Starting the Forrester Wave: White Label Social Networks and Community Platforms (Part 1/4)

Categories: Analyst, Forrester, White Label Social NetworkPosted on July 4th, 2008

Blogging the status of my research agenda has become an efficient way for me to communicate with the market I cover, as well as signal to clients new areas of expertise.

Fortunately, much of the market I cover (or their PR firms) read this blog and my tweets (and vice versa), making my job as a researcher very, very efficient.

Many weeks ago, I made a call for the vendor product catalog in this market, (and via email and twitter) that document, is a detailed index of over 40 vendors in the space, (aprox 50% of the market) and will be available to Forrester clients and those who submitted to it in the coming days.

My research agenda for this quarter is to complete a Forrester Wave (learn more), which is a market segmentation and prioritization report that will help clients (Fortune 5000, Interactive Marketers) determine which vendor is right for them. (I get asked daily in one medium or another who to buy). The primary purpose of this report is to aid my clients to efficiently come to a short list or decision on who to buy. The lingering side effects could also signal to the VC space who to fund, as well as within the industry who will want to partner from a CMS, ERP, CRM, widget, services aspect.

Due to the rigorous methodology (there will be thousands of excel cells created, analyzed, and weighed among our team) The Wave will only include several vendors. During this 10 week process, I’ll be following the guidelines set before me (we’ve done many Wave reports) this consuming activity will meet my entire report coverage for the entire quarter. This coupled with the changes in our team, will keep me very busy, I hope it doesn’t impact my other duties, as well as blogging.

From time to time, I’ll post updates about where I am in developing this product (reports are one of our products), in that spirit, I’m now whittling down the big list to the core vendors that can stand the rigors of enterprise requirements (Fortune 5000) and are primarily suited for interactive marketers (mainly external deployments) who I serve.

If you’ve already submitted to the vendor product catalog, I’m already reviewing with the team. However, if you have an extensive track record for the Fortune 5000 interactive marketer (perhaps with references), and did not submit, you ought to let me know, email me at jowyang at forrester.com . I’ve already reached out to a few who I think could qualify.

You’ve already shown that you know what analysts do, but how we do it is a shrouded mystery, so now, you’re getting a behind the scenes tour as I trek forward –a little transparency should help you to better understand what we do.

Read more about this Wave Research project:

Part 1: Starting the Wave
Part 2: Data Collection Process
Part 3: The Analysis Process
Part 4: Announcing the Wave, the final report

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 12:36 am and is filed under Analyst, Forrester, White Label Social Network. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Jeremiah,
Would you be sharing on your blog the final shortlisted vendors that get into the report?

Anyways - have a good time doing this.

best,
/a

Posted by apoorv on July 4th, 2008 at 2:14 am

Yes, that’s usually public info, see for example this public summary of this recent report:

“CERTPOINT Systems, Cornerstone OnDemand, GeoLearning, Learn.com, Mzinga, Oracle Learning Management (OLM), Oracle PeopleSoft, OutStart, Plateau Systems, Saba, SAP, and SumTotal Systems.”

http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,37146,00.html

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on July 4th, 2008 at 2:56 am

thanks. I understand it’s public *after* the report is published

best,

Posted by apoorv on July 4th, 2008 at 4:11 am

[...] Why analysts matter - “I get asked daily in one medium or another who to buy” Posted on July 4, 2008 by sagecircle Some analyst relations (AR) managers are lucky in that their executives really get the analysts and their impact on the vendor’s leads and sales deals. Alas, not all AR professionals are so lucky. However, there is a resource to use to educate* executives about the impact of the analysts - the analysts’ own words. For example, here is a throwaway line by Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang in Starting the Forrester Wave: White Label Social Networks and Community Platforms: [...]

Posted by Why analysts matter - “I get asked daily in one medium or another who to buy” « SageCircle Blog on July 4th, 2008 at 5:28 am

Thanks for sharing behind the scene info on how you do manage the analyst work at Forrester. It’s really interesting and I hope you can share more and more to make your work more and more collaborative and iterative.
But since you’re making this work for Fortune 500 (5000?) business, is there any hope reading your opinion about white label social networks and community platform? Sure it would be a great help for entrepreneurs willing to connect with their customers.

