Forrester Vs Gartner Research Firms a Comparison

Analyst firms are quite popular among enterprises to help them decide what is best for thier companies. Large ISVs who want to influence the CIO or CEO too get involved with analyst firms to show thought leadership and be seen in front of these busy C Segment folks.

Analyst firms help in

1) They help enterprises purchase the right software. Well I am sure if your budget is small, you are not going to go to these analyst firms for advice. To get started the "Big 4" analyst firms start at $30K per year.
2) Save time
3) For an ISV, they help validate the message or conclusion you made.
4) They are like a paid "market analyst" for your company. If you think you find it worthwhile to hire someone and pay 100K per year to do this job, then it could be worth the time in investing in one firm.
5) BTW they do not give actionable data. They give you stats and you have to make the decision, hence in addition to the docs they give, you must have someone still to work and make decisions on that data.


Some analyst firms price their products (base products) based on the number of persons who can access their web site and documentation. Additionally they will have some docs that are readable only on paying more. For eg: the dataquest documents from Gartner.


This is a simple (shallow) comparison on how a few leading analyst firms (Gartner and Forrester) compare against each other. I was not able to find any good content in this space and hence wanted to express as neutral an opinion as possible. Hope this will be useful to "Analyst Relations" personnel in enterprises and ISVs to make a decision. This is based on my experience with them for over 3 years.


Document Content for similarly priced services Rating out of 10.
Gartner : 7/10
Forrester: 7.5 /10 (extra because some of their docs give numbers and that is extra payment for Gartner)
Comments :Forrester seems to be better for ISVs / Vendors, while Gartner is better for Enterprises trying to purchase. So I found Forrester a bit better as my usage was more from an ISV point of view


Advanced Docs
Gartner: can't rate as I did not have access to too many docs. But they are of great quality.
Forrester: good. and they do not seem to have segregation of document access itself.


Usefulness of Analyst Inquiry
Gartner:Will say what they hear from customers. Not much messaging / consulting works, I guess that must be available at extra cost.
Forrester:Will say what they hear from customers. They will push you to go for messaging / consulting works by extra dollars.
Comments:In this aspect, Forrester is not that good. They expect us to use the "Service Units" $$ and tell the analyst about our product. However for Gartner we can use our existing "Unlimited Inquiry" option itself.


Flexibility of Analyst Inquiry meaning can a non member do the call
Gartner:Yes (they have an option ask another person for this call only option)
Forrester:No. They also say they are strict about this. But on a case to case basis the account manager may allow others to talk so that when its time to renew, they can entice you to upgrade your licenses.
Comments:Normally for Gartner the Licensed user will have to email them but a non member can do the talking on the call.
So I find Gartner very useful in this case. However if you are having too many calls, you may want to go for the additional user license.

Analyst Friendliness
Gartner:8/10
Forrester:7.5/10
Comments:i think this is based on the analyst you talk to. If you consistently talk to them and keep them updated, you get better mileage.


Amount of Content Written
Gartner:Low. Both have high amount of new content written.
Comments:However since Gartner is probably in the market longer, the established markets have very less new content being written and hence you get less coverage in new documents, since there are fewer written for established markets.
For example, APM, Network monitoring are established markets and they do not write anything - no Magic Quadrant.
However for a market like Network Change Management, which is an upcoming one, there are chances newer vendors could get mentioned.
Forrester:Medium. They write lot of content even for established market segments and hence probability of getting mentioned is higher.
Comments: Unless they write we can't be mentioned in any good doc :-)

Any USPs
Gartner:They are more focused on End User / Customers not on ISVs. Their reports are more useful for our customers than for us to understand the competitive space.
Forrester:They seem to have lots of content which looks specifically done to help ISVs or Vendors to understand the competitive space. Comments:They have both ISVs or Vendors and Enterprises as clients. So hence I thought of highlighting this.


Account Manager:
Gartner: mixed. However calls were still scheduled via their call center easily.
Forrester:mixed initially. but we definitely had a better experience with Forrester. Excellent and enticed us to spend more than we would have otherwise.

Cost
Gartner:Starting prices in both range at approx the same limit. 30K
Forrester:Starting prices in both range at approx the same limit. 30K
Comments:this is the case when you have doc access and inquiry with unlimited analyst option.


Free Vendor Briefings Possible
Gartner:Yes - 1 hour -
Forrester:Yes - 1 hour -
Comments:This is something present in all analyst firms. this is normally one way and you cannot ask anything, you answer them. Normally this is for any new product releases, major product upgrades etc. So can do more often too and you DONOT have to be a client to do it.

Will they try their best to make your usage successful ?
Gartner:I guess this depends on how good your account manager is. I have had mixed results.
Forrester:They are excellent and even point to other analysts whose full time job is educating "Analyst Relations" persons.


Will they cover you and are they independent ?
Gartner:They are surely very independent. They have strict standards on how they cover vendors. So if you are a small vendor, you may simply not be able to meet their standards. Which is ok as they set the expectations clearly.
Forrester:No comments. May not be so strict in approach of covering.
Comments:For some analyst firms you have to use Service Units (costs money) to make sure that analysts know about you well.


Is it easy to do briefings ?
Gartner:Very Easy and Really professional internal IT. You can do it over the phone in less than 20 minutes. I like their email option the best.
Forrester:Can't match Gartner. They are sometimes too slow to respond unless you copy the account manager always, which is sometimes an overhead. EMail is very bad, however I have not tried their phone option.


Tidbits
Gartner:
Forrester:Even people in Forrester look up at Gartner as a great analyst firm. Gartner has many analysts covering specific areas where Forrester may only have one and some of them covering more than one area.
Comments:All analyst firms have excellent analysts as they are all very experienced. If you have tons of money, go for both.


To make your analyst relations program more effective, make sure you have one dedicated person in the first year to work with the analysts. This gives maximum mileage for what you are spending. If you cannot dedicate 70% of one person's time on this, you may not be utilizing to the max potential. Note, you are spending a lot, so unless you can back yourself, do not spend.

Also make it a point to do a self review how you perform and how much of their services you use every quarter. Try to improvise on the previous quarter. If you do well with one, then go for the second one in the second or third year.



Please note the disclaimer of my blog.