FREEFORMFOCUS
Summer Edition 2021
WELCOME TO OUR FIRST EDITION!
As industry analysts, we at Freeform Dynamics depend on the efforts and dedication of marketing, communications and product management professionals within the IT provider community. The briefings, events, and materials you provide are essential to keep us tuned in to your organisations' strategies, solutions and propositions. We therefore wanted to say thank you and to give something back, and the result is this magazine. The content mix is a bit of an experiment in this first edition, but we hope you enjoy it and would love your feedback and ideas for topics to tackle in future editions.
WHAT'S IN THIS EDITION?
1. Welcome to our first edition!
2. What makes a good spokesperson
3. Video Highlight
4. Quick-fire opinions from the team
5. Staff profile on Tony Frenzel-Lock
6. Analyst Q&A
7. Briefing recap
8. Content recap
9. Throwback Thursday
WHAT MAKES A GOOD SPOKESPERSON?
Sometimes you lose track of time when you’re speaking with someone. You are on the same wavelength and the discussion is simultaneously thought-provoking, useful and enjoyable. The positive buzz you come away with makes you want to tell others about the great conversation you had.
If you’re involved in industry analyst communications or relationship management, you know your job is done when you see this kind of interaction. The analyst’s advocacy for your company or client gets a boost, and having had a rewarding experience, your spokesperson becomes more accessible for future analyst engagements. Plus, of course, everyone benefits from enhancement or refinement of their knowledge, insights and opinions.
Analysts yearn for these kinds of exchanges. Sure, you need to cover routine updates and announcements, but without that spark of interpersonal connection, no one’s views are likely to shift significantly. The truth is, you will generally have anticipated most of what you hear ‘officially’.
So when thinking about a suitable spokesperson for an analyst briefing, don’t assume that it’s always about seniority or product knowledge. These need to be adequate, but as experienced analyst relations professionals understand intuitively, much more important is knowing your analysts and spokespeople, then bringing people together who have similar perspectives, interests and communication styles.
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- Dale Vile
VIDEO HIGHLIGHT
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QUICK FIRE OPINIONS
Hardcopy isn’t dead
One day, maybe dual-screen folding tablets will be good and cheap enough to replicate the look of a well-designed magazine centre-spread. In the meantime, electronic documents are certainly easier to edit, file and search, but when you just want to read something, hardcopy is light, cheap and battery-free, and simple to pass around.
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- Bryan Betts
Stop adding to the security noise
Treating ‘security’ as a discrete topic for marketing purposes is becoming less and less useful. Sure, big picture understanding and horizontal propositions remain relevant, but with so much high-level noise and scaremongering, context-specific communication is much more likely to
cut through.
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- Dale Vile
STAFF PROFILE: TONY FRENZEL-LOCK
Role: Director of Engagement & Distinguished Analyst
Favourite Hobbies: Football, Reading, Horse Riding, Being Sarcstic
Football Teams you Support: Chelsea FC (Men and Women), Borussia Mönchengladbach
Things you Collect: I don’t collect anything for the sake of collecting but I do have a lot (a huge number) of books, quite a few fountain pens and many ties, tie pins, cufflinks etc., all of which are in daily use.
Biggest Personal Challenge: Supporting Chelsea for over 50 years, Managing Type 1 Diabetes for nearly 5 decades, Becoming a German Citizen.
Favourite Part about Living in Germany: Lots of subtle differences to life in the East End of London
Something you miss from England: London, The NHS, Extra mature cheddar cheese and Jersey potatoes
Biggest Work Challenge: Saying “no” to a briefing or starting writing anything.
Most Rewarding Part of the Job: I get to talk to a lot of people, hear what they’re up to and help us keep a grip on the bigger picture. I get to speak to a range of people from all over the world.
How would your colleagues describe you? “Shy, quiet, timid, reserved”. Or “Quirky/Eccentric”
What’s a word you would use to describe yourself? Old-but-not-yet-quite-
run-down
Best advice for starting out in this sector: Make sure you understand what you’re being told by the people around you and be ready to spot “marketing inaccuracies”. Don’t be afraid to ask questions when you don’t understand. Look for patterns - very few things are “unique”, or even “new”.
ANALYST Q&A
Best/worst thing about web conference briefings/conferences
Best: The lack of jetlag as we can travel the world from our desks, even attending two or three events in one day.
Worst: It’s so hard to stay focused, as we lose the physical and mental separation from daily work and its constant distractions and interruptions.
Best and worst of working
from home
Best of working from home: Not getting up at 4 am a couple of times a month to get the first bus to the airport to get to a
briefing / meeting/conference/ presentation.
Worst of working from home : Not getting to see everyone at a briefing/meeting/
conference/presentation and having an off topic chat along with a beer or two (or three ...) afterwards.
BRIEFING RECAP
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- Dale Vile
CONTENT RECAP
The importance of modern data archiving
There are considerable potential business gains when you have a clear picture of all the information your organisation holds. Modern Active Archive solutions have much to offer.
Read more...
Planning your journey to modern apps and Hybrid IT
From virtualisation & containers to serverless, layers of abstraction underpin modern software development. But code can’t run on air – there’s always hardware down there somewhere! So making good platform choices remains important, as our new paper explains.
Read more...
Self-Service IT Delivery
It might sound scary, but don’t be mislead – our research confirms that, in today’s high-pressure world, automation & self service can boost the efficiency & effectiveness of IT delivery & support.
Read more...
THROWBACK THURSDAY
Cloud computing is now so much part of our everyday lives that it’s hard to remember a time when this wasn’t the case. Less than a decade ago, our surveys were still throwing up results confirming limited uptake and commitment in the mainstream.
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As this article from 2013 illustrates, part of the problem was an interesting chicken-and-egg situation blocking progress. Put simply, a lot of SMBs were not buying into SaaS and other cloud propositions because their trusted ‘go to’ suppliers – local resellers and services firms – were not offering them. Why? Well because there wasn’t enough demand.
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