There’s one huge advantage to the IIAR survey other others (including Lighthouse’s) which is that it’s a write in ballot. There’s no primary nomination stage, and anyone can vote for anyone.

It’s a secret ballot, but the method prevents people from responding more than once, and we use emails to verify who people are.

However, no method will prevent people from voting in line with their preferences.

Duncan.

Transparency and ethics are at the heart of what the IIAR stand for. What’s more the survey is open to anyone who takes part in analyst relations regardless of whether they are members of the IIAR or not. In fact I am pleased to see that there have been plenty of respondents from the US who have no interactions with the IIAR whatsoever.

Nevertheless, I am sure that people will vote for whichever analysts they believe are the best - no single person has the ability to alter the general trend of results. What’s more we have clearly broken down the survey into multiple areas (ie sector - such as hardware, software; and geography - such as Americas, EMEA). This will allow us to segement the results so that bias cannot be used due to a higher number of people voting in one sector over another.

Lets wait to see what the results show. I would be happy to share with you some of the preliminary findings and would welcome your point of view.

My impression is that as this program now stands, it will be construed as an indication that the “honored” analysts and firms are in the IIAR vendor and ageny pockets.