support staff.

Speaking during a visit to Australia last week, the global firm’s managing director, Brett Azuma, acknowledged that Ovum had not met the needs of clients in China and other parts of the region by only delivering its research in English, and so was now focusing on providing services and support in other languages.

Best known for its focus on telecommunications, Ovum also has solid coverage of enterprise IT – primarily software & services. In APJ, its major concentrations of analysts are in Australia and India, with other analysts and consultants scattered throughout the region. In Australia, it has a strong analyst roster focused on telco, IT services & cloud, public sector and financial services, while its Indian analysts are primarily focused on telco and enterprise solutions.

Azuma said that Ovum had hired a marketing assistant in China to initiate the translation project, which will involve machine translation of reports and summaries, with manual verification. Its marketing website, Ovum.com, will also be translated into Chinese.

“We’re planning a Chinese language version of the Knowledge Centre. Although not every report will be translated, there will be the ability to request reports in Chinese. By making translated report summaries available, our non-English reading audience will be able to identify reports of interest to them. We also produce a great deal of quantitative research which requires considerably less translation to make it useable for our clients,” he said.

“If we’re serious about making an impact in China, then we realise that considerable investment will be needed, and we’re 100% committed to make this happen.”

While there is plenty of technology research available in Chinese, most of it is produced in China for local consumption, or to assist multinational vendors with China market entry. Ovum’s decision to deliver global research into China in local language is an unusual one – and a fairly bold one – which will differentiate it from its key competitors.

Azuma said that Ovum was actively recruiting in China, but didn’t talk about specific roles or numbers. However, he did say that language skills are important and it will play a major factor in the recruitment process globally.

“Vertical expertise is country or at least regionally -specific, so we will have country/regional experts based in the AP region, he said.  Beyond the focus on China, Ovum is also increasing the volume of primary demand-side research it conducts across the region – and around the world. It uses its own survey platform and designs the questionnaires, but outsources the data collection & consolidation.

“AP was the first region in which we conducted a vast array of country-specific primary research, which we packaged up as CIO Executive Insights. This has been highly successful and now serves as an excellent template to roll out to the rest of the world,” Azuma said.

The firm is also looking to deepen its engagement with vendors and service providers through a focus on sales enablement with its lead generation product, ICT Sales Prospector.

“This is part of a long-term trend towards diversifying our product set, which helps our vendor clients sell more effectively, and allows our enterprise customers to buy more effectively,” Azuma said.

Taken individually, each of these tactics is interesting, but hardly a game-changer. Collectively, though, they have the potential to increase the relevance of Ovum in many countries across a region which remains under-penetrated and under-supported.

As always, the challenge lies in the execution. From a headcount perspective, Ovum has roughly the same number of analysts in APJ as Forrester, with both of them a long way below IDC, Gartner and Frost & Sullivan.

Finding the people with the right skillsets to increase that number will not be easy, nor will breaking into markets such as China, where insight & advice from external consultants is not valued as highly as it is in western countries. But if the analyst business in the APJ region is to continue to grow, then it’s a worthy goal.

What do you think? Will Ovum’s strategy work? What other challenges will they face? Join the discussion below.

Cheers,

Dave

There’s still plenty of upside for the analyst business in Asia/Pacific…

At first glance, the technology analyst business in Asia/Pacific looks pretty mature – the first global firms established their beachheads in the late 1970s, there are many analysts now who can measure their tenure in decades rather than years, and there has been an ongoing process of consolidation which is typical of maturing industries.

But when you look more closely, it seems that the analyst business in this part of the world is still under-penetrated. And by a fair degree….

The Asia/Pacific region is all about growth – everybody knows that. Not just for technology, but for everything – consumer goods, manufacturing, professional and personal services, airlines, you name it… Due to their sheer population size and rate of growth, China and India attract most of the attention, but there are plenty of smaller economies in Asia which are belting along while the US and Europe try to figure out whether they can pay their bills.

All this growth creates an appetite for technology, which is why so many global vendors have a strong focus on APJ. Many of them get their best growth figures from this region, quarter after quarter, and they don’t see that changing – Symantec’s regional senior VP, Bernard Kwok, was quoted today as saying that the company would double its business in the next five years.

