What a thrill! We recently wrapped up another highly successful ARchitect User Forum — held in Cambridge, MA (as well as virtually) this year, and featuring speakers from Cornerstone OnDemand, IBM, Knowledge Capital Group (KCG), LogicMonitor, Splunk, The Trade Desk and more.
Hundreds of attendees — customers, analysts and other analyst relations (AR) aficionados — convened to discuss the future of AR, what’s “moving the needle” for them, opportunities for technology to lighten the load and enhance decision-making, and how AR can drive sales and business success.
One clear takeaway: The AR community is tight-knit and awesome. In a profession that’s fast-paced and often handled by small or solo teams, AR pros don’t hoard their superpowers — they’re eager to share strategies that work well. And so the enthusiasm at User Forum was palpable and intoxicating (or was that the “AR mARtinis” and “Communication Coladas” we served? ;-))
Check out additional nuggets from the event below. Those who attended will also have access to presentation content and replays. If you weren’t able to come, but would like this information too, please email userforum@arinsights.com.
ARchitect: We’re here to make your work easier and help you drive results!
ARInsights executives shared what’s new in ARchitect and where our solutions are headed in 2024 and beyond. Customer needs and feedback are our North Star, shaping product development.
Our CEO Howard Kogan explained that the company constantly seeks to “elevate our game at ARInsights to be the best possible partner to you.” We take a three-tiered strategy as we execute on that: “First, focusing on products that differentiate. Second, turning data into intelligence. And third, making it simple for our customers” to apply our insights in a high-impact way: improving their AR programs and supporting business goals.
There was a lot of buzz about our newly unveiled ARchitect dashboard and Analyst Impact Monitor — serving up timely intelligence, so you can see where your efforts are creating the biggest results. Stay tuned in the coming months for additional key enhancements — we’ll be serving up more AI-extracted insights, improving the Analyst Portal experience, and making the content we provide you even more actionable, to help you excel in your role.
Customer presentation recaps
Scaling analyst engagement and “program-atizing” partnerships
Brandon Davis, director of analyst relations at LogicMonitor, discussed maximizing AR’s impact with analyst partnerships, following a three-step model: establish, influence, partner. (“The thing I love about the partnership cycle,” Brandon shared, “is you learn and earn in every stage.”)
He highlighted the company’s journey from no analyst partnerships in 2022 to 20 now, and how LogicMonitor has seen a 106% increase in share of voice as a result. Tools like ARchitect help Brandon track progress, and he also discussed the importance of the company’s analyst days and analyst council in fostering mutually beneficial partnerships.
“I really focus in on face-to-face opportunities, using external and internal events to create relationships between our leadership and the analyst community. I think you can get more out of a 30-minute face-to-face conversation than a series of five or sixt [online] engagements.”
Making AR the cornerstone of your competitive strategy
Sarah Robin, senior manager of analyst relations at The Trade Desk, was initially overwhelmed by her dual role of building an AR program from the ground up AND owning the company’s competitive strategy. Over the course of two years, though, she enhanced her market knowledge, elevated her role, and improved the company’s competitive content assets (from static battlecards to interactive resources) — increasing engagement with those assets from 40% to 90%.
“Our role in analyst relations makes us uniquely fit to take our competitive strategy to the next level to help our teams and our company win even more,” Sarah noted. “Analyst relations brings to the table probably the most impactful competitive assets… So, you’re already built into the competitive team, but there are ways you can get involved even more.”
Infusing analysts into the sales process
Jennifer Borun, senior director of AR and strategic engagement at Cornerstone OnDemand, outlined Cornerstone’s multifaceted program for bringing analysts into the sales process — using their expertise and insights as a catalyst to connect with higher-level prospects and close more deals. Her “Analysts for Sales” (or “AR for ARR”) program has been “wildly successful” and involves hosting private analyst webinars, tapping analysts for deep background on prospects, picking analysts’ brains on competitive positioning, and using them as sales references.
“Let’s dispel the myth that [using analysts as sales references] is too expensive. It doesn't have to be Forrester and Gartner… You can have some of your boutique analysts be that third party voice… [Also] think about conferences. Analysts are at conferences. They’re there to meet with people. You can actually set up meetings with your customers and prospects at conferences with analysts… and they’ll talk about you.”
The Analysts for Sales program influenced the company’s biggest deal of the year, among many other wins. “We had a new CRO come in,” Jennifer said. “And on Day 3, I showed him the program, and his mind was blown. He was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing. I want every single sales person to do this.’”
Scaling impact with an Analyst Portal
Splunk’s Rachel Bernstein, senior analyst relations manager, and Sophie Kwon, AR specialist, use an Analyst Portal to reach more analysts: providing valuable content in a self-service model. As Splunk — now part of Cisco — sought to be a leader in an evolving market, the portal helped the team as it managed 15+ report leadership placements — with 11 of the reports authored primarily using portal content.
“We have uploaded briefings, demos, product briefs, and a general-purpose RFI that analysts can go to [on the portal], to write the report. All we have to do is a fact-check in the end. And that really became a huge opportunity for us because there was a lot of lift before for our internal stakeholders, working to brief these people.”
Sophie continued: “It’s been two years, and Year 2 brought even more increased engagement on our portal: 48% year-over-year growth. And that just gives us a lot of optimism for the future. It’s a part of our analyst relations strategy that will really grow in value.”
Linking analyst relations to business success
Beth Snellen, analyst relations strategist at IBM, described a four-step process for linking AR to business success: understanding stakeholder priorities, determining how AR can help, describing target outcomes, and measuring success. “You’ve got to figure out what’s important to your business before you figure out how AR is going to help,” she noted.
Beth previously served as a Gartner analyst — working as the key initiative leader for analyst relations best practices — so now brings both an analyst and AR mindset to her role.
“There are core skills that make somebody successful [in analyst relations],” Beth shared. “You need to be able to communicate. You need to be able to be a strategic thinker. Having strong business acumen is very important… You have to have an ability to understand and learn, a curiosity and interest.”
Partner presentation recap
Looking at AR by the numbers
Bill Hopkins, founder and CEO of The Knowledge Capital Group (KCG) shared early findings from ongoing KCG surveys on AR professionals, teams and firms. Data so far shows more return-to-office requirements, with nearly 1 in 3 AR pros (32%) needing to be in a physical, corporate office at least part of the week. “It’s a real phenomenon that we’re seeing,” Bill said.
In addition, AR job satisfaction is down at the top. “We want to get back to where we’re extremely satisfied and [think] it’s the best job we’ve ever had,” Bill noted.
Average AR team size, according to the preliminary data, is 3.74.
Other eye-popping data points from the preliminary results: AR pros and their companies spend an average of 159 hours per analyst RFI (e.g., Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester Wave, IDC MarketScape, GigaOm Radar, etc.). And with roughly 24 RFIs that AR teams need to complete each year, they’re putting in nearly 4,000 hours — highlighting the need for strong project management, and templates and technology where possible to alleviate the load.
“This is our tribe, man. The AR tribe is awesome and has a lot of wisdom and knowledge to share. You talk about best practices: Best practices are the tribe.”
This goes back to our thoughts on the AR community — and we totally agree! At ARInsights, we look forward to continuing to work with, and learn from, this incredible tribe and community. And we’re already excited to start planning User Forum next year; we look forward to seeing you all there!
If you have questions or thoughts about the event, we’re all ears: Reach out to us at userforum@arinsights.com.
