Here's the context...after a week at Forrester's IT Forum in Las Vegas, clients kept coming back to us saying that in general it was refreshing seeing how much experience our analysts had and also how fun it was to meet the analysts in person. So on Friday May 28th, I posed the question, "Having an int conv w/a client on their expectations on analyst work experience. How much exp do you expect from your analyst?" Now the going hypothesis was that experience would matter, but as you can imagine, there was quite a bit of private chatter along with the public tweets which you can see below:
In a quasi-scientific poll of 37 responses, the general arguments fell into to a few camps:
- Vendors seek seasoned analysts they could put in front of their executives and clients with confidence (45.95% or 17/37). As one software vendor AR manager put it, "How can I put my C-level executives in front of a junior analyst who never worked in the industry and tell them that this person is evaluating you?" Alain Breillat (@alain7), a director of product management at Nielsen reinforced this point by stating, "in my experience the truly useful analysts have deep experience working with the tools (3-5 yrs min) and 3-5 yrs observing industry" Star analyst and guru Naomi Bloom (@InFullBloomUS) chimed in with, "To analyze current devs in their historical context & w the perspective of broad/deep industry knowledge takes at least 10 yrs exp."
- End users expect that the analysts bring seasoned expertise to the table (35.13% or 13/37). While there isn't an expectation an analyst can wax technical about the party models and tables in the latest Oracle or SAP app schemas, there is an expectation that analysts can provide actionable advice. Most expect this to be honed by years of experience. One large customer told me at a client site when I first walked into the room, "Son, you look too young to know what the heck you are talking about. I'm giving you 15 minutes". An hour later, he apologized but the point was well taken. I probably should gray my hair and wear some glasses.
- Vendors look for smart, bright analysts who haven't been jaded and can take a fresh perspective (18.92% or 7/37). A few vendors commented that at times the world order of analysts needed to be broken. Politely and professionaly epitomized by Dawn Crew (@dawncrew), a Solution Marketing Director at SAP focused on HCM, she raised the point that " work experience 20 to 30 years ago is irrelevant anyways. I want an analyst that can consume and digest volumes of info w/o bias"
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Thanks for the shoutout. Real star here is Twitter for its ability to crowdsource rapidly and without regard to whether or not folks are responding to email/calls while on the move. I was still in London when your tweet arrived, handling only critical client emails but responding frequently on Twitter. Another proof of concept.
I expect an analyst that will challenge me with good questions about my business, inform me where they are not under NDA about how competitors are doing a better job than me, and offer context of how my go-to-market strategy does or does resonate with their view/research on the market.
How much experience? Enough to supply substantial wisdom for real-world results. (With “wisdom” defined as “a developed skill of knowing how to do what’s right in a specific situation”.) Two opposite risks are (1) an “ivory tower” individual that stays theoretical and can never land the details and (2) someone with deep and specific knowledge but cannot see the big picture. A solid analyst will have that rare ability to see the big picture and accomplish meaningful deep dives, with the experience to back it up. That experience can through direct experience, interviews, relationships and solid research.
Well written. What is an average difference in cost services between independent analyst like yourself and some behemoth like Gartner/Forrester?
Robin, sorry to say here, I’m not an independent analyst at this time. I work for Forrester. However, the cost of services are normally in the same range. The independent analyst of course keeps considerably more. Instead of a 6 to 10% cut they keep about 80% after expenses.
R
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