While Gartner (NYSE:IT) decided to buy out AMR and fill a coverage gap in SCM, with hindsight a strategy hinted in Cannes (well maybe?). The Gartner-AMR deal certainly has caused a bit of a stir, with over 6000 hits in the blogosphere! While I’m on that news item, I must add thatGartner will hosting tomorrow a special AR Webinar on AMR Research acquisition and that in addition of the blogs I list below (read those first: Carter’s, Bob’s and Tony’s entries before) there was a very relevant comment thread started by and answered by Kate on inquiries.
Most of the respondents of our poll cited Forrester as the best “Second opinion” following this acquisition, so it’s interesting to note that while Gartner kept on its strategy to leverage its research through a deep sales coverage by investing in a key coverage area, Forrester on the other hand decided to expand its role-based research capabilities with capabilities to help IT vendors marketing more efficiently their products via buyers research, analytics, media planning, etc…
Impact for AR:
- While Forrester do have credibility and interesting offerings for marketing professionals and other roles, their product and especially industry coverage remains inconsistent.
- In particular, there have been some questions about replacing the recently departed (not litterally thank god) high-profile analysts such as Ray Wang (blog, Twitter) and Jeremiah Owyang (blog, Twitter).
- However, there are some signs that Forrester analysts may have more flexibility to resume limited coverage of industries.
- AR professionals need to clearly identify the roles analysts write for before engaging with them, as briefing a Forrester analyst does not necessarily align with their goals if they are coverage and end user impact.
Wrap-up of the posts on the Gartner-AMR deal:
- IIAR Blog: Gartner buys AMR -what’s the impact for AR Managers and competitors?
- Analyst Insight: Gartner buys AMR
- Analyst Equity: Gartner & AMR, but in the end its still organic growth vs. the Analyst Cycle
- Sage Circle: Gartner Acquiries AMR Research for $64m
- Technobabble: Gartner buys AMR
- Spend Matters: Gartner to Acquire AMR Research: Supply Chain and Procurement Analyst Game Over?
- ARcade: Gartner Buys AMR: A Tasty Post-Thanksgiving Meal
- Supply Chain Matters: AMR Research Acquired- Will This be a Void in Supply Chain Advisory Coverage?
- ITasITis: AMR clients: action needed!
- MGI Research: Gartner Acquires AMR – A Comment on IT Spending?
I’d love to see a blog post or statement from Forrester (perhaps from Marc or George) explaining in more detail the rationale for & improved customer offering that will result from the acquisition.
Gerry, thanks for asking. Sorry for the delay in reply, but as you might imagine we’ve been enmeshed in welcoming the Strategic Oxygen team since Tuesday.
In the time leading up to our announcement about this acquisition I was genuinely thrilled and now that the Strategic Oxygen employees are now at Forrester, I’m even more excited. Why?
For starters, the Strategic Oxygen team is a great group of smart, thoughtful, and dedicated individuals. Like the colleagues they’re joining in Forrester’s tech industry client group, they are focused upon and passionate about serving the technology product management and marketing professional.
From the feedback that we’ve gotten in the past two days, our senior marketing clients in the technology industry are quite pleased. They’re they are thanking us for investing on their behalf and congratulating us on what they see as a great fit. For Forrester, Strategic Oxygen is a strong syndicated offering which not only supports our business goals but also serves as a natural and elegant extension of our role-based strategy.
I’ve included our press release about the acquisition in case you haven’t seen it. A significant portion of tech marketers’ success depends on maximizing the return on investment from their marketing spend. The Strategic Oxygen product — derived from a global survey of over 20,000 enterprise technology buyers — will enable these professionals to more precisely measure that return and adjust programs accordingly:
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Press/Release/0,1769,1314,FF.html
Hope you find this helpful.
Thanks for the reply and good to talk to you again (albeit virtually this time), Mark.
We used Strategic Oxygen a few years ago when I worked in Intel’s corporate marketing group (brand & campaign management). Intel, being a very data-driven company, liked SO’s data-driven approach. I thought at the time that it was a powerful, compelling and industry-unique tool and I agree it will be a good addition for a number of Forrester’s role-based services.
Looking forward to seeing how you integrate the new tools and capabilities into your existing services!
Focusing on data is exactly the right way to bring more power to the offerings Forrester delivers to the tech industry professionals. That kind of fact-based guidance is sorely lacking in a market filled with opinion-based work. Kudos to Nemec and team for a shrewd, targeted move.
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