IIAR AR Professional of the Year 2016 profile: Peggy O’Neill

Peggy O’Neill, Senior Director, Analyst Relations at Informatica,  (@pegoneill, LinkedIn) is the IIAR AR Professional of the Year 2016 for North America. In this interview, she discloses a few best AR practices from her own shop.

1. What’s been your career path to becoming an AR pro?
   I was a former analyst at Gartner and Nielsen/NetRatings and Oracle recruited me to head its analyst relations program in 2001.

2. What are your opinions of the IT Analyst Marketplace and where do you see it going?
   I’m bullish on the analyst profession. The pace of innovation continues to increase, and technology continues to be a competitive differentiator for organizations. Analysts help customers, vendors, investors make sense of it all.
3. What’s your typical day like?
   Inquiries, briefings, internal meetings, planning, and of course, email.
4. How does your company structure its AR team?
   By product line.
5. Tell us about one good experience you have had with an analyst or analyst firm?
   Really hard to single out one experience, as I’m lucky to work with a great group of analysts.
6. Which analyst firm do you miss that’s been acquired or analyst that’s left the industry?
   David Mitchell at Gartner and Madan Sheina at Ovum.

7. Any hobbies or favourite restaurant / food that you’d like to share?
   Liquor and desserts are my weakness.
8. What is your biggest challenges for the upcoming 6 months? And for the next 30 mn?
   Preparing for fall shows and major briefing updates in September. Preparing for an analyst sales call later today.
     

9. What innovations have you seen from other AR teams or developed in your own AR practice?
   Carter Lusher on our team has been great about pushing Gartner Peer Insights internally, we even got a special kiosk at our user conference earlier this year to encourage happy customers to submit reviews.
10. In your experience what’s the best way to get more engagement with the executives that you support? Always make the connection to the business – sales impact, product improvement, whatever they need to worry about and show how the analysts can help.