Chris Marsh

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Life as an industry analyst
Life as an industry analyst

There’s good advice out there for vendors on how they should work with industry analysts. For those considering the profession, however, there isn’t much information on what it’s like being an analyst - a week-in-the-life as it were.

The experience will differ somewhat by analyst firm, your personality and skills, seniority and specific role. The below is an accurate reflection of my experience - I’m a Research Director, I manage a team of five analysts and a program of research, I’ve been an analyst for over a decade.

My hope is that anyone considering or new to this profession will find the below useful.

Summary for the TLDR readers.

The better you get at briefings the easier every other aspect of being an analyst becomes. Find your own way to enjoy it. For me I like the challenge - how much proprietary information can I find out, which of my hypotheses going in to the conversation can I test, which of my blind spots can I fill in, how can this make me smarter overall.

The Compelling, Leading, Essential, Actionable, Rigorous aka CLEAR framework for writing is a good one to follow.

Most engagements involve senior leaders or mid-managers in Product, Marketing, Strategy or Communications teams, sometimes in Sales or Corporate Development, sometimes it’s CEOs. Regularly listening to, learning from, challenging and guiding some of the most curious minds and smart intellects on a daily basis can give you a very sharp learning curve which is fantastic.

Working with customers is always varied - maybe it’s a 30 minute inquiry, maybe it’s an hour, strategy sessions can be half or a whole day, custom projects can last months. You’ll have a relationship with some vendors and individuals who you’ll work with for years.

Relationships are the bedrock of the analyst role - you’ll potentially be speaking with hundreds of new people every year. The number of people I’ve worked with across different vendors as they’ve moved on to new roles is also not small. The same goes for you if you move analyst firms. A good reputation, and a bad one, is amplified by how tight-knit the technology industry actually is.

As a research leader you are both an individual contributor and (likely) a program manager. It’s challenging but gives you the opportunity (because you have to) to think transversely. By doing so you’ll give your team new perspectives, which they contextualize and develop and send back up to you as new insight to inform your perspective; and so goes the cycle of analysis→ sharing → synthesis → sharing → analysis → and on.

Whether it’s with your analyst peers, data colleagues, your editorial team or marketing colleagues, divisional leaders or others, with vendors or investors, journalists wanting your opinion, conference companies wanting you to speak at their event, and on - it’s an inherently collaborative job.

You can gain a lot from working as an analyst - you can learn ALOT about the technology industry, you can learn a lot about yourself, it may allow you to travel, you could end up working for a good technology company.

Time allocations over the year.

Below is a proportionate breakdown of the time I spend on each area of activity over the year.

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Last week (the first week of September 2022) was a fairly typical week and has involved all of the activities listed below.

Briefing with vendors.

Briefed with a vendor I had reached out to in categories (Enterprise Architecture and Value Stream Management) that I’m learning about. We discussed the company’s origins, funding, products, market strategy and business momentum. They had a fantastic deck full of factual and non-public information and clearly wanted feedback which made for a particularly good conversation.

Took an inbound briefing by a customer on an upcoming product launch, following a series of other briefings and inquiry discussions we’ve done with them this year. These kinds of briefings end up being 80% briefing and 20% inquiry as we riff off that previous information sharing.

I virtually attended a vendor’s annual conference including the keynotes, analyst-only and 1:1 sessions, and discussed with colleagues what, if any, coverage we produce on the announcements.

Most briefings are an hour long, typically the vendor brings some slide-ware, 95% of the time they come wanting a discussion and some feedback. This is the basis of any analyst role. I directly interact with around 150-180 distinct vendors a year, maybe 20% of those multiple times over the year.

Briefings serve a number of purposes - you can obviously learn a lot including private information - I’d say the ratio of information I learn from briefings versus desk research is 70:30, you can establish and strengthen relationships, get ideas for reports, test out your own hypotheses in the conversation.

I go in to briefings seeing it as a challenge - how much good quality information can I filter out of what’s being shared, what can I learn that most others won’t know, and how opinionated on this firm and category can I be off the back of the discussion. It’s a combination of listening and leading the conversation.

