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“What does this mean for us? There’s no doubt that employees are in for a fair amount of change. With $1.28B in FY08 sales, Gartner is about 32 times our size. It has more than 650 analysts to our 40, and 1,000 sales reps compared to 45 for us. It has operations in 80 countries, while we’re in the United States and the UK. Is bigger better? While I haven’t worked for a $1B+ company in 25 years, there are several facets of Gartner I find very appealing: * We will be writing to a much larger audience. For example, First Thing Monday has the largest subscription base of all of our publications. Many of the 32,000 subscribers who received the most recent edition get it as a free publication. While we’re proud of that base, Gartner has nearly twice as many paying clients. * We will have a stronger global reach. While my AMR Research tenure has allowed me to amass nearly 3.4 million American Airlines miles from business travel to six continents, we were never very successful in building a global presence. Although we have global clients, we could never provide them true local support. Gartner, by contrast, has operations everywhere. * We will be in more verticals. We have a strong presence in discrete and process manufacturing, consumer products, life sciences, and retail, but that’s pretty much it. This will change. For example, as part of our sustainability coverage, I look forward to talking to executives in utilities and public sector about their roles and involvement. * We will have access to more research assets. Because of our size, we often had a single analyst or two covering an important emerging software or services market. We now have 650 new research peers to stimulate our thinking and challenge our ideas. * It’s all about the written word. In my first meeting with a Gartner executive a few weeks ago, I asked about metrics for research. He told me that his firm places a strong emphasis on high-quality writing. It was exactly what I hoped he’d say. As you can surmise, I plan to stay with Gartner and reach a much broader audience. While it will be a bit odd not to have the Advanced Manufacturing Research or AMR Research logos grace my business cards and PowerPoint templates, at least I will never again be introduced as being from “American Market Research” or “ARM.” Everyone knows Gartner.”
Gartner Buys AMR Research for $64M in Cash | AMR Research - Supply Chain Management Experts
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