The Changing Ecosystem : New Media & Super Specialised Experts

Dana Gardner points to a new trend around IT industry analysts reaching new audiences and better serving their traditional audiences through RSS-enabled blogging and podcasting. Indeed real-time analysis via free syndication is gaining quite a bit of attention. Vinnie writes about the changing influence game.He points out that the technology marketers need to think beyond including PR (Public relations with print media), AR (Industry Analysts) and IR (investor relations, which is handled more by the CFO's team) and look at two other categories - one already established - Procurement Consultants and a newer one - Tech Blog sites for coverage as these can be just as influential. See my coverage on tech blogsites.So much so, Nokia has a blogger relationship blog site. tech.memorandum sifts through hundreds of technology-oriented blogs to find the hour's hot topics and who is saying what about them. The results are presented concisely in a single place, updated every few minutes. The difference between the old media elite and the new blogging elite is that the latter gets redefined much more frequently. Many analysts take different positions at diferent time - sites like Armadgeddon have been setup to look at real stories, analyst gaffes and (un)predictions, analinguo, rumours, gossips etc. While writing on the role of procurement consultants, Vinnie highlights the role that such firms can play in covering up influencers at play in many of the procurement steps. The vendor marketing arms may not be in a position to adequateky prepare their sales teams for these steps. I agree that for all major deals on offshoring/outsourcing, procurment consultants and If I may add - Many organisations now routinely track the procurement consultants & legal consultants and their perspective - sitting on both sides - supplier and buyer. Tough negotitations in terms of service level enforcements, contractual violations governance, assessment criteria and mitigation, resoure scaling besides related things are in large measure influenced/set out by these expert consulting houses I see heady days for these type of services. All these point to a new ecosystem - analysts leveraging new media, blogs getting more influential, sourcing/procuring consultants playing a larger role than ever(this we might have seen in other industries already - but becoming firmly entrenched in IT services/BPO industries)- indeed in this complex and competitive world - more than ever multiple dimensionsal readiness and gearing in a non-negotiable for success - this creates a multiplier effect for opportunities - the new ecosystem elements and those associated with them clearly shall play a major role in the days to come.