InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
November 17, 1997
Analyzing The Methodology
By Rusty Weston
That's what we did when we developed the methodology for this package. Instead of asking IT managers to sound off about every research firm, we asked them to evaluate only the firms from which they have purchased IT reports in the past 12 months.
While the 10 IT market-research firms we selected represent a wide range of size and breadth, they all produce reports that an end-user IT shop can buy. Based on this qualifier, we excluded IT research firms that cater exclusive
ly to product vendors. The survey questions were designed by InformationWeek editors and were fielded by CIC Research in San Diego over the course of three weeks in October. We spoke via telephone to 300 IT managers nationally who were randomly selected from our subscriber base of 375,000 readers. We terminated interviews with executives who said they use no analysts at all, and they were not included among the 300 respondents.
Those who participated in the survey work at small, medium, and large companies, but not in equal measures: 17% work at companies with annual revenue of $350 million or less; 18% work in companies of $350 million to $1 billion; 29% are at companies with annual revenue from $1 billion to $5 billion; and 36% are at companies with revenue in excess of $5 billion annually. The study sample was biased toward profit-making enterprises; IT executives in government and schools were excluded in the belief that their selection criteria are likely to be based on different principles.
Ple
ase let us know how you like this year's survey, and how we can improve it next year. Send your comments to
rweston@cmp.com
.
ou may know IT analysts as the high priests of DASD, desktops, or data mining. You may seek their recommendations of top vendors and leading technology to help you short-list products for an upcoming purchase. You may read all their research reports word for word. But how do you know you're getting the best available IT market research? One way is to ask your peers in the IT field-in this case, 300 IT managers who also read
InformationWeek
.
Return to "Analyzing The Analysts"
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