Today’s analysts and advisors love talking about how the speed of AI advancements is turning every industry on its head, but most conveniently ignore the fact that their own industry is getting rewired faster than they can say “disrupted.”
The analyst and advisor industries, reliant on IP and research to market their products, are in serious trouble, and many firms will cease to exist in a couple of years. I mean, whatever happened to the likes of Omdia or 451? They already seem to have melted away into insignificance under some analyst firm roll-up scheme, smashing together mediocre events, marketing, and “research”.
I’ve been fortunate to be part of the analyst and advisory industry for three decades. I can only say it’s been a privilege to be paid to learn, to engage with so many smart people, and to build many, many relationships over the years based on trust, mutual respect, and friendship.
However, there have been warning signs for a long while that the comfortable status quo is already getting very rocky (as already witnessed by Forrester’s dramatic decline). And what’s really worrying is the recent speed of development with AI platforms, agentic software, and LLMs, which is, quite frankly, making the use of analysts and advisors increasingly irrelevant.
The issues are staring us in the face:
Generative AI platforms are fast replacing the need for analyst support. Routine research tasks, such as reports summarizing trends, market sizing, vendor comparisons, or basic scenario analysis, are increasingly being automated by generative AI.
Analysts are just too slow to deliver insight. The sheer speed of GenAI is challenging analysts to justify their premium pricing and timelines. Why pay for information that sometimes takes weeks to access, or even set up a call with an analyst? We are operating in a world of immediate decision-making, and many analysts are simply not adapting.
Cost Pressures will focus many firms to prioritize their GenAI platforms: GenAI significantly lowers barriers to basic insight, and many clients are already pushing analyst firms harder to justify their obscene subscription costs. In addition, the cost of enterprise tokens for GenAI platforms is pushing many CFOs to look at offsetting against legacy research costs. If you’re spending $500K+ a year on your enterprise OpenAI access, you’ll want to offset this against existing information costs, which will likely include analyst subscriptions.
Analysts are losing authenticity. So much analyst output today has become so jargonized that many research consumers are simply switching off. Who wants to hear the constant regurgitation of meaningless words like “orchestration” and “transformation”. Analysts using GenAI to craft their narrative immediately lose touch with a human audience who wants to hear something real, not more recycled nonsense.
Many analyst/advisor relations professionals are killing the analyst industry. Most tech and services firms persist in relying on prehistoric analyst relations professionals who have forgotten what “value” analysts provide to their firms. They live in a world of checking boxes for administering their executives’ briefings and justifying their large salaries by claiming they somehow drive influence and new business for their employers. I personally can’t remember the last time analyst/advisor relations professionals proactively called up analysts to understand their research agendas and craft an engagement model to get the most out of the relationship. These roles will likely get phased out in the next couple of years as the whole concept of analyst value deviates away from these transactional relationships that are becoming worthless in this age of LLMs.
In short, the whole concept of the value an analyst provides is changing very fast…
How the analyst industry can save itself
Stop cheating with ChatGPT. Now. As MIT scientists have discovered, do not use ChatGPT for your writing if you want to avoid accumulating Cognitive Debt. So if you are genuinely using ChatGPT to write your research for you, stop now. One, it will rot your brain, and many smart people can tell they are not reading the work of a human. