Analyst Relations and How to Talk to an Analyst

I just ran across a blog / website by Sage Circle, an analyst relations consulting house. I have put it in my blogroll as well. It is a useful site with good information on how to deal with analysts. There are lots of good tips, including a link to this article here.

I would add some of my own advice / amplify what others have said (in no particular order):

- There is a difference between AR and PR and pitching to VCs. Learn the difference.
- If your company tag line starts with: “The Leading supplier of . . ” Rewrite it.
- You should be able to tell me very succinctly your key value proposition and differentiation.
- VCs love: “We are just like XYZ, only different / better”. I personally find it lame.
- Tell me something that is not in the press release or in the brochure.
- Don’t try to spin me and l dislike talking to a “cheerleader”.
- If you make a claim, be ready to back it up.
- I want to know what else you are seeing in the market place.
- PowerPoint is OK, make sure to include specific facts, points you want me to know, but skip the fancy stuff like animations.
- I like to get my hands dirty with using the system, so give me access to a demo site or test bed.
- I expect you to do some research on me and have read my blog. If you want to impress me, pick one thing to discuss in a little more detail (you do not have to flatter me or agree with what I have wrote, but I would like to understand your viewpoint).

There are probably more items to add, but will leave it at that. I look forward to your comments.

Latest News – I am joining Synergy Research

I am very pleased to announce that I am joining Synergy Research. Synergy is a well respected group of people and does very high quality research in networking and telecommunications. I will continue to cover Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) and also be the lead analyst on Managed Services.

The Managed Serivces Market is growing substantially as economic and competitive pressures will drive more enterprises to
outsource greater portions of their telecommunication, IT, and network operations. Managed services can include data network, voice network or converged network services, as well as conferencing, real time streaming video and playback.

New Look and Location for my Blog

Sorry if I confused people with my new location and look.

My previous blogs on blogspot were “Social Networking Meets the Enterprise” and “Insights on the Future of Technology” and they are consolidated here as one blog.

I was hoping to keep them separate, but I am still figuring out how to work WordPress and the website authoring tool that I have.

Look for the web site beta to be up this week.

Google’s Chrome: How Significant is It?

I was pretty skeptical about Chrome, Google’s first entry into the browser market. I had heard it was pretty stripped down and I was anticipating something like google docs, which I do not use because it lacks the features I regularly use and like. I tried it and thought I would not use it much because the lack of menu options or tool bars seemed too foreign. Though I stuck with it a little longer and eventually got used to it. The best part of Chrome is its rendering speed. It is faster than I expected. I have used it off and on all day and find it acceptable, though I still prefer Safari and Firefox (I do not use IE unless forced to by sites that refuse to work properly in any other browser.

As a first product, it is better than I expected, though not enough to make me change over completely because it is too austere for me. I think that some of the “neat features” being touted already exist in other browsers and do not match the great stuff you can add to Firefox get like CoolIris’ Piclens. Also, the spell checker does not work when I am writing in my blog. The competition will not stand still, and since Chrome uses WebKit, the same engine as Safari – I do not see this is a major long term advantage.

The bottom line is that Chrome is OK, but not game changing. It will not have a major impact on Google’s revenue in the short – medium term. Chrome obviously puts more pressure on Microsoft, which is Google’s main strategic objective. This is going to be interesting.

News and Updates

I have decided to become an independent researcher. My website (dinesconsulting.com) is under construction, but the blog is now hosted here (in case you have not noticed). I have combined my blogs on enterprise social networking with technology insights in one place. The plan is to power the website with social networking tools.

I will continue to concentrate on enterprise social networking, and will look at other “game changing” technologies that are in the nascent / emerging stage.

The blog will be my main communications vehicle, where I will publish much of my thoughts and opinions. I will write more in-depth reports (mostly 2-5 pages) which will be available for purchase individually or via syndication. Initially I will be publishing profiles of various suppliers in the enterprise social networking space.

In addition to publishing supplier profiles, I will publish market overviews and case studies, conduct end-user and vendor surveys, and will be available for consulting, speaking engagements or webcasts.

I am looking forward to having spirited / engaging conversations with you on the future of emerging technologies.

Did Verizon Make a Good Decision with Rolling Out FIOS?

This is the question posited in the New York Times article: Verizon’s FiOS: A Smart Bet or a Big Mistake? Four years ago, when it was announced, financial analysts were very skeptical, thinking that AT&T’s copper based approach was going to be good enough and cheaper. Now the article states that the jury is out.

If you take the long term view, it was absolutely the right approach. Verizon made an investment in the future of their network. Wireline telephony is losing share to mobile, that is clear. But wireline telephony is also losing share to IP based telephony. The ability of wireless to provide high bandwidth reliably (for internet access) is quite limited and will likely never equal fiber solutions. Therefore, Verizon is extremely well positioned from a technology standpoint.

