Today’s star analyst in our reasonably priced Around in 10 Questions series is Douglas Hayward from at IDC. You can find Douglas at Twitter under @douglashayward.
1. What are your coverage areas?
From October 2010 (earlier in reality), I’ll be co-ordinating IDC’s Western European IT services and business services forecasts (business services basically means business consulting services and BPO). I’ll also be running the European Services: Markets and Competitive Insights subscription research program, an overview program that tracks the dynamics and fortunes of the European services market, and those of the key vendors.
I’m also launching a very exciting new IDC service that I can’t talk about yet. As well as all that, I’ll continue tracking the business consulting market in Western Europe – but note that from October onwards, I’m no longer officially tracking BPO in Western Europe. I reckon I’ve got enough to keep me busy without BPO.
2. What are your opinions of the IT Analysis Marketplace and where do you see it going?
The market is consolidating around a very small number of big brands, particularly IDC, but with room for specialist niche players of course; it’s the classic mid-market squeeze-out. To survive the next decade, you will need data, opinion and influence – and IDC has all three. Research and consulting houses with just one or two of these three elements will fall by the wayside.
3. What’s your typical day like?
It depends on which part of the various offering cycles I’m at! Forecasting has four three-month cycles a year, for example, which can get pretty intense as deadlines loom. Sometimes you’re doing heads-down, desk-based data crunching and model-tweaking at your desk with barely time to grab lunch, but a few days later you could be drinking beer on a riverboat in Prague in mid-afternoon (this is known in the trade as “essential field research”).
4. Now, c’mon, tell me an AR horror story?
Do me a favour! No.
5. How do you position your firm? What is your business model? (where are your revenues coming from, mix between users and vendors?)
We’re truly global, yet with strong local presence. I was amazed by the depth of experience and the authoritative level of knowledge of some colleagues when I arrived here three years ago. Revenues are traditionally vendor-centric, yet we’ve got a significant end-user events / conferences business and we do a surprising amount of end-user research and interaction that that we probably don’t talk about enough.
6. What is your research methodology, in 255 characters or less? (primary research, F2F or phone, secondary only, etc…)
What is this, twitter?? All the above: primary, secondary, f2f, desk, riverboats: you name it!
7. Any favourite AR professional you’d like to mention? Any why?
So you want the other 98% to hate me?
8. Tell us about one good AR practice you’ve experienced or one good AR event you’ve attended.
For events, we like the “mix-and-match” model: plenary sessions with Q&A opportunities, followed by one-to-one sessions (actually you can group people from the same research house together) for drill-down follow-on. Don’t forget to get at least one end-user/customer speaker; we’re very cynical about people telling us how happy their customers are. Never, ever hold a panel session with the moderator asking all the questions. Oh, and don’t forget to arrange “essential field research” every now and then.
9. What are your offerings and key deliverables?
Have you got all day? We do subscription research, forecasts, data “trackers” (in which we slice and dice market segments continuously), custom research and consulting projects, strategic and tactical-level workshops, custom presentations, end-user conferences and events, executive dinners and round tables, and integrated go-to-market services (which combine many of these activities). There’s lot more, besides.
10. Any hobbies or favourite restaurant / food that you’d like to share?
I’m a cyclist (up to 100 miles a week to/from work) and I take a lot of pictures – I try to bring a small but decent-quality camera with me on foreign trips. Restaurants? What are they? Didn’t people use to eat in them before the credit crunch? Actually, I’ll eat just about anything, but I’d rather not eat bee larvae in a restaurant again – once is enough.
