Perhaps its fitting that the people who have opinions about the industry analyst business aren’t actually industry analysts. It’s kind of like the director of enterprise software research who’s looking to hire an analyst and turns down a half-dozen experienced individuals, citing the need for someone with an actual background in corporate information technology.
To be fair, it’s possible for someone from outside the analyst community to understand the business, but I haven’t seen too many people who really get it. Those who, most often, appear to understand are publishers who ultimately botch things by trying to reduce everything to plug-and-chug report templates and a tidy editorial calendar set 14 months in advance.
But to the point of what industry analysts do. Even as there are more of us, there seem to be fewer people who actually understand what we do…or how to use us.
Changing Times
There was a time, and that was many years ago, when an industry analyst could go to a conference, meet with a couple dozen companies, talk about their research agenda, and never get asked “when are you going to write about us?”
Of course, that was a long time ago, and perhaps it never happened. In my memory, I like to think that, maybe, SUPERCOMM ’97 was like that. With the passage of time, my only memory from that show involves me impersonating someone else in order to get into a Ray Charles concert.
For the recent past, I’ve been working in digital media, and most conferences in the media industry are sweaty affairs in New York city where everyone with a press pass gets run through a gauntlet of sales people who begin their conversation with the kiss of death, “Well, what questions do you have for me?”
Now that I have greater control over my research agenda (and travel budget), I’m back in the saddle, going to conferences where people actually know (and use) industry analysts.
And still, I find that the core business of industry analysis — inquiry, advisory and fact-based consulting — is becoming a lost art in a sea of “research” and hard drives filled with data sets, spreadsheets and the immortal Acrobat file.
So for the record. Here’s a quick primer on the industry analyst community:
1) History
The industry analyst community has its roots in Yankee Group, founded around 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts by Howard Anderson. Yankee’s original business was in the telecommunications industry, and it expanded into the information technology (IT) marketplace. I mention Yankee, because several Yankee alumni went on to found two of the leading analyst firms in the wold — Gartner Group and Forrester Research. Gartner is the largest analyst firm, followed by International Data Corporation (IDC) and Forrester.
2) Clients
Somewhere in the past, someone created the idea that industry analysts work with end users in corporate IT departments to figure out which technologies to select. Some analysts actually do this, and some companies (notably Gartner) that have built this positioning into their business. There are many excellent analysts who do extensive work with corporate IT end users.
And yet, many industry analysts also work with technology vendors in the same industry. There are many marketing people at IT vendors who believe that working with industry analysts will give them influence over IT decision making.
Beyond the horizontal Information Technology (IT) market, there are also vertical markets; such as financial services, retail, media and entertainment, and telecommunications; in which a similarly-focused set of analyst-client relationships exist. For example, at BIG Picture, our focus is on the communications industry, and the nature of our work with “end users” at telecoms service providers takes us directly into working relationships with technology vendors.
3) Syndicated Research & Data
Larger analyst firms schedule their research and analysis an annual calendar and publish accordingly. These published reports are often packaged with raw data sets, surveys, market sizing information, projections and forecasts — which are sold as an annual subscription service with online access as well as analyst inquiry.
4) Inquiry
Inquiry is one of the most important services that analysts provide. Clients are able to ask for answers to questions that may include anecdotes, data extractions, competitive intelligence, advice and other types of information. Most syndicated research services include a specific number of inquiries or a total amount of analyst inquiry time.
To put inquiry into context. Imagine being able to ask an expert to spend an hour getting an answer to something that would take you (or someone on your team) a week. It’s a way to quickly get up to speed on something, or to get a head start in solving an important question.
5) Fact-Based Consulting
There are times where inquiry just isn’t enough time, and that’s where analysts will come in for more extensive projects that include: training, competitive intelligence, architectural decisions, strategic planning, and so on. Industry analysts tend to work on short engagements and focused projects. For longer projects, especially process engineering and re-organizations, that’s when it’s time to call a management consulting firm.
6) Events
Over the past decade, the events business has become an important component of the analyst business. Many mid-sized and larger firms host numerous events as a way to build community around their analysts, clients and solutions providers to the industries they research.
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There are other things that analysts do, but this should give a quick outline of the high points.
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