by Christina Neill
April 15, 2020
Around this time last year, we published our Guide to Peer Review Sites. We looked at the major players in the peer review site landscape, what AR’s mandate is in relation to these sites, and our recommendations for moving forward to create a peer review site function in your organization. We’re excited to share we’ve just updated the guide with the latest information for 2020.
Since Gartner Peer Insights is directly connected with analyst relations, we know it’s important that AR pros understand the ins and outs of what these reviews are and how they could impact your analyst relations program strategy. Below are the significant items we’ve learned about PI over the past year. You can also find these in the newly republished guide.
For at least the first half of 2020, Gartner is not changing the methodology of the VoC report but will be expanding the markets available and providing more context for VoC readers. The VoC report will publish 4 months after the MQ of its market is published, with review sourcing starting just one month after the MQ publish date.
Over 100 categories will have a VoC report in 2020, and Gartner continually updates their roadmap on which markets will be considered. Download Gartner’s roadmap to see if your market is being considered.
In December 2019, Gartner piloted new graphics pre-filtered by industry, region, and firm sizes. This change will now slowly roll out across all VoC reports that have sufficient volume. The original VoC graphic and text will remain the same, but now users can expect additional sections to deep-dive into the reviews and browse via pre-filtered views.
We’re impressed by Gartner’s tenacity with keeping other resources related to the VoC up-to-date as well. If you’re looking for information regarding timelines, sourcing reviews, criteria and dates for your market, browsing Gartner’s Resources for Technology Providers is a great place to start.
Peer Insights has a new report in the works called the Consideration Landscape. They envision this being a cluster map of vendors that are being considered for deals. This will help buyers understand the totality of the landscape, not just the MQ players. It will also show who’s interesting, who’s cool, and who the buyer needs to be aware of.
Peer Lessons Learned is another supplemental report for Buyers. It will remain unchanged but will also start scaling more rapidly across markets
Two other reports that Gartner will be scaling this year, are the Vendor-specific deep dives and Roadmap Priorities documents. They are meant to help vendors understand their positioning vs the market.
Gartner has added new filtering capabilities to the review website. Buyers can now select company size, industry, and region to easily find reviews from similar buyers to themselves. Keep in mind though, the site still automatically defaults the search results to the most recent reviews from the past 12 months.
Gartner has improved the vendor dashboard as well, creating resources to ensure vendors have everything they need to be successful. Gartner published a new Vendor Success playbook and a Success Stories repository, as well as updated the user experience on review sourcing.
Gift cards to incentivize reviews aren’t going away – they still offer $25 gift cards to the first 50 buyers that offer reviews for each vendor – but reviewers say they want more than money. Gartner is looking at potentially giving reviewers access to a piece of Gartner research or a market trend in exchange for a review. Expect Peer Insights to solidify this non-monetary incentive over the next six months.
And lastly, we couldn’t forget to mention that Peer Insights now has an official mascot. When you visit Peer Insights’ website, you’ll see Marley the Meerkat cheering you on as you leave and read reviews.
For the full Guide to Peer Review Sites, including an overview of the review site landscape and our recommendations for approaching and managing the channel, download the updated guide.
