My Take: The Role of the Technology Analyst

Since the topic of analysts has come up recently and I'm being asked about my perspective privately, I'll add my perspective publicly – for what it is worth. I've been a logistics analyst (at the Pentagon), a management consultant and I've had a number of product and management jobs at software companies so I am not a career analyst and I feel like I am relatively (you can decide on your own) unbiased.

First I'll start with the various responsibilities that I have had over the last year – and this is not necessarily representative of all analysts or even of most analysts at IDC.

• Writing: I wrote roughly 40 documents last year, 15+ of them major documents
• Research: Surveys, interviews, and participating in online discussions
• Presentations: 6+ presentations at conferences and briefings
• Modeling: Forecasting and developing systems models to mimic market behavior
• Briefings: I'm going to estimate that I've taken 150+ briefings from companies (and I turn away many)
• Inquiries:  2-3 a week from buyers, Wall St. Firms, VCs, or big services firms
• Customer Events: I've probably been to 15-20 of these events
• Customer Projects: Whitepapers, presentations to internal groups, or strategy days with senior product, marketing, or M&A teams
• Talking to the press
• Responding to emails, scheduling, returning phone calls
• Talking to prospects, preparing proposals, preparing surveys, cleaning data
• Program development and planning
• Program marketing: collateral, sales training, etc.
• Collaborating with other analysts

What is great about that job:

• The access such a diverse cross-section of market influencers: vendors, buyers, investors, and press and with it the opportunity to see so much
• Endlessly interesting – the conversations I have and the people I meet and work with are a great part of the job…goes along with 'Never a dull moment'
• My colleagues – I've been learning a huge amount from colleague who have seen the rise and decline of markets
• The flexibility to prioritize where I spend my time and what research to pursue

What frustrates me:

• The expectations that I can grow a new program, write extensively, get visibility, and manage the administrative side of my job…and be human. I feel a little set up to fail and I don't like that. Granted most of these expectations are my own.
• The limited ability to explore new business models – I'm a start-up girl and I'm used to being able to experiment
• The craziness of all the things that I do feeds my ADD (no..not really) which is not always helpful.
• I'm a doer and I like developing a product with a team and seeing its evolution - I'm disconnected from that as an analyst

That's my perspective on what it means to be an analyst…but what does it mean for you? Here's where I think analysts can provide value:

• Because of position, analysts hear and see more than most other people in a market; we are hubs and the better we synthesize information (and that depends on the analyst) the better insight we provide for corporate strategy, product planning, marketing strategy, and marketing      communications.
• Also because we are hubs, we can introduce people. Call it old-fashioned match-making but we typically know senior managers and they are likely to respond to our introductions.
• Press and financial analysts like a third-party perspective. If you want your message put in a larger context we can often be helpful – whether that is in general or for a new product release. We cannot, however, help much if you repeat press releases to us – the more we know, the better we can put your strategy into a larger context.
• Frameworks, data, and trends: This can be useful for market messaging, market strategy, product planning, corporate strategy, and sales training.
• Acting as an external team member that can review and comment on plans.
• Using the visibility of the analyst to get attention – this is highly dependent on the analyst

Hopefully that's useful – I try and provide as much of this value as I can when I brief with companies (who are generally not our customers) but in essence what our customers pay for is regular access – we obviously can't brief with most companies according to their preferred schedule but we spend a lot more time with our customers and will always fit meetings in if at all possible. And I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't talk about interesting companies that I brief with who are not my customers - that is, in fact, part of what my customers are looking for.

I think a lot of people find us analysts frustrating to work with and from what I've seen it is rarely due to lack of interest and intent on the part of the analyst…we just have a lot coming at us through a lot of different channels.

Comments

[Jonathan Block]

Excellent post and insight into the day of an analyst. I'm not a technology analyst per se, but I do cover some marketing and social media technology as part of my job at SiriusDecisions, but your "day in the life" analysis is spot on.

[Rachel Happe]

Hi Jonathan - Thanks for stopping by and sharing your perspective.

[Carter Lusher]

Hi Rachel, Very useful post. I put a link to it on the SageCircle page "Analyst tips for AR"

http://sagecircle.wordpress.com/analyst-tips-for-ar/

Question: What are the top reasons why you turn down a vendor briefing?

[Rachel Happe]

Thanks Carter - The overwhelming reason that I turn down briefings is because the requesting company is outside of my coverage area. IDC has a briefing request form at http://www.idc.com/about/vendor_briefing.jsp that is the best way to request a briefing.

More often than not take a briefing, briefings tend to get scheduled with a lot of lead time, particularly if there is more than one analyst involved.

At IDC we will do one briefing a year with non-clients. I do try to hold to that policy generally because I otherwise would have no time for other research, writing, traveling and client work.

I generally do my best to accommodate briefings for anyone in my market (enterprise social networking).