Posted by Romain on July 4th, 2008 at 6:25 am

Note: Do you read the trackback from Carter Lusher, he extracted an important sentence, thanks Carter for reading so carefully.

Romain, My research is somewhat collaborative. Well, it certainly is internally, there are teams that work together to create each report.

If you’ve watched carefully, there’s a reason I ask so many questions on my blog, make lists, and allow for feedback –I’m already doing collaboration.

Yes, it’s Fortune 5,000, not just Fortune 500. The good news is you can purchase the report (any report) on the website for a few hundred dollars. Anytime I mention buying something, I also mention that if for some reason you’re not satisfied, we’ve a money back guarantee. I feel so good about saying that, as I know it means customers will be satisfied.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on July 4th, 2008 at 7:32 am

Thanks Jeremiah. I and other AR professionals appreciate your candor and openess about how you conduct research and what you are working on. Keep up the good work.

Posted by Carter Lusher on July 4th, 2008 at 7:41 am

A comment on “money back guarantee”. Forrester is the only analyst that I know of — and SageCircle tracks many firms — that offers a formal “money back guarantee.” This was initiated in early 2005 about the time of the Gartner acquisition of META Group, so in part it’s a bit of marketing.

Regardless, Forrester deserves kudos for standing behind its products and offering to return money if the client feels that the research was not worth cost.

Posted by Carter Lusher on July 4th, 2008 at 7:47 am

Thanks Jeremiah for this posting, I’m one of your regular readers but with all my recent traveling I wasn’t able to keep up, so this reminder is great. At http://www.rsitez.com, we missed the first call for submitting our details for your vendor catalog but I’m going to send you all our information. I hope we are not so late in the process to be analyzed by you and your team. In any case, we are looking forward to see the results of your report, it’s clear it will define this new industry.

Luis Carbajo
VP Business Development
rSitez, Inc
Create your own social network within minutes!

Posted by luis carbajo on July 4th, 2008 at 11:57 am

Luis

Please email sglass at forrester.com and CC me. We’ll send you the sheet.

Posted by jeremiah_owyang on July 4th, 2008 at 1:25 pm

[...] point was highlighted by Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang in Starting the Forrester Wave: White Label Social Networks and Community Platforms about some research he is working [...]

Posted by Why analyst relations matter - Analysts do not have time to do comprehensive research « SageCircle Blog on July 9th, 2008 at 5:05 am

[...] July, 2008: I am now conducting a Forrester Wave report to find out which one of these vendors will be best suited for Fortune 5000 in…. [...]

Posted by List of “White Label” or “Private Label” (Applications you can Rebrand) Social Networking Platforms on July 21st, 2008 at 10:50 am

[...] I embark on this Forrester Wave Report for Community Platforms, I’m just reminded of what the experience was like on the other side of the table. So if [...]

Posted by Graded by Analysts on July 29th, 2008 at 5:05 pm

A belated comment - Consider the value of linking social networking solutions, such as integrating IBM Lotus Connections, a social networking solution designed for the enterprise, with external social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Skype. This following site provides a practical example and “how to” http://www.lbenitez.com/2008/08/how-to-integrate-lotus-connections-with.html

Posted by Don Neely on August 12th, 2008 at 4:23 am

[...] more about this Wave Research project: Part 1: Starting the Wave Part 2: Data Collection Process Part 3: The Analysis Process Part 4: Announcing the Wave, the final [...]

Posted by Status: Forrester Wave Report for Community Platforms, Analysis (Part 3/4) on October 24th, 2008 at 11:30 pm

[...] to filter out which vendors would be appropriate for the Wave report. I made a few public calls on my blog, twitter, indicating my intent as a result over 50 vendors submitted. We generally do not [...]

Posted by How we filtered 9 vendors out of 100 for the Community Platform Wave on January 13th, 2009 at 9:48 am

[...] 1: Starting the Wave Part 2: Data Collection Process Part 3: The Analysis Process Part 4: Announcing the Wave, the [...]

Posted by Corporate Social Media Platforms - great info to check out. on March 30th, 2009 at 8:20 pm