The State of The Industry Analyst

May 6, 2010 by 5 Comments

How’s that for a ridiculous title? This piece is nowhere near as ambitious as that; it’s a response to some typically provocative comments from Gideon Gartner, a founder and arguably the most iconic figure in our industry. In his blog post Advisory Industry, a future redesign: the Payment Model, Gartner challenges his readers to think again about the business model of technology research and advisory firms. I was moved to comment, as many others have been, and after posting my thoughts, I decided to put them up here as well. But before you read on, I encourage you to read Gideon’s post.  Go ahead – I’ll wait here. Read more of this post

Filed under Analyst Relations, Research Industry Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Oracle Ups EPM Ante

April 8, 2010 by 9 Comments

After a 2 year wait, Oracle is rolling out some fruits of its daunting integration efforts in enterprise performance applications. New suite bundles, an Essbase connector and Hyperion uplift are highlights of its Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) 11.1.2 release. The numbering scheme, evidently constrained by the overall Oracle level 11 nomenclature, drove the understated “11.1.2” moniker, but make no mistake, this is a major thrust – delivered in 15 languages and with a new focus on role-based thinking. The task-specific and vertical themes that dominate developments in enterprise applications were on display here as Oracle delivered Financial Close Management, Disclosure Management, and Public Sector Planning and Budgeting applications atop the Fusion Middleware platform that is the basis for further product portfolio integration in the quarters ahead. The architectural value of the Business Intelligence Foundation here cannot be overstated; Oracle is delivering on a well-thought-out model that facilitates a steady growth in product opportunities that will drive incremental revenues. Read more of this post

Filed under Data Management, Data Warehousing, Event Processing, On Business Intelligence, Software infrastructure Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

AR: Analysts Don’t List Themselves on Social Media

March 30, 2010 by 18 Comments

Several AR professionals have recently asked me how to find industry analyst blogs or Twitter addresses. The immediate answer was to send them to Sage Circle, where a pair of excellent directories are maintained. But the fact of the questions made me revisit the issue with a simple test: if I looked up biographies, would the “official sites” list those links for analysts? Astonishingly, the answer was no. Read more of this post

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PDF X-Change – Still The One

February 25, 2010 by Leave a comment

Nearly a year ago, I mentioned a wonderful product called PDF X-Change, from Tracker Software,  in a post. It allows me to annotate PDF files, which many vendors maddeningly insist on using for briefings. Why “maddeningly”? Because for me at least, the best place for my notes is in the presentation – it provides the context and I don’t need another window open. In PowerPoint I just use the notes at the bottom of the window. PDF X-Change is a free download, and takes care of the rest of the pitches I see. Read more of this post

Filed under Analyst Relations, The Computing Life, Software infrastructure, Vendor image and communications, Research Industry Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tech Marketers Need Friends With Benefits. No, Not That Kind

October 15, 2009 by 13 Comments

Every software product developer, and product manager, and sales rep, needs friends in marketing. And they need to be friends with benefits – benefit statements. Clear. Explicit. Specific for a particular stakeholder. Sound obvious? Based on the last month of briefings I have taken, it’s clearly not. Read more of this post

Filed under Analyst Relations, Vendor image and communications, Research Industry Tagged with , , , , , ,

Lively LinkedIn TDWI Discussions Exemplify Community IP Values

September 4, 2009 by 2 Comments

I’m not normally a fan of blog posts that do little more than talk about information available elsewhere. But I’m going to make an exception, because what TDWI has been able to do of late on LinkedIn has generated a good deal of conversation, information sharing and intriguing conclusions. Kudos to Wayne Eckerson for his efforts at getting this going as well as evangelizing it. Read more of this post

Filed under Data Management, Data Warehousing, On Business Intelligence, Research Industry, The Computing Life Tagged with , , , ,

Captive Analyst Bloggers: Break Free! You Have Everything To Gain In Your Links

May 28, 2009 by 11 Comments

I spend a fair amount of my time checking in on the blogs of people whose work I respect. Now that I am no longer an analyst at a big-brand  firm, I do this more than I used to – and I can now recognize there is an insularity “on the inside” that one becomes unaware of as it creeps up  on us over time. And the big firms want it that way – they have designed their blogs to be private islands, disconnected from the rest of us. Read more of this post