You have to work on your briefing pipeline, you’ll get plenty of inbound requests to brief you but most of your conversations should be ones you initiated otherwise your knowledge becomes the sum of what vendors want you to know, which isn’t good.

The better you get at briefings the easier every other aspect of being an analyst becomes. Find your own way to enjoy it. For me I like the challenge - how much proprietary information can I find out, which of my hypotheses going in to the conversation can I test, which of my blind spots can I fill in, how can this make me smarter overall.

Writing Research.

I wrote up a profile report of the vendor mentioned above, I had a colleague peer review it, I sent it to the vendor for a fact check Thursday, they replied Friday and it went into our editorial queue. We welcome all comments/observations but emphasize that, of course, we reserve editorial rights on those not relating to factual matters.

I wrote 90% of a market commentary on how the Collaborative Work Management category may evolve over the coming few years, I’ll finish it Monday and send it off to editorial. Among other things I’m comparing the growth rates of the major players so it involved pulling the figures from those that are public and coming up with estimates for the private firms.

I co-authored a deal analysis of an acquisition of one vendor by another. Interesting deal we were briefed on just before it was announced publicly. A colleague of mine wrote the draft, I peer reviewed, edited and added to it. We run all such reports by our M&A analyst colleagues to get extra flavor. We published our analysis the day after the deal was announced.

The rough expectation is that a short-form report (c. 1500 words) should take around 6-8 hours although sometimes it’s more, sometimes less. It can depend on how good a writer you are - an analyst on my team with a journalism background can write a really good profile report in 2 hours or less, he wrote a long-form report in about a fifth of the time we’re expected to take. It’s nuts, he’s great and I wish I could do that. I’m not a naturally talented writer although do enjoy it. I tend to boil the ocean with my writing, going long to then have to edit back down.

The number of reports you write a year depends on a number of different things, but typically the more senior you are the less you write because you’re spending more time on other kinds of projects/ engagements. A Senior Analyst here may write 50-70+ reports a year, a team lead like me maybe 30. I therefore have to really pick and choose what I write up, try and make every one count.

Writing as an analyst is a little odd - we have some analytics on who reads what but not as much as all analysts would like. It can at times feel like shouting into a void, but then people read it and get in touch to agree or challenge you on it and you feel good.

A lot of time it comes as left-field. I had a C-level leader in a tech company with whom I’d interacted somewhat come up to me before he stepped on stage in-front of around 8,000 people to deliver a keynote to say he’d used a lot of the concepts and ideas in my team’s research in his presentation. He did and credited us, which was great, but a surprise. There are many other versions of that where you see yourself reflected in marketing campaigns, in product roadmap decisions, in bigger positioning bets.

I still need the motivation absent a lot of confirmation/intel on how our research lands. For me it’s a combination of how much I feel any report I write represents an advance on my own understanding of that topic before I wrote the piece.

I also try and stick to the CLEAR framework:

Compelling – I have something important to convey.

Leading – Your insights break new ground and accelerate progress in your field.

Essential – Your audience seeks you out as an indispensable source of truth

Actionable – Your intelligence is timely, relevant and enables companies and individuals to make informed and confident decisions

Rigorous – Your arguments are cogent, backed by data, verified, and reviewed.

Customer projects.

I wrote the first draft of a customer-sponsored short whitepaper on the application of no code technologies in frontline worker scenarios and sent it off for feedback, we received the feedback and sent it off to our editorial and creative services team to produce the final deliverable. A colleague of mine wrote up an outline of an accompanying piece which I edited and sent on to the same client for feedback.

I prepared a slide deck for a presentation I’m doing at a customer’s annual conference where I’m presenting and participating on a panel. I had to submit it for approval through our internal compliance procedure, and then correspond with one of the wizards in our creative services team who makes it look awesome. There are several steps to that process that I have to shunt along over a couple of days.

