Category: AR management

Notes on managing your budget in a recession — SageCircle’s Coffee Talk

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icon-budget-cuts-105w.jpgOn Tuesday April 1 SageCircle conducted a web-based Coffee Talk around the potential impacts of budget cuts and how AR teams can best handle them.  We began with a few slides to review the techniques for managing a budget and then opened the session to questions from the participants.

Often when resources are trimmed certain areas experience across-the-board and significant cuts.  While some of these areas can be quick to recover in the future analyst relations is generally not one of them.  Developing relationships that can truly provide a positive revenue impact takes sustained effort over time.  Once your program begins to slip the effort required to […]

Definition and basic characteristics – The ROI of Analyst Relationship Management Systems (part one)

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icon-tools.jpgThis is the first in a series of posts that will explore the resources required and the advantages gained in using a formal analyst relationship management (ARM) system.  In this post we will look at the characteristics of a good system.  In future posts we will review some of the commercially available products, suggest some best practices in using a system, and look at the values that can be obtained.  Your comments are encouraged. 

What is an ARM?

Sales and service organizations have long used customer relationship management (CRM) systems to provide customer service, track and promote sales, and maintain general customer records.  These can range across home-grown in-house systems, commercially-available software run by IT, and hosted solutions provided by outside firms.  The value of these systems is well documented.  Public Relations departments often track their work in PR-specific systems that fit into the same three categories.  Analyst Relations teams need to look to […]

Social media inputs need to be added to analyst opinion monitoring programs

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icon-social-media-blue.jpgAnalyst opinion monitoring is a critical AR task because it contributes to AR planning, rapid response to sales impact, relationship management, message management, internal politics, and overall metrics programs. In the past, savvy AR means focused on the spoken word – using the SageCircle spoken word audit technique – in addition to the usual written word tracking, typically press quotes and written research. The 21st century raises the bar for what is required to be best-in-class savvy because AR now has to track analyst opinion as expressed in social media.

At this point in time, the analyst opinion monitoring program needs to add analyst podcasts, analyst Twitter streams, analyst blogs and […]

The organizational challenges of managing AR, CI and MR [Practitioner Question]

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question-mark-graphic.jpgWe often are asked about the differences in management techniques when AR is organizationally under corporate communications or marketing as compared to a when it is part of a strategy group.  How you deal with analysts, and the need for strategic interactions as compared to product-level briefings, will be altered based on the client base you are attempting to serve.

Analyst interactions also occur in the Competitive Intelligence (CI) and Market Research (MR) groups.  They are also often the keepers of the major analyst contracts and the “repository” of the purchased analyst data, reprints, and commissioned research.  In addition to providing research for the product and strategy teams they contribute to the sales organization with share numbers and competitive bullet points.

Sometimes these groups are in very separate parts of the company (e.g., AR in corporate communications, MR in product management and CI in field sales) while at others, especially in smaller vendors, one person does it all.  In larger companies these functions may be so organizationally separate from AR as to require processes for enhancing the communications and collaboration, despite the fact that you are all dealing with the same analysts.

From time-to-time, companies make organizational changes with AR being told – sometimes over AR’s reasonable objections – to take responsibility for the CI/MR teams. Incorporating the CI/MR teams with AR can prove to be an interesting challenge for the AR manager because […]

The value in the Analyst Relations Diagnostic™

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SageCircle AR DiagnosticOne of the SageTools that SageCircle has devoted a significant amount of effort in building is the Analyst Relations DiagnosticTM. It represents such a significant research investment and a major advancement in evaluating AR programs that we decided to trademark it. In addition, it’s one of the coolest tools this long-time analyst has seen.

The AR Diagnostic evolved as we worked to develop a systematic approach for evaluating AR programs. We had to balance gathering a comprehensive set of information with putting too much of a burden on the AR manager. In addition, the AR Diagnostic had to make analysis efficient while yielding insights that supported pragmatic recommendations. The approach selected uses text questions (e.g., AR goals for the year, concerns, executive perceptions) to gather overview information about the AR program and a detailed questionnaire that asks the respondent to answer “Yes”, “Somewhat” or “No” to statements.

SageCircle created this tool to permit quick data capture and automatically generate graphs (click on example to enlarge) showing where the AR program tracks against SageCircle’s AR Effectiveness Matrix. Using this tightly packaged information, the strategist can then create an individually tailored analysis and […]

You could end up buried deep in the “Niche” by insisting on being added to a MQ before you are ready

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Niche = “Losers” on the Magic QuadrantGartner’s Magic Quadrant is probably the iconic piece of analyst research. With its visibility and status, it also has enormous influence on vendor sales opportunities, especially when it comes time for IT buyers to draw up the all-important vendor short lists.

Because of this influence on short lists, communications and IT vendor executives sometimes obsess over the “MQ” for their markets and put great pressure on their AR teams to get placement on MQs they are not on. This can actually be a counterproductive move because vendors who really should not be on a MQ will get stuck in the lower left hand corner (click on graphic to enlarge). Even thought this part of the MQ is labeled “Niche,” too many IT buyers translate that label into “Loser.” Getting perceived as a “Loser” can put a vendor’s sales at a disadvantage in trying to get into an opportunity because it is so much more difficult to explain away why you are not a “Loser.” than explaining why your company was not included on a version of a MQ.

Some Gartner analysts publicly admit that this mental relabeling occurs and try to mitigate […]

Budget cutting part two — Alternate solutions for analyst contracts

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icon-budget-cuts-105w.jpgLast week (see Budgeting cutting can help AR focus and innovate) we suggested that potential budget cuts may have the effect of causing AR teams to prioritize and innovate in their programs and might not always be as negative as when first viewed.  Another way to deal with the possible cuts in funding that follow any economic slowing is to look to alternative solutions.  These techniques obviously take precious time and effort that AR teams also don’t have, but may be reasonable choices when money is not available.

Analyst seat holder contracts

Review each analyst contract for usage and determine business group seat holders who need to be eliminated.  Then contact the high value and high usage seat holders to see if the business group can pick up some or all of the cost.  Be prepared to justify the cost as the business group […]

Blogs as part of the AR tool box — Is there a chicken-or-egg issue?

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icon-social-media-blue.jpgWhile blogs have been around for a number of years, they are seldom used by communications and IT vendor analyst relations (AR) teams*. I have found only Adobe, Cisco, HP, IBM** and Sun. This is too bad because blogs can be a valuable tool for communicating certain types of information in a less formal manner.

Now it is important to realize that a blog is not the end all and be all of analyst interactions. For one thing, blogs are usually not password protected, so nothing remotely confidential can be the topic of a blog entry.

There are a number of reasons why AR has avoided blogs:

  1. The AR team cannot get permission to launch a blog because their company has not developed a blogging strategy and policy yet
  2. AR is simply overworked and cannot add another task
  3. AR perceives that it does not has the right skills to create blog content
  4. AR believes there is no demand for a blog because the analysts are not asking for one
  5. AR thinks there are not enough interesting topics for them to consistently blog

Items #1 and #2 are show stoppers. Items #3 and #4 are what I call chicken-and-egg issues. For instance, […]