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PDF X-Change Rocks: AR Soft Copy Survey Participants Take Note

April 24, 2009 by 5 Comments

Poll results for soft copy survey

Poll results for soft copy survey

This is the third and final post on the topic of which format is best for providing soft copy of briefing material to analysts. After a few more votes were added, the combined total of PDF and annotatable PDF formats got closer to Powerpoint in our survey. The final total was PPT 29, PDF13, annotatable PDF 10. (See chart at right.) Read more of this post

Filed under Analyst Relations, The Computing Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

PPT Wins Poll on Analysts’ Preferred Soft Copy Briefing Formats

April 10, 2009 by 6 Comments

Preliminary votes and comments are in – nearly two-thirds of our 46 respondents as of April 10 prefer Powerpoint format to PDFs, and a small minority is using annotatable PDF format, though several didn’t even know it exists. (Adobe, are you listening? Some work to do here.) Key themes in comments from AR and analysts:

  • Some analysts like to edit PPTs; when they can’t get them, some resort to other methods. Forrester’s Oliver Young told us, “I take screen shots of almost every Webex or Go-To-Meeting session I end up in since so many vendors never bother to send along the slides.” We heard the latter complaint several times; Guy Creese of Burton Group has the numbers: “Half the time (I keep stats on this, since I find it so aggravating), I’m not sent the Powerpoint.”
  • PDF had its champions too. HP’s Gerry Van Zandt noted its broad platform support and backward compatibility; ”for those who DO use Office, you have the issue of the older Office 2003 .ppt/.xls/.doc and the Office 2007 .pptx/.xlsx/.docx files. If you don’t have the translators installed, it’s a pain.”
  • Send in advance; preparation makes the meeting more effective. Rick Brusuelas: ”allows analysts to prepare better (isn’t the point to get useful feedback?).” It also helps AR do their job better; Duncan Chapple of Lighthouse AR noted, “if the analyst gets the slides, then so does the AR manager, and that helps spokespeople to be more coherent over time.” Jocelyn Eisenberg likes the active role it facilitates for her: ”I insist presentation decks be provided to me in PPT format so I can edit them, if necessary, before sending them on to the analysts.”
  • Powerpoint’s file size can be an issue. Sandy Berman says IBM  ”sometimes sends PDFs if the PPT file is too big for the firm’s firewall or gateway or whatever it is that returns huge files to me as undeliverable.” Of course, there may be a hint in there about the contents of the file, too…

Finally, the file is not the point; communication is. Curt Monash, for one, doesn’t want slides at all, and rarely looks at them a second time. Last word to Henry Harteveldt of Forrester: ”What I CANNOT stand is the briefing organization taking me through slide by deathly slide. I learned to read at a very young age.”

The survey will run through April 20 and then I’ll do a wrapup.

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How Should AR Provide Soft Copies of Briefing Content?

April 2, 2009 by 27 Comments

I had a couple of quick exchanges today with some analyst colleagues talking about what method we like to take notes during briefings. We all have our own way of storing them, sometimes a company repository, or a personal OneNote archive. I’ve always used a folder for each vendor within which I store content that can be searched with Google Desktop or some other search mechanism.

By far, my favorite way to take notes is inside Powerpoint files that the vendor gives me. I can keep the slides onscreen and make comments relevant to the picture in front of me. If I have to have a separate window for a text editor, I have to go back and forth, and I can’t easily connect the comments to what is being shown.

Some AR people tell me they use PDFs because they don’t want the content re-used, especially if it might be changed or taken out of context. A fair point, but why tell analysts things if not to have it re-told? There are rules we all follow about NDAs and such, and if we don’t – well, you won’t keep talking for long. John Rymer of Forrester offered a good alternative – annotated PDFs. The content can’t be changed, but you can take notes. Fair enough.

So: a poll.
AR: Which method do you use? And why?
Analysts: Which do you prefer? And why?
Please share, and use comments for color, as always. I’ll report on results when we have a reasonable number.

[EDIT: Poll was removed April 24, 2009. If you have comments please do add them to the comments. See later posts for discussion of results.]

Filed under Analyst Relations, Research Industry Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

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