Analyst relations (AR) professionals want (and need!) to know what analysts are saying about their company, competitors and industry; it’s part of the way AR pros measure results. But periodically searching for research on a given firm’s site won’t cut it. For one thing, it’s useful to know about mentions as they happen, so you can act on the information. Plus, nowadays, analysts aren’t just publishing research — they’re also sharing their opinions and takeaways via blog posts and social media, and through quotes in media articles. 

Regularly and manually sifting through all that would be a headache… and a time-consuming one!

This November 10, at our User Forum in Burlingame, California (also held virtually), Gerry Van Zandt will share a better way. As senior director of analyst relations for analytics automation company Alteryx, Gerry is a one-man AR show… so he’s well-aware of the need to save time in AR processes! (But even when Gerry worked on much larger teams at Intel, HP and Oracle, he still prized efficiency.) 

We were thrilled to catch up with Gerry recently to discuss his upcoming User Forum presentation and other AR insights, gleaned from his nearly three decades of experience in the field. Read on to learn more from the conversation (and join us at User Forum for additional details):

Q: Please describe your role at Alteryx.

Gerry: I run and manage the full analyst relations program for Alteryx, a $750 million analytics software platform company that’s growing at around 40% annually.  

Q: What is the mission of your AR team? 

Gerry: The AR mission for Alteryx is to ensure that our leaders are engaging with all relevant industry analysts in our markets and adjacent ones. We seek to obtain and leverage analysts’ knowledge and insights — as well as ensure analysts are up-to-date on our company strategy, portfolio, successes and market challenges, and that they’re well-informed about how our customers benefit from our products.

Q: What AR challenges does your organization face?

Gerry: Given our growth in portfolio, capabilities and customers served, there is also an ever-growing analyst appetite for information about Alteryx and a greater opportunity to engage with the analyst community. I wish I could triple the size of our team!

Q: How do you use people, process and technology to solve these challenges? 

Gerry: ARchitect is a core element of our AR program foundation and supports multiple areas: interaction and insight tracking, analyst outreach, metrics and measurement, daily alerts on research, competitive intelligence and tracking, and more.  

ARchitect has really become a “Swiss Army knife” for AR professionals in recent years. One example of its usefulness is that we’re able to generate quarterly AR metrics literally in minutes using specialized ARchitect queries — automating a process that would have taken multiple days in the past using manual methods. 

Q: What’s the title of your User Forum presentation? And what will people learn from it?

Gerry: My presentation is called “Using Analyst Premium Content to Supercharge Your AR Program.”

Attendees will learn about Premium Content, a versatile, add-on module for ARchitect that supports a well-rounded AR program. With Premium Content, you can search the ARchitect database for mentions of your company, competitors or key topics across analyst tweets, blog posts, media quotes and subscription research.

This session will identify and discuss practical ways that AR leaders can use Premium Content. I’ll share examples of Premium Content used by itself — as well as in conjunction with other techniques and information sources — to provide a comprehensive picture of analyst insights and sentiment for continuous AR program improvement, analyst targeting, AR measurement and analyst insight monitoring.

Q: In three sentences or less, what’s your best piece of AR advice?

Gerry: Analyst relations is a long-term process that requires well-defined goals, constant and careful attention, analysis and adjustments to achieve the best results. You should strive to appropriately set stakeholders’ expectations about what AR can do (and what it can’t), communicate results regularly, and educate your team on how the process works and their role in it. This will build support for your program and help ensure its success over time.

Q: What are you most looking forward to at User Forum?

Gerry: Connecting with AR friends and colleagues after a long absence due to the pandemic. It’s always good to break bread with members of the AR tribe 🙂 

Want to hear more from Gerry and other AR pros? Join us in-person at ARchitect User Forum on Thursday, Nov. 10, from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. PT, at the Hyatt Regency SFO in Burlingame, California  (or sign up to attend virtually if you can’t make the trip). It’s an opportunity to learn new AR strategies, listen to real-world success stories and network with other AR practitioners across the globe. We hope you’ll register and join us!

And if you’re interested in more great tips from Gerry, keep on reading! We interviewed him earlier this year for our “Profiles in AR” blog series. Check out Part I and Part II of the conversation — where Gerry discusses AR on small teams vs. large ones, briefing best practices and the future of analyst relations.