I also began preparing content for an upcoming strategy session where a vendor wants us to produce a SWOT on their company and a detailed review of the landscape they play in. They’ll also be sharing some draft messaging with us beforehand to review and react too. This will probably be a collaborative effort with a colleague in my team. The session will be with the client’s different GTM teams. Normally we have a good five or so weeks lead-time for this kind of engagement.

I met up in-person with a team of product and analyst relations folk in a vendor I cover in my research. We did it in a coffee shop. It was pleasant, casual, useful. They shared some information around their vision, we talked about that and wider market dynamics - who might the executive sponsor be for this category in a few years, what messaging will resonate, what are other vendors doing, etc. They sent a follow up note thanking me for a stimulating conversation, I thanked them, they invited me to another event which I’m looking forward to.

I participated in a kick-off for a client-sponsored whitepaper and webinar discussing themes, focus and timelines. They shared their views, we shared ours, we found a landing spot where as with all our client work we can remain independent in our message and substantiate that with our market data. There were marketing and communications leaders from their side on the call.

I participated in a client inquiry on the landscape of employee engagement tools - they wanted some market intelligence and to get my feedback on their messaging ideas.

I participated in another client inquiry with an investment firm where they were wanting to get up to speed on a category we cover in our research - we discussed the category leaders, risks, growth and opportunities. We discussed their investment hypotheses about the category. It was challenging and enjoyable. You never quite know with investors whether they’ll be coming to the call with masses of knowledge or almost none. You have to think on your feet, gauge that and respond accordingly.

Most engagements involve senior leaders or mid-managers in Product, Marketing, Strategy or Communications teams, sometimes in Sales or Corporate Development, sometimes it’s CEOs. Regularly listening to, learning from, challenging and guiding some of the most curious minds and smart intellects on a daily basis can give you a very sharp learning curve which is fantastic.

They can be great ways to strengthen relationships, you can come away having done net new thinking about a particular topic, if public-facing they can be useful ways to get your name out there.

Sometimes, however, they can be onerous, time-consuming, you don’t really learn anything. You can get bogged down - a whole quarter goes by and you feel you haven’t done much other than churn through different clients’ custom projects. All analysts find themselves there at some point.

I find strategy sessions and short whitepapers the most useful - they force me to be opinionated and to refine my ideas, inquiries are exciting - you have to think on your feet, oftentimes you have no idea what you’re going to be asked, if they are a series of inquiry with the same vendor it’s a great way to build a relationship and add value. Webinars are often just pulling content from other decks, they take time and I don’t often come away feeling I’ve learned new things, but vendors like them.

Whatever your proclivity an analyst role is varied and there will obviously be some things you like and some not.

Working with customers is always varied - maybe it’s a 30 minute inquiry, maybe it’s an hour, strategy sessions can be half or a whole day, custom projects can last months. You’ll have a relationship with some vendors and individuals who you’ll work with for years.

Of course all these things play off each other - you brief with a vendor, you find them interesting and they are interested in your views, they become a client, they do inquiry with you and find it useful. You speak to different people in that vendor, they want to do webinars or papers or something else with you which if you can find common ground on the topic you end up doing. You attend their events to get extra information. They read more of your research and on it goes. It doesn’t always work like that, sometimes you have a relationship and then your or their priorities change and you become less useful to each other.

Relationships are the bedrock of the analyst role - you’ll potentially be speaking with hundreds of new people every year. The number of people I’ve worked with across different vendors as they’ve moved on to new roles is also not small. The same goes for you if you move analyst firms. A good reputation, and a bad one, is amplified by how tight-knit the technology industry is.

Team management.

Check-in with my manager to discuss items on our collective agenda and upcoming projects.

Undertaking weekly check-ins with my three team members discussing progress, workloads, and any items they, or I, need help with.

Working with my team to update our channel research agenda for re-publication.

Discussed with one of my teammates the evolution of his market sizing product.

Giving feedback to a teammate on a deck they’re preparing for a webinar.

Reviewed some content from one of my team members and prepared some of my own for an upcoming session where my manager will be presenting on our Group priorities going into 2023.

Trouble-shooting an internal procedural issue with one of my team members.

