One of my favorite sayings is “It’s good to be good, but it’s better to be lucky” and we were definitely lucky in early 2004 when Gartner appointed VP and Distinguished Analyst Carl Claunch as one of the two Lead Analysts for the company Dave and Carter worked at.
Up to that point, many of the major companies had great difficulty in getting Gartnerians to see the big picture about the entire company. We had the classic “blind men and the elephant” problem in that an analyst’s primary research coverage defined how they saw the company as a whole. For instance, a server analyst thought of us as a server company, not as a vendor with a portfolio of products and services that provided synergy to each other. In addition, most analysts were not receptive to getting briefings outside their coverage area. Carl, on the other hand, made the effort to get familiar with corporate and business group strategies and dig into the strengths and weaknesses of all parts of the company. This led to Carl becoming a valuable advisor to our executives as well as someone who provided a truly strategic analysis of the company in published research and Symposium presentations.
Another great attribute of Carl’s is his focus on client service. He never showed up to a SAS (Gartner’s term for an analyst consulting day) gig less than totally prepared. In addition, Carl would proactively call us with issues that he saw developing in the IT buyer community. This gave us the opportunity to seize opportunities in the marketplace or to correct problems before they ballooned into something ugly.
Bottom Line: Carl Claunch is one of Gartner’s top analysts when it comes to seeing the big picture and delivering client service. If you are a CIO or IT manager who relies on the major portfolio vendors like IBM or Sun, then Carl should be high on your list of analysts to regularly talk to about understanding the whole picture of these strategic vendors. IT vendors should turn to Carl as an advisor who can provide both strategic and tactical insights. Reporters should have Carl in their rolodexes as a source of incisive sound bites for major IT industry stories.
Periodically, SageCircle will profile outstanding analysts. Initially, the analysts will be ones that Dave Eckert and Carter Lusher worked with during our years in AR, but we encourage you to submit worthy analysts for a profile. We also hope to better refine our criteria for an outstanding analyst and your suggestions are encouraged.
Outstanding Analyst: Has detailed knowledge of the products and technologies in their defined market space, but also understands how that market space relates to the rest of IT. Has broad knowledge of both the IT vendor’s products and strategies as well as the range of client needs. Provides honest and fair perspectives in reports and speeches. Goes beyond what is expected when providing services to all clients.
Question: What are your criteria for what makes an outstanding analyst? There is an analyst you would like to give a shout out to? Leave a comment or send an e-mail to info [at] sagecircle dot com
Since 2000, SageCircle has helped analyst relations teams to focus on business value by encouraging innovative thinking that leverages insights and drives revenue.