BARC and Le CXP announced last week they were merging.
BARC (no Twitter handle?) is a German IT analysis firm founded in 1994 and focusing mostly on ECM and BI. Le CXP (@cxpoeilexpert or @cxplace) dates back from 1973 and was formed originally as an end-user consortium aiming at evaluating something new at the time, packaged software.
Both focus on the end-user and will have something like 30 analysts and consultants overall, focussing only on software and selling mostly to end-users. Le CXP is also in partnership with Penteo (@PenteoAnalyst) in Spain.
Those three players, are some kind of exception for having built strong and resilient local IT Analysis firms. There are many other EMEA players, some such as Ovum are more global in nature, other like PAC are vendor-facing or are more about consulting (e.g. Experton). And many more in the UK.
Key takeaway for AR pros:
- All those firms do answer a need for local knowledge in local langage
- For a reason, they can’t be easily dismissed, most of them for instance have a high SOV in their local market
- Some also have a prescriber role with end-users, typically below the radar of larger US firms
- Others have an expertise in the ecosystem and channels
- AR professionals should incorporate local influencers into their plans, even if they can appear as a low priority from 5,000 miles away
- Sometimes, they’re best “handled” through a GloCal model (members should read the IIAR Best Practice Papers on International AR > link 1, link 2)
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