Are you checking for the year-end prediction research notes?

Well, it’s that time of the year when thoughts turn to holiday parties, mistletoe and… the annual deluge of analyst predictions for the coming year. For example, the rollout of Gartner Predicts research notes started in November with 44 published so far. Another example is IDC starting its series of industry Top 10 Predictions webinars and reports. There are many more examples from single practitioners to major firms. 

Many in the vendor community dismiss the annual flurry of predictions because they perceive them to be fluff with extremely short shelf lives. It is also easy to miss these annual notes if you have alerts keyed to your company name because companies are not often mentioned in the notes. However, your sales people can be blindsided by one of these notes if the analyst denigrates your market, even if your company is not directly mentioned. Don’t be surprised if the content of a prediction appears to be a little wild-eyed and out of character for your favorite sober-sided analyst – they are encouraged to write in an edgy style in order to be entertaining and perhaps get press attention.

Don’t forget to check the firms’ press releases as well, because they can differ from the original prediction. For example, a Gartner prediction in

SageCircle AR Podcast for December 1, 2009

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 co-host this bi-weekly program. You can find all the SageCircle podcasts on our podcast page.

Visit the podcast page to download the MP3 file or listen to the episodes on your computer.  Click here to subscribe to the podcast within iTunes

SCP 14: Table of contents. Numbers in parentheses refer to minutes:seconds when the article starts within the podcast.

[00:00]  Opening

[01:06]  News – hiring up in analyst ecosystem

[02:54]  Interview with Datamonitor-Ovum Research Fellow Jonathan Yarmis on the new strategy for Datamonitor-Ovum

[12:22]  Analysis by SageCircle of the new Datamonitor-Ovum strategy

[22:43]  Upcoming

Announcing the SageCircle free webinar on Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research

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Replay of this webinar is now available. To receive a link and password to watch a streaming version of the webinar please email “info [at] sagecircle [dot] com”. Please include your job title and company name. Agenda:

• Basics of the deal
• SageCircle Analysis of AMR’s and Gartner’s Motivation
• Highlights from Gartner AR Community Call
• Commentary on Points from Gartner AR Community Call
• Recommendations for Research Clients
  • Enterprise
  • Vendors
• Recommendations for Vendor AR Teams

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Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research is very interesting for a number of reasons, but it also raises a number of critical questions. To complement our blog post (click here) on the acquisition, SageCircle is offering a free webinar to expand our analysis as well as suggestions for how clients of either firm as well as vendor AR teams should respond.  Following our short presentation we will have ample time for questions. 

Our webinar is at 10 am US PT on Thursday, December 3^rd (click here to register). Please feel free to forward this invitation to your colleagues.

Not by coincidence, we scheduled our webinar after Gartner’s AR Community Call, which is this Thursday, the 3^rd, at 7:30 am US PT. You can register here, which we recommend you do.

This means during our webinar we will also discuss what Gartner said in its AR Community Call and how it might differ from our analysis.

SageCircle Advisory clients are encouraged to

Gartner Acquiries AMR Research for $64m

12/1/09 7:01 am PT – Initial post. Analysis to follow.

12/1/09 11:38 am PT – Analysis added

12/2/09 7:00 am PT – Free SageCircle webinar on acquisition

Replay of the webinar “SageCircle Analysis of Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research” is now available. To receive a link and password to watch a streaming version of the webinar please email “info [at] sagecircle [dot] com”. Please include your job title and company name

Gartner’s acquisition of AMR Research for $64m, approximately 1.5x revenues, is interesting in that it does not seem to fit neatly into any one of these rationales: 

1. Additive to expand research coverage, consulting, events and other services
2. Acquire client base
3. Acquire sales representatives
4. Take out direct competition to improve pricing power
5. Prevent competition from grabbing an asset that would be used against Gartner

First:

Approximately 75% of AMR’s enterprise clients were in manufacturing/supply chain which is not consistent with Gartner’s core CIO organization. Gartner CEO Gene Hall has doubled down on IT since taking over in 2004 and eliminated non-IT focused business such as Vision Events. So does this represent a change in strategy? Perhaps the Datamonitor-Ovum strategy of going after both business and IT leaders has caused Hall to modify his approach?

AMR is primarily focused on ERP/enterprise applications, manufacturing, supply chain, retail, and sourcing. While Gartner does have some overlap, it is very uneven from one area to another. While Gartner does have a manufacturing vertical, the number of analysts is small, only seven. Furthermore, Gartner does not have brand equity in the manufacturing space so acquiring AMR manufacturing assets makes sense. Gartner’s retail analysts number just six so combining those with AMR’s analysts also makes sense. However, AMR has lost one of its top retail analysts, Janet Sherlock, just this week. Sourcing is an area that is one of Gartner’s strengths with 40 analysts listed in that space. AMR’s sourcing research took a huge blow when Phil Fersht left in late September so that particular area might not be of interest to Gartner. ERP and supply chain are grouped together at Gartner with 27 analysts. While Gartner has a strong reputation in enterprise applications, including ERP, it has less of a brand in supply chain so combining AMR supply research would be logical.

AMR’s event business is tiny in comparison to Gartner’s with only two or three targeted events per year with approximately 500 to 700 attendees each. Even if Gartner wanted to expand into other types of enterprise clients, it would not have to buy AMR to launch these types of events.

Enhancing Gartner’s advisory/consulting assets might be a possible motivation. As published research becomes more and more commoditized, enterprise clients turn to analyst firms for personalized advice and targeted consulting. Gartner has kept its analyst team relatively constant at 650 even as it has more than doubled the sales force to 952 since late 2004 (according to

Analyst Ecosystem News – People on the Move

Tip o’ the hat to many tipsters who provide us with the following tips. Alas, they are all shy so they requested that their names not be used. 

Arrivals:

• Forrester – Nigel Fenwick (Twitter, personal blog) covering CIO issues
• Forrester – Augie “August” Ray (Twitter, personal blog) covering social computing
• SynergyACG – Eve Griliches (Twitter) covering telecommunications equipment. Prior to SynergyACG Eve was a Director at IDC.

Departures:

•  AMR Research – Janet

Happy Thanksgiving

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Here is wishing all our American clients and readers a fun and relaxing Thanksgiving. For our readers outside the US, you no doubt will be enjoying a few days of reduced emails and phone calls! 

Our next official post will be on Monday, November 30th.

The Top 5: Roadshow Readiness Mistakes

Even in the 21^st Century with telepresence and social media, sometimes it is very useful to hit the road and meet analysts in person. Unfortunately these are expensive exercises so analyst relations (AR) teams need to be aware of the following top mistakes when it comes to road shows.

5) Not picking the right individuals to brief. Too often IT vendors waste precious time briefing analysts that have little ability to support the goals of the vendor.  While it is fine to add secondary analysts the focus must be on the most relevant to your revenues

4) Preparing a “one size fits all” presentation rather than tailoring presentations to the individual and type of analyst firm being briefed.  Analysts need to feel that you have taken the time to address their specific interests.

3) Having the wrong orientation, i.e., wanting to perform a data dump of speeds and feeds on the analyst instead of engaging in