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At GitLab we spend a substantial amount of effort on Analyst Relations (AR) which is working with groups like Gartner, Forrester, and 451 Research. On https://a
by sytse 7y ago
At GitLab we spend a substantial amount of effort on Analyst Relations (AR) which is working with groups like Gartner, Forrester, and 451 Research. On https://about.gitlab.com/company/team/org-chart/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/team/org-chart/ you can see we have two people who are a dedicated Analyst Relations Manager. They manage the relationship but many of our product marketing managers and product managers are involved to answer questions and give presentations.
An important thing these firms do is aggregate customer feedback. For a consumer tool I can look on Quora and for a development tool I can look at Hacker News. But for enterprise tools the people that use the product are often not allowed to share feedback themselves. However they are allowed to talk with analysts.
That is why the opinions of these analysts are often really important to convince new customers your product is any good https://about.gitlab.com/is-it-any-good/ https://about.gitlab.com/is-it-any-good/
BTW We just won a 451 Firestarter award https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2020-01-14-gitlab-recognized-as-451-firestarter.html https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2020-01-14-gitlab-re... which we're stoked about.
- techpop10 7y agoAn important distinction (as I mentioned in another comment) is that you have no idea how much "aggregate customer feedback" Gartner really has, they don't disclose their research methodologies at all. That's a real problem. 451 research does... and sincere congrats on your award.
- sytse 7y agoThank you! BTW Gartner now has an online review tool called Peer Insights https://www.gartner.com/en/products/peer-insights https://www.gartner.com/en/products/peer-insights Here you can read the customer reviews https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/application-release-orchestration-solutions/vendor/gitlab/product/gitlab https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/application-release-o... I might be a bit biased because in 2018 GitLab won Gartner their customer choice award and recently we won another awards based on peer insights https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2019-07-26-gitLab-recognized-in-gartner-peer-insights-customers-choice-for-EAPT.html https://about.gitlab.com/press/releases/2019-07-26-gitLab-re...
- techpop10 7y agoYes, very familiar with it... unfortunately there's a bit of vendor gamesmanship with these and they don't inform the MQ. Sorry, I've had too many years working with these tools, I'm cynical.