Industry Analyst - Roles and Deliverables

Roles and Deliverables

Industry analysts provide a combination of syndicated and client-sponsored (bespoke) market research, competitive intelligence, and management consulting services.

Deliverables take many forms, including publications like research reports, white papers, research notes, and newsletters; advisory services that include inquiries, briefings, consulting projects, and study findings presentations; and events such as conferences, seminars, roundtables, and other speaking engagements at internal client meetings and symposiums. Analyst firms serve a management decision support function at corporations and public service organizations, and for the vendors, regulators and investors serving those industries.

Industry analysts serving buyers of technology-based products and services, where the largest concentration of industry analysts provide services, work with three primary groups of clients:

• Commercial and public service entities that use technology-based products and services.
• Vendors providing products and services to commercial and public service organizations, and the channel intermediaries that resell or aggregate these products and services, including hardware manufacturers, communications companies, software firms, IT services providers, value-added resellers, mobile network operators, and content aggregators.
• Organizations that invest-in, regulate, or support the vendors and intermediaries, including investment banks, anti-trust regulators, chambers of commerce, and leasing companies.

The subjects of research conducted by analysts include many of the same stakeholders that also buy services from analysts. This has caused the integrity of the research to be questioned, which is covered in more detail below. These research subjects include product and service buyers, users, and implementers; the product and service providers themselves, including their key supply chain partners; and sources of investment capital for the vendors, capital for client purchases of vendor products and services, and regulators. Analysts also perform at least passive sales support for their firms, such as contributing to sales meetings, contracts, project profitability, or lead generation programs. This is necessary because the clients are paying for their expertise and must have an opportunity to assess associated capabilities.

At most firms, analysts set research agendas in close cooperation with clients, design surveys, analyze findings, and write research. They may also conduct the surveys themselves, or they may work with third-parties or interns to perform the data collection. Increasingly, analyst firms and their subcontractors employ online survey tools and offshoring to reduce research costs and turnaround time. In some cases, analyst firms are mining new sources of information from research partners, like consumer cell phone bills, RFID-enabled point of sale data, and analytics on Web traffic.

Typically, technology and service providers work to influence the analyst research agenda and coverage of their firm, and to build trusted relationships with individual analysts. This is done through a specialized marketing function called industry analyst relations or analyst relations, where some analyst relations staff members specialize themselves in certain product, service, industry, or geographic areas of the vendor organization. This function not only facilitates effective two-way communications between the analyst firm and the vendor, it attempts to concentrate and control spending on industry analyst research and advisory services.

It has become a common practice for analyst firms to assign a central "vendor relations" contact within their organization, to coordinate briefing, reprint and similar requests from vendors. Commercial and public sector client organizations have now assigned sourcing and procurement category managers as the primary contact for research and advisory services firms as well, to concentrate and better leverage spending on related products and services.