So, in mid-2017, what’s changed at IDC? And how is it handling organisational change since their change of ownership, earlier this year?
These were just some of the questions posed by Industry Analyst Relations professionals at a recent IIAR webinar and networking session with…
- Dan Timberlake (UK&I MD, VP Sales, EMEA), Tom Meyer (GVP Research EMEA), and Mathew Heath (EMEA Marketing Director, himself the brains behind the always-entertaining @IDC_EMEA account), who gave us a download.
Dan, Mathew and Tom were all refreshingly open, honest and transparent. Some immediate impressions I took away:
1. IDC EMEA averages over 85,000 client interactions per year – and has strong IT end-user attendance at its UK & US focused events
2. IDC Predictions webcasts are all free to attend, and their IDC Directions events in both the US and EMEA are super well-attended by vendor audiences.
The conference portfolio includes 180+ conferences and these events boast 10K attendees last year who attended events they do, or co-host with vendor organisations, so worth a look and a minute of your time.
3. It is making a major attempt to attract more CMO line of business buyer audiences through its own custom research, customised business modules and by building out more research aimed at ‘specialist’ marketing audiences.
This includes: increasing the scope and size of its sourcing advisory services, government policy coverage, and specialist units currently under development for 2018 in areas of GDPR, Blockchain, and DevOps.
Some other interesting quick IDC titbits to digest:
- Inbound search performs extremely well for IDC. Its targeted content marketing campaigns run by IDC Interactive Tools provide 50x better return on investment, compared to industry-wide averages they benchmark themselves against
- Its data is hugely advantageous to challenger tech brands and global VC and investment communities. Since 2014, IDC averages about 15,000 interactions with the global financial community per year, and 500,000 data extractions were used by its financial audience in 2016
- In its research & innovation-led efforts, it is making a concerted effort to be more EMEA-centric. There are now IDC European practices based around innovation led by Phil Carter, IDC chief analyst in EMEA since 2016, as well as IoT, and even blockchain/distributed ledger technologies – headed up by the team of Tom Zink & Giorgio Nebuloni – which is launching for late 2017
The team is also justifiably proud of its heritage providing both ‘tactical’ and strategic data to drive data-driven decisions by CIOs. GVP Research (EMEA) Tom Meyer claims IDC are the ‘best data (providers) in the industry at this point.’
The team remain unworried by the announcement of lay-offs in the US earlier this month by parent company IDG. Yet another bright light for the EMEA AR industry is that IDC EMEA has actually experienced a hiring increase year-on-year since 2016. It’s added 6-7 new senior analysts in the UK alone since the start of this year.
And far from nervousness since the change in ownership, the team from IDC seemed buoyed by the prospect of new energy being breathed into the organisation and are looking forward to the future.
