Carsten Schmidt and other IDC Alumni recently formed Henry Corporation as a network of analysts offering strategic advice and marketing services to IT vendors, including Martin Hingley. Read Carter’s post for more background.
- What are your coverage areas?
At HENRY I manage the commercial communication with our clients and project manage larger and cross-country projects. - What are your opinions of the IT Analysis Marketplace and where do you see it going?
A marketplace assumes sellers and buyers. Frankly, I see the buyers pulling out because of the vast availability of free information and alternate sources. Secondly analysis and marketplace are contradicting forces if we hold on to the belief that analysis is an objective or even scientific process as opposed to the notion of a marketplace. There’re numerous examples how research firms productize their analysis. By doing that information transforms from research to marketing. There’s nothing wrong (or “magic”) about that as long as we stop calling it research. - What’s your typical day like?
I communicate a lot, either by email, phone or blogs. My role is to be proactive towards HENRY’s clients, the IT vendors. I spend most mornings planning my day and prioritizing my approach. I care a lot about not wasting other people’s time. I firmly believe in business relationships that are mutually sensible meaning having the respect and interest in your client’s goals and objectives. Talking to people I never think what I can get out of it, but how it can benefit the other part. Experience has taught me that this approach is the most rewarding in the long run. - Now, c’mon, tell me an AR horror story?
AR’s are marketers and part of the marketing ecosystem together with research analysts and sales and marketing people. Most ARs know that which helps communication and facilitate exchange of information. It is only when AR’s commence pre-assessing the purpose of your approach that the AR misunderstands their role. - How do you position your firm? What is your business model? (where are your revenues coming from, mix between users and vendors?)
Our revenue comes solely from vendors. And we are in the business of helping building pipe lines by providing lead generation on behalf of the IT vendors. This is no different from our research colleagues in the industry apart from the fact that we communicate it in the open. World business as such is becoming more and more verticalized wherefore in-depth understanding of the IT business is a prerequisite for providing tactical marketing services. Research is used as a tool in one-on-one projects and as a foundation for offering the right tactical approach. Consequently we do not believe in published qualitative research reports as they are by nature strongly biased toward the intended buying audience. - What is your research methodology, in 255 characters or less? (primary research, F2F or phone, secondary only, etc…)
Qualitative research must by default be primary. If not I’d call it journalism. Quantitative data can easily come from public available sources as long as you are a skilled analyst able to verify and see behind the data. HENRY only partner with highly experienced analysts as you will know from our website.
- Any favourite AR professional you’d like to mention? Any why?
IBM’s Carsten Grønning is a great representative for the AR community. Forward coming, helpful, proactive and knowledgeable. - Tell us about one good AR practice you’ve experienced or one good AR event you’ve atttended.
As long as the relationship is mutually sensible any AR practice and activity is good, simply because proactivity is beneficial and time saving for both the research company and the IT vendor. - What are your offerings and key deliverables?
HENRY has three offerings, Research-, Activate- and Event-related. We consider research as an integral part of the marketing value chain which real purpose obviously is to improve market shares. We embrace that value chain by focusing at the ultimate goal for our clients, the IT vendors. - What is your biggest challenges for the upcoming 6 months? And for the next 30 mn?
Strategy work at IT vendors are being centralized at headquarters. That has been a trend for years now. Secondly still more marketing money are spend closer to the clients at the expense of market intelligence. Our challenge is to communicate this trend to our prospect clients and to offer marketing services that are closer to our clients customers.
