Analyst Relations at a Big Company

I’m frequently asked what it’s like to make an announcement at IBM. I’m also frequently told (by analysts):

Why doesn’t IBM just do x,y,z?

Why did IBM do x,y,z?

Who is the person that does x,y,z?

Company a,b and c can do this, why can’t you?

If IBM would spend some of it’s money doing x,y,z instead of stock buybacks, buying this or that, it would make more sense.

So it is when working at a larger company, things are different, especially in a communications function. It’s like working in the military, the congress or the UN sometimes.

IBM is a Big Company

Well, d’uh. But I had to establish the premise for drawing analogies. With big comes a different set of issues. When I worked at a small company years back, many times I made the decision to do what was needed for press, analysts or marketing campaigns.  If I needed money, I just went to see my buddies in accounting that I likely had lunch with and bingo, it was done.  Not so in a biggie company.

Coordinating communications across multiple disciplines, to different constituencies and from different area’s of the company and still seem congruent at the end of the day is also sometimes a feat. When it works, it is a charm, when it doesn’t…you wonder if we all work for the same company. Not only do you have message issues can conflict, you have executive issues…..and conflict.

There are times when the messages are actually competing with another brand or division. Co-opitiion lets you partner with your competitors and when you announce a joint project, it can upset the applecart internally. Oracle competes with our middleware, yet is a services partner. SAP uses our database technology to compete with Oracle, but again competes with our middleware stack. Microsoft is shipped with some of our servers, yet we are all about Open Source and Linux.

To make an announcement, hold an analyst day or any other form of communication, it calls for multiple revisions, making it hard to stay on track.

Working in the Congress

This is when it’s like congress. You have a bill (set of messages) and it covers many states (brands, divisions, groups) which you have to get it passed (make the announcement). There are constant negotiations, earmarks, pork where everyone has to get their message in. In case you didn’t already know, clear and concise messaging is effective, multiple and conflicting messages are not. It is up to the Comms team to keep it on track. Then you have a speaker of the house (executive) that is making the announcement, including the press secretary (announcement team) who field additional questions and clean up.

Then there are the times when we are doing say, acquisitions. We are sworn to secrecy (NDA’s), are given our marching orders (messaging) have a commander (executive in charge of the project) and are basically told when, where and how things are going down. Now drop and give me 20 push ups. This at times can actually be easier as the butt-in-ski’s from various groups don’t get to put in their 2 cents to slow things to the speed of a glacier. But to watch a big company work with the efficiency of an aircraft carrier, I’ve seen throngs of people get organized and get into action in literally minutes….. and it is some of the most effective work in the shortest amount of time you’ll see at a big company.

The UN
Then there are the communications times that remind me of raising teenagers, like nailing jello to a tree. It’s not clear who’s in charge, who’s announcing what and/or why. But we HAVE to get back to TPTB to report progress. I’m sitting back the whole time watching this train wreck waiting to happen. These announcements usually get swept under the rug or butchered if anyone finds out about them. It’s like working at the UN, people posturing about their product or announcement, but getting nothing done and and having no power to enforce anything….
How to get it to work
The net of it is coordination. A/R has to work with P/R, with the executives, with the analysts, with the press, with the WORLD to get the messaging correct and approved, The whole time the internal team has to notify everyone so that when a customer calls, we actually know what to say. All the affected product groups need to be communicated to and worked with. Timing has to be worked out because if you haven’t noticed, we pretty much announce something every day. It’s hard not to step on someone else’s toes, especially if you are communicating to the same mediums. We have to space out the announcements, and getting priority for yours is like going to court and negotiating a plea bargain. Which announcement is more important to the company? Well, what day is it.

The internal negotiations of such machinations is a skill in itself. You learn political, social, communication and flexibility skills in addition to your job. It is very difficult to make such a big company work together effectively, something that we do better than most, but still have a ways to go sometimes.

So when you ask us, why don’t you just do x, y or z, it’s because were going through the alphabet doing a,b and c,,,,plus some hieroglyphics to get it right, not because we aren’t listening to you. When you ask us who takes care of the revalvitating capitulators and I don’t know, it’s because we’re big and a lot of people do a lot of jobs. Oh yes, and since IBM stands for I’ve been moved, people change jobs and who did it last year is rarely an indicator of who’s doing it now.

It’s a good thing I can blog, the only boss I have to run that by is me.