Some big vendors aren’t even really here yet! Analysts tweeting out of Dreamforce today quoted Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff as saying that the company hadn’t entered China yet (although its website lists offices in Shanghai and Beijing). However you look at it, though, that vendor has hardly scratched the surface in APJ.

And then there are the local vendors…. Software and services suppliers from India, communications equipment vendors from China, the established hardware manufacturers from Japan and South Korea, and lots of start-ups right across the region developing applications, tools and solutions for their local markets.

Every analyst firm I talk to in this part of the world says business is good – they’re sharing in this growth, but not at the same levels as their clients. And when you break down the numbers around the analyst business in APJ, you get the feeling that there’s still plenty of upside, and those firms that ratchet up their level of investment are going to reap the benefits.

So let’s look at the numbers.

I’ve consolidated these from analyst firm websites and my own databases, and I regard them as good estimates, but they may not be 100% accurate. Indeed, the total analyst workforce numbers quoted on the firm websites appear to be “rounded” and may in fact understate the case, and some of them use vague terminology so it’s difficult to make exact comparisons.

IDC

There’s no doubt that IDC is the biggest technology analyst firm in APJ. It employs approximately 230 analysts who are located in 14 countries, accounting for something like 23 per cent of the “more than 1,000 analysts” that its website says it employs worldwide. Interestingly, IDC employs the same number of analysts in China – 45 – as it does in its Singapore regional headquarters, with Japan the next largest office, followed by Malaysia, then India.

 Gartner

Gartner established its first Asia/Pacific office in Australia in the late 1970s, just after IDC, and expanded progressively across the region. It added significant headcount with the acquisition of Dataquest in 1995, and the majority of its analyst hires more recently have been in China and India. Gartner employs approximately 120 analysts in APJ – out of a global total of 800, or 15 per cent – in offices in 10 countries. Japan is its largest office by analyst numbers, followed by Australia and India, with China still relatively small.

Forrester

Until its acquisition of Singapore-based Springboard Research in May last year, Forrester had very little presence in APJ – a couple of analysts in Australia, and one in Japan. There are now about 40 analysts & researchers employed by the firm in APJ, the majority of them in India, although it also has reasonable presence in Singapore, Australia and China. But this figure is just 9 per cent of its worldwide headcount of 450 “research professionals.”

 Ovum

Ovum employs the largest percentage of its analysts in APJ – just over one-quarter – but as a European firm, it doesn’t have a large number of analysts in North America. Its website says it employs 140 analysts and consultants worldwide, and about 36 are in APJ – primarily in India and Australia.

Frost & Sullivan

Frost’s website says it employs 1,800 analysts and consultants worldwide, but getting any insight on how many of those actually focus on technology – as opposed to the other industries Frost also researches – is pretty hard. In APJ, Frost’s technology focus is primarily on telecommunications, contact centre and some other specific segments such as information security, but the regional organisational structure is a little complex, and in some countries, analysts don’t specialise in a single industry or topic. I’d estimate about 70 fulltime technology analysts in APJ, but the number could be higher.

Apart from those five global firms, there are probably another 30 or so firms with some sort of analyst presence in APJ. As well as US and European firms which employ a handful of analysts in the region, this group includes advisory firms in Australia such as IBRS and Longhaus; Japanese “numbers houses” such as Yano and MIC; and the intriguing Chinese players such as CCID and Analysys International.

According to my friends at KCG, there are about 350 “real” analyst firms worldwide, which means that just 10 per cent of them have some sort of analyst presence in APJ. Granted, many of those firms are quite small, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t or shouldn’t be investing in the real growth opportunities that exist in this region.

There are plenty of gaps in the research portfolios of the larger firms too. For example, deep focus on technology in specific industries is limited, and very little attention is paid to non-traditional purchasers of technology. There are huge provincial markets in China for which there is very little good market intelligence, while coverage of emerging markets such as Vietnam has barely scratched the surface.

APJ is one of the major growth engines of the global economy for the foreseeable future, so you would think the analyst firms would be throwing resources at this region to cash in. That doesn’t seem to be the case, but maybe that will change – after all, it’s all upside.

Cheers,

Dave

It’s Symposium season! What should AR pros do to prepare?

UPDATE: Some things change, some things don’t. One thing that doesn’t change is Gartner Symposium – it rolls around like clockwork every year. And another thing that doesn’t change is the need for APJ AR pros to have a plan to get the most out of their attendance at Symposium. And the time to start planning is now.

