Wave report to segment market leaders in a crowded industry
I’m over the hump of this laborious research project to determine which of the 90 community platform vendors are enterprise worthy for Fortune 5000 interactive marketers.
Enterprise brands seek ‘Community Solution Partner’
I firmly believe that technology is a commodity, that’s why there are 90 vendors in this crowded space. Brands have indicated that success is only 20% technology, and the majority is 80% is a combination of internal changes, services, and support.
One thing I heavily stressed in my research, isn’t a focus so much on the technology, but instead how the vendors could truly be ‘community solution partners’ to their clients. A true solution partner understands the business needs of their client, offers strategy, best practices, can assist with implementation, offers ongoing technical but more importantly, community management, guidance, and recommendations.
The research methodology includes:
I’ve had to make sense of thousands of cells in multiple excel sheets, ensure each line is accurate and will enable our clients to make important decisions.
6-hour in person lab days with each of the 9 vendors
During the last few weeks, I spent 5-6 hours with each of the nine vendors, often in a windowless room where powerpoint, screenshots, and live testing of their software took place. Using Forrester’s 5 objectives of listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing, I’ve found some key patterns to the strengths of vendors.Up to 27 customer interviews
Surprisingly, vendors don’t know their own customers that well, in more than one occasion, customers poorly rated the vendors that suggested they participate as this ideal customer reference. I also cross references with vendors to see how well they could anticipate what their customers said about them in some cases, vendors were completely unaware of the challenges that clients were having a very bad sign.Reviewed data submitted by vendors
Earlier, we issued a survey to vendors in this space, over 50 of them responded, and submitted around 50 or so fields of data. I factored in a great deal of this to perform market sizing and to complete comparative analysis.Frequent discussion with clients
Perhaps the most important piece of data input is the constant discussion with my clients on inquiry calls. I hear from them what they want (demand side) as well as their experience with vendors (feedback). It’s interesting to find out that many brands are not happy with their platform vendors, and the vendors often don’t even know it!
Next Steps: Final Analysis, Preparing for Publication
Expect to see the published report in the coming weeks. Right now, the spreadsheets are being reviewed by vendors in the fact checking process, and I’ve already started to see some patterns in the data that will help to determine positioning. Thanks for your patience, between client duties and travel, getting all the pieces together for success requires some patience to ensure it will be done correctly.
If you’re a client and need advice now, you can schedule an inquiry call with me and I’ll be happy to discuss with you my current findings. I’ve already made some recommendations to clients based upon their specific needs and objectives.
I hope you find this transparency in the research methodology helpful in understanding our goals to make sure our clients make the right decisions to be successful.
Read more about this Wave Research project:
Part 1: Starting the Wave
Part 2: Data Collection Process
Part 3: The Analysis Process
Part 4: Announcing the Wave, the final report
The transparency in the research methodology has been invaluable in learning more about the entire process, but that’s not what this comment is about.
I just wanted to give you kudos, a pat on the back, something to acknowledge that I realize how much you’ve been traveling/working and yet you’ve still been able to provide consistently valuable content on your blog week in and week out. It’s no wonder many of your posts continue to turn up on my ‘top posts of the month’ post I do at the end of each month.
Keep up the phenomenal work Jeremiah, but don’t be afraid to catch your breath.
Best wishes!
Ryan thanks for noticing, I put in a lot of extra hours to do this work on the blog –which is beyond my job duties, in the long run it helps everyone, and me too. Keep on reading!
Must read this about customer references:
http://customerreferences.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/you-gave-a-bad-customer-reference-to-an-analyst-are-you-serious/
Jeremiah,
This statement really stood out for me:
One thing I heavily stressed in my research, isn™t a focus so much on the technology, but instead how the vendors could truly be ˜community solution partners™ to their clients. A true solution partner understands the business needs of their client, offers strategy, best practices, can assist with implementation, offers ongoing technical “but more importantly, community management, guidance, and recommendations.
As a business, software development, sales, and upgrades are much different than creating and managing a professional services organization (consulting and community management). This was a hard lesson for many of the early community leaders such as Participate.com. PDC started as strictly a services company offering community strategy and management services. When it expanded into community software, it was a disaster.
Not all organizations can be all things to all clients. We’ve seen a lot of business come our way as a result of software companies selling experience and consulting services as part of their engagement, but not delivering fully on the consulting side. They were excellent in implementing their software, but weak in providing proven best practices to help their clients succeed. When the clients didn’t see any real results, they brought us in to clarify the strategies and help build out the processes necessary to get results (otherwise known as business results).
Not sure the one stop shop for social media works so well in the real world. But that’s my two cents as a professional services company executive who doesn’t sell, but does recommend software platforms for clients.
Jeremiah,
I’m unclear on how you moved from 90 to 9 possible contenders — any light you can share on that process would be very much appreciated!
Ted
Some of the details are on this post (#1)
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/07/04/starting-the-forrester-wave-white-label-social-networks-and-community-platforms/
Essentially, the VPC provided us with data from 50 vendors which we were able to them filter down specific attributes to determine which vendors would best be suited for: Enterprise Class Interactive Marketers.
I’ll disclose more of the criteria in the final report.
When is the Wave report coming out? dying to see it.
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