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I’m surprised I even made this grilling – I suffered from the worst bronchitis in living memory in the run-up to this session. Fortunately, I managed to recover just in time. So, do analysts still matter? The live broadcast was positively animated with a few tense moments during the grilling phases of the discussion. And it wasn’t just me grilling – the audience thoroughly enjoyed unpicking the panel. And so they should!

Speaking of the panel, Michelle Accardi runs the shared services group at CA, a leading IT Enterprise Management Software vendor, and in that capacity oversees their global marketing programs. She is both a client of various analysts such as Gartner and Frost & Sullivan as well as an ‘end user’ – a subscriber to reports and industry research which is relevant to her as a marketer. “Analysts matter as much as my customers care about them” she says. Her big thing is trust. She advises any marketer to canvas customers and find out which analyst firm THEY trust and to invest your marketing dollars accordingly. For Michelle the whole analyst thing is not just about the products, but also about understanding her customers’ needs so that CA can deliver the right solutions (read: ‘make sure that the messaging aligns with the customer need’). Now, since Michelle is big on the trust issue, I challenged the subject of objectivity as analysts often seem to get ‘won over’ – directly or indirectly – by vendors such as CA. Michelle agrees that there is a perception that vendors use (read: pay) analysts to push their own agenda, but insists that more often than not, analysts remain true to their role as ambassadors of reliable and trustworthy industry insights.

Chris Ross, VP of Marketing at the Burton Group, arguably the most neutral IT research and advisory services firm, disagrees. He believes that there is no way for those ‘reliable and trustworthy insights’ not to be shaped by the tens of millions of dollars which vendors are pouring into these analyst firms. Chris believes that any analyst firm whose majority revenue is driven by vendors (e.g. Forrester, Gartner etc) will provide great insights to the vendor, but may have a penchant for more subjective recommendations to their buyer community.

The audience was getting animated, joining in the debate. One delegate was lamenting the difficulty of getting the analysts’ mindshare as a small medium enterprise vendor with limited budget, while another countered that analysts have a bias TOWARDS small medium enterprise who shake up the space and AGAINST the big incumbent players.

Naylor Gray, Frost & Sullivan’s Global Marketing Director turned the trust question on its head and put 2.0 on the hot seat. Frost and Sullivan are a well recognized analyst firm focused on accelerating growth for their clients. In his opinion, trust and the reliability of data gets established through questions such as 1. do they have a methodology, 2. is it transparent, 3. can the model be easily manipulated or is it ‘vendor proof’, 4. do they have the industry coverage and the capability? According to Naylor, social media cannot be trusted at a deep level. There is no methodology – there is no brand – social media is made up of individuals and individuals will never be trusted brands upon which professionals will make significant business decisions. He has a point – analyst brands play a role in empowering the buyers to make their business case. Going to your boss(es) for funding, validating your request with a leading analyst brand and related industry research/insights will go down better than ‘Someone on Twitter said’ or ‘this blog I read on a daily basis mentioned that’….

Still, Chris argues that analysts are under threat if they do no position themselves correctly in this new landscape. Interestingly, Naylor quoted Google as a key competitor due to the accessibility of industry insights and data which competes with the ‘off the shelf’ reports which analysts generate revenues from. “If the customer can get everything they need through search and Web 2.0 tools and platforms for free, they should.” says Chris. So, the ball is in the analyst’s court to stay relevant. “The analyst business model is strong, but our related services need to evolve. These days, we’re so much more than creating documents – we develop ‘Google proof’ non-commoditized insights, we sit in on staff meetings, develop highly custom research. The basic subscription model works, but the value proposition is shifting from content to advisory.”

So, the reason why analysts still matter is that information is not insight. And – according to the panel – analysts have a role to play in deciphering the many moving parts in their subject matter area to provide unparalleled depth and breadth which is indispensable when making important business decisions. Another consideration is that social commentary and/or communities are not necessarily prevalent in all B2B industry sectors.

So, the whole notion of empowering professionals with credible, reliable and free knowledge is a pipe dream? Naylor dryly interjected that business isn’t quite that altruistic, but could definitely see how more credible ‘vertical’ social networks could start making a difference (i.e. Sermo vs. LinkedIn). Michelle pointed at her work with ‘community of interest websites’ which CA developed with TechWeb TO empower the community. Which brings us back to trust – an industry professional will rarely believe a vendor-driven resource (even if that fact is well hidden). What would be really powerful, Michelle argues, is to ask the customers which brands they trust and to use that social consensus to develop trusted professional communities to empower professionals to rate products, exchange experiences and trade insights. The audience agreed: 73% would like to see these type of resources for their respective profession.