Is a Blog that Influential to Analyst Relations?

Maybe.

I had a conversation recently with one of the major firms recently who asked me why I did what I do on my blog. Being transparent, I told them my motives, my objectives and my expectations. Let me stop and say that I fully expect them to be reading this post. I’ve been asked to present blogging as a best practice for analyst relations to a group of my peers. I do believe that it is a best practice as I accomplish many things through blogging (I’ll concede that competitive eating is pretty much motive-less, except for the spectacle of it). Mostly I was taken back that anyone would care a hoot about what I write, but I seemed to have mis-judged the audience. I know why I do what I do, but it seems that others are interested and the firm I spoke to thinks it could help the greater A/R community.

Blogging should be about transparency, but as I’ve noted before, I hate to lose. I clearly use my blog to speak to analysts as I learned well that the R in A/R doesn’t stand for reports. Yes, I write that often, so that phrase is brought to you by the department of redundancy department, but I digress. Back to hating to lose, I find that blogging gives me an additional line of communications with analysts, which I’d need to disclose to all, and it gives me a one up on the competition. I even have relationships with analysts through the blog that I don’t work day to day with.

It became clear in the conversation that I’m not going to worry about it that much as the discussion quickly came to the point that blogging is passion, you either are going to do it or your not. Most that do it are like the people at the gym after New Years. Here today, back at the buffet line tomorrow.

It also became clear to me who I felt was better than me, which I would point out in such a presentation, should I get asked to actually do it. But a lot comes down to me, would I discuss it or would I hold the keys to the safe of A/R tactics.

Maybe I just have delusions of adequacy?

My guess, I’d probably do it if asked to as if we can make our profession better, why not? And to answer the question is a blog influential to analyst relations, for me the answer is definitively yes…..both reading and writing.

Competing in an Analyst Vendor Comparison - Part 2

I’m writing this series so one can see what goes on inside a analyst vendor comparison from our point of view. I compare this to what the outside world see’s, which is the results once published. I was also asked by some analysts when I began this blog to discuss the dynamics of these projects from our side so they could understand what we are going through.

This particular review as I mentioned before is being conducted by one of the big three firms. The dynamics of the relationship are different because of size, analyst reach and other factors which require us to handle the relationship portion of the job differently than with a non big three firm. I emphasize this as I’m writing about a report, but the wise in the A/R community know that the R in A/R stands for relations, not reports.

We were challenged by both time and experience as I noted before. Time, as it occurred over the Christmas holiday period and experience as I am working with an entirely new team who has never undergone this process. I wish to point out that the analysts have now commented that our attention to both detail and deadline were better than others so far, meaning we took the time to break down our programs vs. answering the question in terms of yes/no or did we comply. While this is not life or death, understanding what the analysts are going through to compare disparate programs when answering the questions helps them understand and therefore help us. One must understand from the vendor side that the analyst does NOT work for the vendor and therefore what we take for granted is not intuitive for them. They must boil the ocean of all the forms into something that is consumable for the audience and compare a huge variance in both programs and responses to questions. This can not be accomplished by just filling out the form and it is a process. Let me back up to describe this.

While I began this topic in December of 2007, I believe that the cycle started in December of 2006 when this report was not even scheduled. We took over a year and multiple briefings both over the phone and in person to cover the breadth of our programs. I’ll admit that we are IBM and complexity can be our core competency, so this doesn’t apply to smaller companies who might not have programs as large as we do, but I don’t work for them so that is the hand I’m dealt. Nevertheless, were I at a smaller vendor, I would still approach these comparisons the same way, relationship based. Through this process, we were never guaranteed that such a report would be written, as this is the first time for this firm on this subject, but we build the relationship between said firm and our programs over this time. What is most interesting as I refer back to the issue of a new team is we started with one set of executives and team, and competed in the review with another. This was a test for me as to whether the merits of the program stand out regardless of the players, of which time will tell.

We did deliver the completed forms on time and in great detail (not a wave of minutia, which must be managed) for which I credit our team in taking this seriously. I routinely count on the competition to be both late and incomplete at this point. I’ll give the smaller vendors the benefit of the doubt when they don’t have dedicated A/R programs and this is someone’s night job, but this happens at the major players I’ve been told by analysts, which is faux pas supremo. I’ll admit to a bit of anal retentiveness to getting the job done right, and a sense of competitiveness that drives me in almost every aspect of my life, but the reality is that a job done well is what we are paid to do, a job done excellent separates the men from the boys.

