Winners announced: IIAR Analyst of the Year 2016

The IIAR is delighted to announce the winners of this year’s

IIAR Analyst of the Year 2016 and IIAR Analyst Firm of the Year 2016

AND THE WINNERS ARE…

Keep reading below for the IIAR Analyst of Year 2016, IIAR Global Analyst Firm of Year 2016, IIAR Independent Analyst of the Year 2016 and the best new entrants

Analyst relations pros voted for over 170 different individual analysts. Having run the survey over several years, it was striking to see the amount of new analysts that figured this year as compared to previous ones. This goes to show the dynamic nature of this space. There are now hundreds of so-called ‘upstarts’ firms, analysts continue to move between firms, and new analysts enter into the picture.

The analysts were rated along a wide range of criteria that included: i) their knowledge of the domain, whether their research gives actionable advice, is their writing novel and thought provoking etc; through to ii) questions about their impact on technology adoption decisions; and iii) whether the particular analyst was easy and flexible to work with from an analyst relations point of view.

Unlike last year, where the vote was a close run thing, this time around there is a clear winner. One analyst stood “head and shoulders” above his peers with respect to how he was viewed by analyst relations pros.

The IIAR analyst of the year 2016 is Phil Fersht from HfS Research (LinkedIn, @pfersht). Phil was runner up in the award last year, behind Julie Short of Gartner. This is a hat-trick for Phil as was he was also a previous winner of the award in 2010 and 2011. Congratulations once again to Phil. He is obviously doing something right!

The winner of the analyst of the year was nominated for the following reasons:

“Thought leader…say no more”.

“He is head and shoulders above all industry analysts as an influencer in the market and gives great unvarnished advise to our senior leadership”‘.

“Phil is very approachable and his advice brings in a different dimension to our thinking towards our strategy and business”

The runners up this year were Julie Short (LinkedIn, @JulieDShort) from Gartner and Doug Cahill (LinkedIn, @dougcahill) from Enterprise Strategy Group. Whilst Julie was winner of the award last year, this is the first time that Doug has featured on our winners dais. Congratulations on their second and third places. Here are some reason why they received so many votes:

Julie is “driven, smart and easy to work with”.

Doug has “strong ability to distill and interpret complex concepts into key takeaways and actionable guidance – whether that is to end users or vendor clients”.

Following close, and unlucky not to be included in the final shortlist of three, were a large group of highly rated analysts. This included Chris Pang, Gard Little, Liz Herbert, Barbra McGann, Andrew Butler, Andy Mulholland, Mark Grannan and Ray Wang.

 

Global and Independent Analyst firms of the year were run using the same format based on 15 criteria, but in separate categories to allow for more equitable comparisons between the larger and smaller firms. The industry analyst market is segmented in terms of role and by size.

The IIAR Global Analyst Firm of the Year 2016 is Gartner.

The runner ups are Forrester and IDC.

This year again, Gartner was the clear category leader, followed by Forrester, IDC and Ovum. Forrester managed to reverse its position from last year where IDC came out in front. Special mention should be made of Ovum who continue to close the gap on the firms in front of it.

Here are just some of the comments we received about Gartner:

“I like how quickly and aggressively Gartner has grown out their marketing practice over the past 3 years”. 

“Gartner is premium priced, but delivers business value. Gartner has the broadest and deepest coverage of end-to-end data management. At least with the analysts I deal with on an ongoing basis, the analysts are client service focused and check their egos at the door”. 

“Gartner is the leading analyst firm by far, and their new recruited analysts are eager to learn. Great account team!!!”.

Here is a selection of comments about our runners up:

Forrester:

“Their account management exceeds the competition, and they make a true effort for us as a client to feel we are getting a full value from our investment”.

“Great group of analysts, Sales teams, and management. Fair pricing considering the competition above them…”.

IDC:

“Regional and WW a great firm to get data on markets and products, very useful to build GTM plans and activities. Nice people!!”.

“What I enjoy about IDC is that their analysts are very approachable (they are not as formal as say Gartner), they are covering more and more of what we do, they publish a lot of Marketscapes which is difficult in terms of time commitment and resources but when the end result is positive its a good outcome/visibility for the firm, the analysts are good at writing ad hoc pieces (IDC Links) and working with them for PR or marketing purposes is easy”. 

“This is the ONLY global analyst/research firm that focuses on manufacturing and related technology on a truly global basis”.

 

The Independent Analyst Firm of the Year 2016 is HfS

The runner ups for this year are and ESG and Constellation Research.

In the Independent Analyst Firm of the Year category, HFS emerged as the clear winner, with ESG and Constellation fighting it out for second and third respectively. 451 Research and RedMonk also scored well.

Respondents described how HfS were:

“Thought leaders, flexible and very fast to see the latest trends”.

“Great firm, and growing global influence. Still needs to catch the Big 2”.

“HfS analysts are very easy to approach. Their content is easy to understand and use. They are very flexible in their deliverable usage”.

 

Best New Entrant

In this category, our respondents were asked to identify a number of promising and potentially disruptive new firms. A wide range of new firms were mentioned. This shows that there is not one ‘market’ for industry analyst research but diverse markets with theses smaller firms able to cater for specialized products, technical fields and industrial settings. Here we list some of the firms in order of the votes they received: Moor Insights and Strategy, Aite Group, Machina Research, Current Analysis, IHS, ABI Research, Aptitude Research Partners, Celent and Creative Strategies.

 

About this survey

The data was collected and analysed by Fabio Rocha (LinkedIn) and Neil Pollock (LinkedIn, @neilpollock). Fabio is a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of enterprise sales, marketing and business development experience in IT software and services. He is currently completing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh Business School. Neil is a member of the IIAR board. In his day job he is Professor of Innovation at the University of Edinburgh Business School. He has recently published How Industry Analyst Shape the Digital Future. A more detailed analysis of the findings will be posted in due course, including of course a new version of the IIAR Tragic Quadrant. Finally, Ludovic Leforestier (@lludovic, LinkedIn) oversaw the development of the survey and has been behind its continued improvement over several years following the original version by Jonny Bentwood  (LinkedIn, @jonnybentwood).

 

Past winners

The IIAR Analyst of The Year has been running since 2008, see below the past winners.

• The IIAR Analyst of the Year 2015 was Julie Short at Gartner
• The IIAR Analyst of the Year 2014 was Ray Wang / Constellation
•  The IIAR Analyst Firm of the Year 2014 was Gartner
•  The IIAR “Tragic Quadrant”
• The IIAR Analyst of The Year 2012 was Alex Soejarto / Gartner
• The IIAR Analyst of The Year 2011 was Phil Fersht / HfS Research
• The IIAR Analyst of The Year 2010 was Phil Fersht / HfS Research
• The IIAR Analyst of The Year 2009 was Ray Wang back then at Forrester
• The IIAR Analyst of The Year 2008 was Ray Wang / Forrester