Discussing development goals with one of my team members.

Peer-reviewing a couple of reports from my colleagues, and logging as part of our internal compliance process that I’ve done so.

Being a team lead will likely also mean being responsible for a group research agenda - what categories and trends you cover, what data products you own that supports that agenda, how you position your team and communicate it internally and externally.

As a research leader you are both an individual contributor and (likely) a program manager. It’s challenging but gives you the opportunity (because you have to) to think transversely. By doing so you’ll give your team new perspectives, which they contextualize and develop and send back up to you as new insight to inform your perspective; and so goes the cycle of analysis→ sharing → synthesis → sharing → analysis → and on.

Internal collaborations.

I did some thinking about content for an upcoming instalment of our own (fantastic) ‘Next in Tech’ podcast in a few weeks which one of my team members and I will be doing together.

I was asked to input into an internal working group exploring new ways to support the research community across our different divisions. I spent about 90 minutes on it speccing out how I think we can generate more cross-functional research collaboration.

I begun to compile a deck for our divisional leadership on remote/hybrid market trends using data from our employee, HR and IT decision-maker surveys - they asked to be briefed on it so they can participate in our own company’s internal decision-making around this.

I worked with one of my teammates to level-set on industry trends ahead of revising our annual employee engagement survey over the next few weeks.

What you do here obviously depends on the organization you work for. S&P Global where I work has a large and diversified research community. I work in the Technology, Media, Telecoms (TMT) division, in our community we also do research around Maritime, Trade and Supply Chain, Financial Institutions, Issuer Solutions and Brokerage Research, and Economics and Country Risk. There’s plenty of opportunity for collaborations therefore.

Whether it’s with your analyst peers, data colleagues, your editorial team or marketing colleagues, divisional leaders or others, with vendors or investors, journalists wanting your opinion, conference companies wanting you to speak at their event, and on - it’s an inherently collaborative job.

General administration, emails etc.

I reached out to a bunch of vendors we want to speak to, and replied to a handful of inbound requests to brief us.

Submitting receipts for a work-related travel expense.

Of course a lot of email, including replying to lots of invites to vendor conferences (it’s the season) that’ll take place between now and the end of the year - deciding which I want to attend.

Co-ordinating with a customer my attendance at their event - booking flights, talking schedules, discussing my participating in one of their conference breakout sessions.

There’s more to my role than the above, some projects are seasonal (e.g., end of year predictions reports), some weeks I do more planning with my team around our research coverage, some months you’ll have no consulting work and some months a lot, sometimes you’ll be collaborating more with analysts in other teams and some not. The above is however a pretty typical week-in-the-life of someone my level.

What can the analyst profession give you?

You can learn ALOT about the technology industry: Naturally if you are speaking to tens and tens if not hundreds of industry leaders every year you can learn a lot quickly. Often without having much of a relationship with you vendors may reveal confidential information - roadmap information, financials, M&A ideas, etc. Most vendors do so because they want feedback - another excellent way to learn - throw ideas out, see what the response is, refine those views, throw them back out again, over time you can develop very nuanced views few others have had the circumstances to also develop.

You can learn a lot about yourself: As I’ve outlined above the typical analyst role means you’ll be doing a lot of different things - for me I learned a lot about what I’m naturally good at and what I need to work on more, what I really like and like less, what skills I want to develop. The in-at-the-deep-end external-facing nature of the role was very good for me as an introverted 20-something, for example.

You could end up working for a good technology company: Some analysts start their careers in a tech company, some do other things, become an analyst and move into a tech company. Some flip flop through their career back and forth between tech company and analyst firm. I’d say any analyst will benefit from having been the other side of the fence at some point.

It may allow you to travel: The reason why as a Brit I live in the US is because I had the opportunity to visit here many times before I moved - visiting colleagues in Boston, clients in the Bay Area, Utah and elsewhere, attending conferences in Texas, Seattle, Atlanta, Florida. I started my analyst career in the UK from where I took business trips to Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and further afield to China. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I prefer to travel far less now I have a family of my own but through my 30s it was fantastic.