Our next step was to speak with the analyst’s to make sure that there was no questions on either side of the questionnaire that might be misunderstood or misinterpreted. As I suspected, there were. What was interesting is that in most cases, both we an the analyst’s had the same issues and subjects that needed clarification. This is a clear indicator that we were at least somewhere near each other regarding being on the same page as to the direction of this project. Again as I suspected, other vendors are not completing this step which leaves it up to interpretation, which can go either way. After a good conversation, we cleared said issues up. The old saying of leaving no stone unturned matters here.

I believe that this is a crucial step in dealing properly with analyst’s in such a project. Any misunderstanding or lack of clarity can cost you a notch or two in the outcome, once again challenging my competitiveness which won’t go away. This also gives us a chance to build the relationship with the analyst’s further. Beyond the obvious of business reasons here, it is a good practice to keep an open dialogue with your analyst counterpart.

I anticipate the results in February, so we’ll see how it turns out.  While I could have written a step by step guide of how to manage these projects, I don’t want to give away the keys to the store quite yet.  If you read it, there is enough information here to do well at this.

Competing in a Analyst Vendor Comparison - Part 1

I hope this will be a multi part post over the next month as I’m in the middle of a comparison by one of the big three analyst firms regarding our partner programs. As it is with Dragnet, the names are changed (or not mentioned) to protect the innocent. I also don’t want to affect the outcome by being too public, but since it is an analyst relations event that we all go through….. just the facts ma’am.

We received the questionnaire a week late from the original time line, but weren’t given an extension. Normally, this wouldn’t have been an issue as I’ve been working with a delta force team in ISV and Developer Relations (IDR) and I’ve “trained” them on the drill. Two things have changed. First, we’ve never done a report on our group with this firm so the unofficial rules of engagement are an unknown. I believe that while you need to follow rules, nuances are the make or break when there is an issue near the line where an answer or rating could go either way.

Second and this is the big issue, is my whole team turned over with the exception of me, so no one had ever dealt with an analyst and some are relatively new to the IDR program. This was a problem. We had to assemble a whole new team and get them to understand that not everything we do is important to an analyst. This discernment is a big issue when answering the questions properly. Overpowering a question with information is not the same as answering it properly. Conversely, we have to get them to understand what is important and answer the question asked.
Our ability to do well in this was in part governed by the questions asked for the rating. The analyst firm was very fair in giving all participating vendors the guidelines and asking our input beforehand, and asked if anyissues were not relevant or did they leave out something that was meaningful. This was one of our points to influence the report so we took the view of the reader (partner/ISV) and answered as to how they would read it and it appears that was of value to analyst.

I’ll give the analyst firm credit, they took the time to read our input and considered it, more than some have done for me in the past.

So I’m coaching a team of rookies that are playing in the big leagues (the competition in this one add up to hundreds of billions of revenue, no small potato’s) and this is the playoffs.

I’ll write further as the process goes forward and once over, I’ll reveal the results and perhaps the analyst firm . Normally, I’m quite confident in these as our programs are solid, but for this one, there are too many unknowns. If I had to guess, we’re a top 2 or 3, but again, there is no way of predicting.

The test of the quality of most things is by fire. So while it shouldn’t matter that we have all new people, the program should be capable and we should be able to do the normal good job we do. That discounts the human element of this, one incomplete or mis-interpreted answer could deal us a bad card. As they say in “The Gambler” every hand’s a winner and every hand’s a loser….

I want and iPhone, but I want an iPhone killer even more

I think the iPhone is a really cool tech tool.  My doctor even told me it changed how he runs his business because he switched.  I love my iPod and I hate Sprint, so it’s a no brainer for me.

So why am I so happy about products like the Nokia N95  and the new iPhone killer from Dell? Competition baby.

It’s no secret that I love capitalism.  Why, because it drives down the price and drives up the features, functions and quality.  It makes everyone get better and the ultimate winner is me, the consumer.

One thing I’m hoping for is the 3G and/or some IP capability.  In the spirit of better products, this will help us divorce ourselves from the service handcuffs that the cellphone companies strangle provide us with.  We should be tied to the phone and it’s capabilities, not the carrier.

So I normally am not a Dell fan, but in the spirit of capitalism, please bring this out before Christmas.  I know that the next two revsions (maybe even more) are already functioning in the Apple labs, so turn up the heat and get it out!

