Curtis Breville launches geniusTek.net – Analyst Ecosystem News

Curtis Breville, an alumni of Enterprise Management Associates (EMA), has launched a new firm geniusTek.net. From their website:
 
“Two-decades of industry experience and a different approach bring unique business value to both technology vendors and end-users. geniusTek brings an unmatched perspective to businesses looking to make smart choices with technology.”
 
geniusTek.net has services for both vendors and [...]

GigaOM launches new virtual analyst network to distribute analyst research

GigaOM (see below for background on GigaOM) announced (click here and here to read the announcements) on Thursday May 28, the launch of GigaOM Pro. This new service is a virtual analyst network that will make available analyst research reports on a subscription basis. This report is based on a briefing for SageCircle by GigaOM VP of [...]

Automating AR activities with an ARM like ARchitect

Last week in Las Vegas Dave attended the ARchitect™ Users Group meeting, which was hosted by ARInsights.  This Analyst Relations Management System (ARM) and its features has been discussed in previous posts.
ARchitect’s new “briefing book” feature, which is about to be released, was previewed which sparked a lively discussion.  This new functionality allows clients to [...]

Cross-link your social media identify by adding your Twitter handle to LinkedIn profile

It’s important to raise the visibility of your Twitter handle to increase your followers, which could then give you insights about who you should follow. One of the simplest ways to raise your Twitter visibility is to place links to your handle in your LinkedIn profile. This is rarely done, but quite easy to do. 
SageCircle [...]

SageCircle Podcast for May 19, 2009 – Big Two 1Q 09 earnings; Survey of the Analysts; Spoken Word Audit

It is with great pleasure that we announce the launch of SageCircle’s newest free research deliverable, the SageCircle AR Community Podcast. The AR podcast is a review of the latest news and trends in the analyst ecosystem along with tips and tricks for analyst relations professionals and analyst research consumers. SageCircle strategists Dave Eckert and Carter Lusher [...]

Interesting post by IBM’s John Simonds on back channels to analysts

Check out The Back Channel, My Most Important A/R Tool for useful tips on an important subject. One of John’s key points is to not abuse the back channel, but to use it judiciously.

Knowing when an analyst is kicking off a research project – one of the paybacks for monitoring social media

Intelligence about what an analyst is researching is a huge value of monitoring social media (e.g., Twitter, blogs, or social networking sites like LinkedIn). Here are two examples of analysts announcing projects that showed up in my RSS feed this week: 
Debbie Wilson, Gartner, in her blog post Call for Strategic Sourcing Suite Vendors. “Today I [...]

SageCircle’s “Introduction to Twitter for AR” webinar

In the last year, the Analyst Twitter Directory has grown from 58 entries to more than 610 analysts.There has been similar growth in the AR Twitter Directory with over 370 entries. Both directories are being updated weekly with new names. So if some of your top analysts and your peers are on Twitter, shouldn’t you be on Twitter as [...]

Does Forrester have a conflict of interest with its AR workshop on the Wave and Magic Quadrant?

There was an interesting tweet this morning (see graphic on right) about Forrester’s new AR training offering.
Hmm, interesting question.
What do you think? Is there:

A real conflict of interest?
A potential for a perception of conflict of interest?
No conflict what so ever?

We are looking to the members of the analyst ecosystem community – AR, analysts, IT managers, PR, research consumers [...]

The facts point to Gartner not relying on consulting revenues

There was a recent comment to a rather old (August of last year) post. Because it is about something that we hear periodically, we decided to elevate to a full post to bring the comment and our response to everybody attention.
 The comment is from the reader who called himself “Me” and referred to the post [...]

AR job opening – Microsoft Windows

Title – Director, Analyst Relations

Product: Windows
Job Code: 256562
Location: WA – Redmond
Travel Required:

This is a senior leadership role in our corporate PR team that will be directing and managing Analyst Relations (AR) agenda for the Windows Business Group. This is a role with growth potential that owns the overall AR strategy for Windows in the enterprise [...]

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) lays off analysts

SageCircle has received credible intelligence, subsequently confirmed, that EMA has  initiated a job action resulting in analyst lay offs. We will continue to provide updates as we learn new information.

Update: 5/15/09 11:41 am PT – Sent request for confirmation to EMA’s press office
Update: 5/15/09 12:11 pm PT – Initial post and first confirmed names added name to analyst list
Update: 5/18.09 8:52 [...]

IT Analyst Reports is less than it seems

The following showed up in one of my Google alerts
“Complete, free analyst reports – Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester …
By admin
If you’ve ever tried to track down a report from an IT analyst, you’ll understand why ITanalystreports.com is quickly becoming the de-facto standard for finding…
IT Analyst Reports – http://itanalystreports.com/”
Well, at first glance IT Analyst Reports certainly [...]

What would make an analyst firm sales representative really great

During our “Managing Your Gartner and Forrester Expenditure” webinars and inquiries where we were helping clients with contract renewal issues, one comment we frequently heard was about the “great relationship” the contract manager had with a sales rep for an analyst firm. Often the definition of “great” turned out to be a rep that would not harass [...]

Example topics to post or tweet about

ne of the perceived hurdles for analyst relations (AR) professionals who want to adopt social media like blogging and Twitter is how to come up with all the content. While initially this might seem daunting, once you get in the habit of watching for relevant content it will pop out at you. Here is a [...]

Getting started with an AR-Sales Partnership is as simple as 1-2-3

any analyst relations (AR) managers perceive that an AR-Sales Partnership is a complex and time consuming endeavor which they simply do not have time to initiate. While a full scale AR-Sales program for a large vendor does take significant resources, getting started does not have to require a lot of work. Rather, AR can conduct [...]

Tweetparty works as a distribution list manager for Twitter direct messages

A nifty new tool for Twitter is tweetparty, which permits users to send a direct message to a group of followers. This could be a very useful tool for analyst relations (AR) programs as it enhances the efficiency of using Twitter. It provides for Twitter what a distribution list does for email.  There are a [...]

Gartner, Inc. Q1 2009 Earnings

This analysis does not look at areas of interest to investors, but seeks to pull out insights that are relevant to clients and prospects of the “Big Two” advisory analyst firms as well as communications and IT vendor analyst relations (AR) teams.
 Gartner, Inc. (NYSE:IT) announced its Q1 2009 earnings on May 8, 2009. See [...]

Vendors need to respect analyst firm copyrights

On May 6, 2009 the Gartner Ombudsman blog had the following post Gartner External Use Policy: We Mean It where they called out a vendor by name for copyright violation. The violation was clear: distributing a research note without purchasing reprint rights. Frankly, this sort of blog post is only a slap on the wrist [...]

Does your Sales Force Hunger for Information about the IT Analysts?

 At a multi-day all-hands sales meeting, one SageCircle client gave a short 15-minute talk to his company’s sales force on the IT analysts. After the meeting, the VP of sales brought to the AR manager’s attention that on the written evaluations of the all-hands meeting almost every sales representative mentioned the information about the analysts [...]

An analyst can go from skeptic about social media to fan overnight

hen it comes to social media usage by analysts, nothing is set in stone. For instance, Carter was having a conversation with an analyst from one of the “Big Three” firms who said:
“I do not have a blog and I refuse to sign up for Twitter.  However, I do read every blog by the vendors [...]

Encouraging your Sales Force to ask Questions

ne of the strategic initiatives AR should be focusing on is “Arm Sales – Close Business” which means creating training and tools for the sales organization to deal with analyst impact on sales opportunities. While this is an excellent idea, there is the not-so-small matter of getting Sale’s to cooperate.
Most sales organizations are manically focused [...]