Today’s IIAR> Around in 10 questions interview is with Irwin Lazar / President and Principal Analyst, Metrigy, (@imlazar, LinkedIn) who covers workplace collaboration
1. What are your coverage areas?
Workplace collaboration technologies including unified communications / calling platforms, messaging, meetings, and non-real-time collaboration. As of late my focus has been on office and meeting room evolution, collaboration application management, security, and compliance, and the adoption, ROI, and management of generative AI
2. What are your opinions of the IT Analysis Marketplace and where do you see it going?
The IT analysis marketplace is obviously very competitive with a lot of extremely smart people and firms. Our focus is on providing data and metrics-based guidance rather than just our opinions, I think vendors and buyers alike gain the most value in being guided by actual data and I think the industry will continue to evolve to provide real-world-based guidance.
3. What’s your typical day like?
I start with a scan of Slack to catch up on conversations and tasks that are due today, then go into email to look at external messages. Then I check out a few news feeds to see if there have been any major stories or announcements. From there, it varies. Some days i’ll be mostly on video calls with clients and vendors, others i’ll spend the day working on research projects. And of course there is a lot of travel to trade shows and conferences, especially in the spring and fall.
4. Now, c’mon, tell me an AR horror story?
Wow. I can’t say I’ve ever had a horror story (fortunately). Maybe the closest was the time an AR lead confused me with another analyst and thought I had left my previous firm and told our account manager that they weren’t renewing our services because I was no longer there.
5. How do you position your firm? What is your business model?
Metrigy’s name is derived from “Metrics+Strategy”, we position our firm as providing data-based guidance based on primary research data gathered from end-user organizations. The majority of our revenue is derived from vendor clients though we work with thousands of end-user organizations who participate in our research.
6. Tell us about one good AR practice you’ve experienced or one good AR event you’ve attended.
For me, the best practice is regular engagement, ideally no less than quarterly. The best AR events that I’ve attended provide a great deal of access to executives, customers, and partners, ideally in no more than 2 days.
7. What are your offerings and key deliverables?
We offer subscription-based access to our research via a variety of license types, some of which include marketing services (e.g. papers, webinars, podcasts, etc.) or advisory sessions.
8. Any hobbies or favourite restaurant / food that you’d like to share?
My biggest hobby, I suppose, is Scouting. I’ve been involved in Scouting in the US for about 15 years now, both of my sons are Eagle Scouts, and I’ve stayed involved in a variety of roles since they aged out. Favorite restaurant is seafood with a water view. Kincaids Fish, Chop, and Steakhouse in Burlingame CA is a particular favorite.
9. What is your biggest challenges for the upcoming 6 months? And for the next 30 mn?
The biggest challenge is studying the impact of generative AI from an ROI, security, and compliance perspective for our clients, while also trying to assess and implement it for our own internal use.
10. Is there another analyst whose work you rate highly?
My colleague and partner in Metrigy, Robin Gareiss, is always amazing me with her ability to understand and provide guidance on emerging trends in the customer experience space.
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