Director of Research and Vendor Programs/The Meta Group
208 Harbor Drive, PO Box 120061, Stamford, CT 06912
203.973.6700
The Wind Up
David Yockelson, director of research and vendor programs at the
META Group, is an 11-year veteran of the Stamford, CT-based IT
consultant. The company, founded in 1989, started out by strictly
providing IT research, but in the last several years has expanded
into other areas - all under the IT umbrella - that have enlarged
the tent for PR pitches from vendor companies.
The company has three core areas: Technology Research focuses on
the IT basics, such as infrastructure, collaboration and security;
Executive Direction, offers coaching for CIOs on how to derive and
explain value associated with technology investments and relate to
the CEO and, finally, Industry Services, covering the
insurance/healthcare, government, energy and travel/transportation
fields. With Industry Services, "we look at the key business
processes in each industry, and the IT drivers in each," Yockelson
says. "The technology research service goes the other way, in how
technology basics can be used in different vertical areas so they
sort of meet in the middle." Research into both basic technology
services and the various industries that META covers can also be
applied to the issues that CIOs grapple with on a day-to-day
basis.
All of the business/technology information covered by META
Group's 250 analysts is cross-pollinated among all the various
departments "so when, say, an industry looks at a technology, an
executive looks at a technology and a consultant does an engagement
everybody is up to speed with the current META Group take on it."
The analyst firm's primary base of customers is Fortune 500
companies with heavy IT spends.
Like other IT research firms, META is calling for moderate
growth in IT spending this year. Its 2004 Worldwide IT Benchmark
Report, which gathers critical IT data and metrics from companies
around the world, predicts a rebound in IT spending this year, to
about 5% of revenue. The manufacturing and insurance industries are
expected to have the biggest increase, at 12% each.
The Pitch
Despite the moderate level of IT spending this year, PR execs
representing vendor companies must constantly cultivate
relationships with META Group analysts such as Yockelson, who views
vendor companies as partners rather than (simply) people who
pitch.
"We want vendors to talk to us early in the cycle for a variety
of reasons, the most important of which is it's hard for us to
effect change if we don't know what's going on," he says.
"Secondly, everybody in AR and PR knows that surprise is generally
bad. PR doesn't like to be surprised by analysts' comments and,
similarly, analysts don't like to be surprised by announcements.
Before they [communication execs] put something out, it helps if
we've been involved in the messaging.
Aside from starting the dialogue early - and not 10 minutes
before the product rolls out - Yockelson recommends that vendors
provide as much product/market information as possible: How
innovative is a particular product and how did it achieve such
innovations? Was it through organic growth or acquisition? "We want
to see how players mature and change with the times," he says. With
a growing number of players in the IT arena, "vendors have had to
get a lot more savvy about what pushes whose buttons...It used to
be you could compare viewpoints from five different people in a
[vendor] organization and you get five different answers. Nowadays,
the story lines are lot more consistent and a lot better
managed."
One sand trap PR execs fall into is looking at analysts as "PR
channels." "That's not the right way to look at META Group and its
ilk. We're there to listen, challenge, comment and confirm, and
that's one thing they need to be aware of," Yockelson says. "It's
going in with the idea that this can be a mutually beneficial
relationship and not an adversarial,
throw-something-over-the-wall-when-we're ready kind of thing."