Event Hell or, 1 Event 2 Events 3 Events 4…5 Potato 6 Potato 7 Potato more

There is something about this time of year. All of the major Analyst firms have or just completed events, and IBM and other vendors are doing the same. Within IBM, each division is hosting their own events (Hardware, Software, SMB and so forth), so add a couple there.

This brings up some questions and complexities. How can you get to all the events if you are an analyst? How can you get to all the analyst events if you are a vendor? Are they all really necessary? What if they were held in Second life or virtual knowing that video conferencing isn’t going to work on this scale?

I’m not going to answer every question, but they are relevant to ask. Time is not just a commodity, it is valuable, and in some cases a currency. Travel is a royal PITA these days and it’s making one ask is it really worth it? Let’s talk about these things.

IBM Events

Multiple IBM events are easy to manage if you are a specialized analyst. Cover your area. Hardware analysts need not go to Software events (oh yes they will want to soon!!!!) and so forth. Smaller or generalist analysts need to cover all of IBM for their company. Is it possible to make all the events? Can you stomach that many days of IBM speak?

Well, yes it is necessary in some respects. We give direct access to the executives running the show and influencing the industry. No in other respects. We event the snot out of the industry and sometimes all you have to do is wait for the next one. Homework is key here. Getting to the right event is important. I’ll give a hint to analysts, if you have a good relationship with your A/R person, you can decide this together. With their own events happening, not all analysts can come to our events as they have to do theirs…Enough of the analyst perspective.

From our perspective it is also tough. Many times you have to support your executive at similar and related events. For me, we’ve recently had or will have STG, VC, SMB and our own event. All related, but different in terms of support. How do you not say the same thing over and over again? We also must be conscious of the audience and topic so as to speak correctly and directly to it.

What about things we can’t control? For example, what if our message is a competing message to another division or group? For example, we partner and compete with Oracle, SAP and other companies. Those are friends to one group and foes to another. How many copies of Windows do you think our server division sells, along with our own? It’s easy if you are a one product or a one industry company, not an option for IBM. With complexity comes, well…complexity.

Analyst events

Last week was Forrester Groundswell, Gartner Symposium and upcoming is the IDC Software Alliance Leadership Council. One can’t be in two places at once, so what’s the priority? When our executives go to an analyst conference and speak to analysts, what will we have to say just days later at our conference with the same analyst? Go to what you can, and have time for.

How much is too much

I think we (Analyst relations and Analyst companies) are in the throws of trying to figure this question out. It was a good model that got overplayed I think. Meeting often is good, but can you meet yourself to a point of saturation? Time must pass for strategy and execution to play out or be re-developed. Personally, I think we need to reduce, combine or space out our events a bit more.

Second life is not the answer, personal touch is.

I wish I could report that Second Life would be the panacea for this issue, but it is not. Sure it would cut down on travel, but the second word in A/R is relations. We need the interaction, but we need the right amount. A good event gives you plenty to discuss and transmit your strategy, interact with the pundits who evaluate the industry and tighten relationships…but the 64 thousand dollar question is how much is too much?

New Lotus Notes announced - Why One Specific Feature Matters to me

Here is a synopsis of the announcement from TheNewsMarket.com:

IBM has launched its Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino 8 software applications for businesses. The two software systems function by integrating e-mail, instant messaging and office productivity applications. Lotus Notes 8 and Domino 8 arrives - IBM’s new collaboration software, now available - is designed to help users spend less time managing email and more time on real collaboration. New features include enhanced e-mail that can gather and review e-mail threads more easily, enable users to view their collaboration history with specific individuals, and retrieve certain messages sent to the wrong person. The systems also feature integrated office productivity tools, composite applications, support for activity-centric computing, and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and Atom feeds. The Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino 8 software systems are currently available by electronic means only, and are expected to be released for physical distribution Sept. 21.

Heres why I care the most - You can CALL BACK EMAIL YOU DIDN’T MEAN OR WANT TO SEND!!!

I, along with most people who use email have sent something they would have liked or died to have back.  It was either embarrassing,  sent to the wrong person or groups, or perhaps it was sent in a fit of email road rage and you’ve since cooled down.

I could have used this years ago.  This perhaps is the most innovative email feature I’ve heard of, because were human.

I wonder if this is going to send the rats scurrying around the room late at night to catch up to this???????