Gartner is again running three events in APJ – Tokyo October 15-17, Goa October 21-24, and Gold Coast October 28-31. From an APJ AR perspective, the Gold Coast is probably the most important one, but the other locations also offer the opportunity for plenty of engagement with analysts from across the region & around the world (although the Tokyo event is a little more local in focus).

This year’s theme is “Leading in a Digital World” – hardly earth-shattering, but we would be more surprised if it was something very different to this! This theme plays through all of the tracks, and most notably the CIO stream. Sadly, the CIO sessions are pretty hard for vendor AR folks to get into, so you might have to rely on chatting to a friendly end-user executive to get any insights from that stream…

In terms of changes, the most notable this year is the introduction of a full day of sessions devoted to seven vertical markets – banking, education, energy & utilities, government, healthcare, manufacturing and retail – indicating that industry insights are becoming just as critical as technology understanding.

Below is a post I wrote a year ago, providing advice to AR pros about what they need to do to prepare for Symposium. That advice remains true today, so it’s worth taking a few minutes to review, even if you read it last year. It’s also worth checking out the short video interview with Gartner’s Ian Bertram, who also provides some sound advice.

Just as Gartner itself is the 800-pound gorilla of the industry analyst business, Symposium/ITxpo has become the dominant analyst event as the firm has continued to invest and expand across the globe. The portfolio now includes eight separate events – three of them in the Asia/Pacific & Japan region – enticing thousands of high-quality, paying delegates to invest up to a week of their valuable time to listen to and engage with the cream of Gartner’s analysts.

The events business is big business for Gartner, and it’s growing. In 2011, Gartner generated a touch under $US150 million from events, a 21% increase over 2010. That’s only 10% of Gartner’s total revenues, but it equates to more than half of Forrester’s total 2011 revenues.

The events business is getting bigger for other firms too – as I write, Forrester is running its first CIO Summit in Singapore, and IDC runs a continuous stream of conferences, summits and other events across the major cities in APJ. But it’s the sheer scale of Gartner Symposium/ITxpo that means that AR pros need to take it seriously, and need to put a plan in place if they want to get the maximum benefit out of attending.

I’ve attended most of the Symposiums held in Australia since the late 1990s, both as a full fee-paying delegate and via the cheaper option of a showfloor (ITxpo) pass only. I also attended the Orlando extravaganza – on a showfloor pass – in 2008, when the onset of the global financial crisis dampened attendances and enthusiasm.

There are two things I’ve learnt from these experiences – if you plan well and work smart, you’ll get value out of Symposium; and as an AR pro attending the APJ events, you get way more access to the people who matter to you – the analysts, the customers and the Gartner executives – than you could ever hope for at the Orlando event, where it’s just too easy to get lost in the crowd.

As a consultant, I get much of my value from networking so I spend a lot of time on the showfloor – and hanging around near the one-on-one desk – where I can catch up with analysts as well as vendors. Inhouse AR pros will get value from this approach too, but need to spend a lot more time attending sessions, so you know exactly what analysts are saying about you.

Another way to know exactly what analysts are saying about you is to engage with them directly well in advance of Symposium – about now is a good time start, if you haven’t already.

That’s where the benefits of planning come to fruition. Well before getting on a plane, AR pros should know which analysts are speaking (and doing one-on-ones), which of their colleagues are attending, and which key customers are attending. They should have a pretty good idea of which sessions they’re going to attend, who they need to set up meetings with, and how they’re going to spend their time.

Once you get there, it’s just a case of executing on your plan. And knowing that you’re going to have to adapt that plan on the fly as new opportunities arise and others disappear.

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down with Ian Bertram to talk about what AR pros should do before and at Symposium to get the most value. As well as being the global manager of Gartner’s analytics and business intelligence research, Ian is the head of research for APJ and also leads the vendor relations function in this region. A 14-year veteran of Gartner, Ian has attended his fair share of Symposiums too, so his advice in this video comes from experience, and is pretty much the same as what I give my clients.

So, just one more piece of advice from me – work hard, but make sure you have fun! Symposium really can be an enjoyable experience…

Of course, more suggestions for best practices at Symposium – or any analyst event – are welcome, so just hit the comments box.

cheers,

Dave