I am a FIOS customer, I telephone, internet and TV via FIOS. There have been some minor hiccups, but overall I am quite pleased with the internet speed and quality of the video. The biggest issue with Verizon (in all divisions) is customer service. I give them a D. Calling customer service goes to a voice recognition that is unbearable (it is the not the accuracy as much as the menu system has way too many choices and too confusing). They still have not figured out that customers want to be able to do business with them nights and weekends and that we find it annoying to enter data into the automated service and then have to repeat it all to the agent. Their web based access is cumbersome and you need multiple accounts.

Now, Verizon’s biggest success factor will be how well they execute their user interface, offer good programming and much they invest in customer service. Their competitors (cable companies) are better in all these areas. So, like many technology investments, the key to success is less dependent on the technology choice than in the “soft issues” like service quality.

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Slick New Web Service

I just ran across a slick web service, started by a former colleague, Vadim Yasinovski. It is www.pdffiller.com, and it allows you to fill out any PDF form directly online without needing to download any software. OK, it does not solve a huge problem, but it neatly addresses a nagging issue that we all seem to run into. I have found that most forms are setup for printing and being fill out by hand and this is a welcome convenience factor.

It is worth checking out.

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Enterprise Social Networking Market will be $2 Billion

In case you have not had the time to look at the summary of my report, I dedided to post some highlights of Volume 1 here.

Key findings:

ESN is inevitable. Like email and IM, employees are going to use them anyway, so management might as well give them the tools so they have some input in them. (Yes, email was not so ubiquitous 10 – 15 years ago. I remember having to use my personal email account to send files to my colleagues personal email account so we did not have to print and mail or fax).

The market is current $200 million (to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld: who knew it was so big?) It was a bit surprising, but the numbers work out that way. I count 55 + startups in the space alone (I know I am missing a bunch, as I have not been actively hunting them down). Most of these startups are small, but a handful have revenue in the $10-30 million range. Then we add IBM, Novell and make assumptions about how much SharePoint is sold each each year and how much of that revenue can be allocated to ESN.

The business will be $2 billion in 5 years, growing at approximately 40%. This is a mid-range to conservative estimate.

Volume 2 is in progress. It will profile approximately 20 companies, so stay tuned.

Is Social Networking in Enterprises Heading for a Slowdown?

A Network World article on a McKinsey study and an ITBusiness Edge blog seem to point to sluggish or slow adoption of Web 2.0 – and by extension this could mean that ESN adoption might be slower than we expect. The main reasons given are the economic downturn and a lack of an ROI. I agree that these factors could slow down ESN but only in the short term. Over the long run, ESN is pretty much inevitable and will make little difference in the overall adoption.

As a side note: I find it interesting that the news media and most bloggers are taking a technology-centric approach when looking at ESN / Web 2.0 in the enterprise. For instance, the McKinsey study looked at how many enterprises are using RSS or wikis. I believe that this is too narrow a focus and that we should be looking at how enterprises are using the technology to be more innovative, efficient, faster etc. If we focus on the technology, then we can fall into the trap of looking at technology for its own sake and not for the business benefit. For example, CRM is defined by the business process it automates and not by the underlying technologies that enable it (e.g. contact management or email marketing).

Here is my response to the blog, FYI:

It is good to get multiple opinions – it creates a healthy debate.

Based on my research, the C-level execs may try to stop it but it is going to happen anyway. Employees are starting to use it anyway and eventually the C-level types will catch on. For example, about 90% of the Fortune 1000 companies have a network on Facebook (set up by someone in the company), and I cannot imagine that the C-level execs had anything to do with it or even know about it.

It is looking a lot like email and IM. Remember back in the mid 90’s? There was a lot of inertia within major corporations giving email to employees. Also, while many companies are talking about blocking IM, other research shows that it will have nearly complete penetration into major corporations in just a few years.

As for ROI, I agree it is important, in fact having a business reason for implementing the technology is imperative – otherwise you are just deploying technology for its own sake – which is the wrong reason. The problem now is quantifying the benefits with some reasonable accuracy or confidence and since the use of the technology is young and our experience is limited, this will take some time to prove. A few pioneers will take the leap of faith and gain the rewards or pain of failure (and they are betting that potential payoff is great enough that the risk is worth it). We should thank the pioneers because their efforts that educate the rest of us about the best use of the new technology. I predict that in a few years no one will be doing ROI on web 2.0 (when was the last time someone did an ROI on email or web site?)

The economic doldrums will slow down adoption rates that we predicted earlier, but this will be a temporary situation- in the long run web 2.0 in the enterprise (and the related use of web 2.0 for social networking in the enterprise) is inevitable.

See below for more information.

http://enterprisesocialnetworking.blogspot.com

http://www.wainhouse.com/presn08.html

Another Sign that ESN is Going Mainstream

I just noticed a short article in Information Week on how banks like ING are deploying a customer SN siteto attract more young people and companies like Fiserv (a back-end bill paying company) are offering MyMoney a Facebook app to provide basic banking functions.

These are excellent examples of mainstream enterprise using SNs for external audiences. Expect to see more announcements of similar innovative uses of SN in banking and financial services and in other industries as well.