Duncan's annual report

It's my birthday tomorrow, so here's an update on the last year. I'll be offline, as far as possible, in the peaceful lakeside town where my family lived for the decade when I was born.

Four highlights

The key events were:

• I graduated from my masters in research at Edinburgh. It was a crucial event in my long-term project of writing a PhD about analyst relations. My thesis examined the Gartner Magic Quadrant from its origins to the launch of the interactive MQ. It's unusually well-timed because of the silly puffery around the new?interactive Forrester Wave.
• One challenging point was leaving CCGroup - B2B tech marketers. After five exciting years of building its analyst relations practice, I and other executive committee members departed as the firm responded to the immensely challenging times for PR agencies by pivoting into integrated marketing. I worked remote though the summer, in Stockholm and Oslo mostly.
• The high point was joining Elisa International Digitial Services in May, Elisa's software business. Working as a SageCircle contractor, I am developing analyst relations for telecoms automation specialists Elisa Polystar, the Elisa IndustrIQ manufacturing automation suite of camLine, CalcuQuote, sedApta Group and TenForce, and Elisa Distributed Energy Solutions. The learning curve as part of Elisa's global marketing leadership team is steep!
• The low point was the death of Dominic Pannell, one of my fellow co-founders of the The IIAR> (Institute of Influencer & Analyst Relations) and a friend, foil and collaborator over a quarter century. Last week, I wrote this note marking the anniversary of his year, and his colleagues at SageCircle summarised what they had learned from working with him. He's missed.

What else happened over the last 12 months?

Lifelong learning

After submitting my MRes thesis, I followed a year-long INSEAD Executive Education programme, and became an alumnus in March. INSEAD is one of the world's top business schools, operating in alliance with The Wharton School and Sorbonne Université. The Lead the Future program focusses on innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy.

This month, I'm wrapping up a Hult International Business School graduate school elective in sales strategy. Next month, I'll be taking another language class at Aalto University.

Analyst relations

The?Analyst Relations Forum?met recently at?The University of Edinburgh?Analyst Observatory, hosted by?Neil Pollock?,?Matin Cheng,?and myself. We heard the 2024 analyst relations awards go to IBM's AR team, and to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Intel Corporation, Dell Technologies, Salesforce, Cisco, and Google.

AWS headed up the 2023 awards, nine months earlier, which also recognised Ericsson, IBM, and Microsoft.

Some major trends are developing in the analyst relations community.

• AR budgets continued to swing towards paying for analyst content, and less effort is doing into relationship building.
• As AR aligns to sales, many take the risky choice to move into sourcing advisory relations.
• AR managers continue to be skeptical about peer reviews. TrustRadius reported that both peer reviews and analyst reports are being used less.

Analyst influence

It's a weird year for AR people and analyst firms, and visual artifacts played an almost totemic role.

• Buyers continue to use analyst content, showed data collected by Coleman Parkes, but vendors are involved later in the buying cycle. As a result, analysts could be getting more influential.
• Analyst firms decelerate tech markets by not engaging with that opportunity fully.
• Serious overclaiming accompanied the launch of the interactive Forrester Wave, broadly similar to the Gartner interactive Magic Quadrant we discussed in 2018.
• A chart by Arkadiusz Wolinski provoked a major discussion. He was able to visualise the finding that the analyst firm mentioned most by a firm's clients might not the the most influential firm on its key accounts.
• I read some of the most impactful research for years, and highlighted this report from the Hannover Messe, from the outstanding team at Omdia.
• I shared the concern about Gartner's aggressive ringfencing of content. As a Gartner advisory seat holder at Signicat I often found that most Gartner research on a topic was not available to me. I'm not alone, it seems.

The job hunt

I am delighted to work on my current contract with SageCircle and Elisa, but I remain open to permanent roles. I can work across the European Economic Area, as a dual EU and UK citizen. Let me know if you have any leads or suggestions.