ECM and RM Industry Analysts

What a week! Sick in bed with Gastric Flu and also desparately trying to finish a project, and sort out a ton of other things. Hence no postings.

Couple of things I have wanted to find time to write about for a while but haven't quite gotten round to are:

• Which analysts cover this space well?
• Which books are worth reading/buying?

Reason being I get asked both these questions often! I'll deal with the analyst one first, as that's easiest but also a potential minefield as I know so many of them in the ECM/RM space.

The way I see Industry Analysts providing value is in two ways - direct interaction with the analyst or reading the reports that their firms put out (asking them to get involved in consulting is usually a big mistake - take if from me). For most mortals it is extremely difficult to gain access to an analyst for any period of time unless you are a major client of the analyst firm. But if you are one of the fortunate - then all the leading firms have some good analysts that are worth talking to:

• Toby Bell & Karen Shegda at Gartner
• Sue Feldman (particularly on search and taxonomy) at IDC
• Connie Moore & Bob Markham at Forrester
• Chris Harris-Jones, Sarah Kitmer and Angela Ashenden at Ovum
• Mike Gotta (particularly for collaboration) at Burton Research
• Jim Murphy at AMR

For written output though its a different list - as for whatever reason the level of detail, accuracy and value of the written output of the various firms differs widely. Leading the bunch (quite frankly by a fairly good margin) is:

• CMS Watch led by Tony Byrne (yes I am a guest contributor there!)
• Forrester - overall excellent coverage
  
• Ovum - particularly for the major ECM vendor evaluations and ECM market forecasts
• Burton - for collaboration and portals

There are many boutique firms out there who also offer good advice and the space overall is getting better coverage than it did. But in truth its not a space that is well covered by analyst firms. The very people centric, consulting led, nature of ECM and RM is lost on many analysts, who spend far too much time with vendors and far too little with end users. I'll close this posting before I get into too deep water with ex colleagues and peers - and try and follow up soon with something on worthwhile books on the topic.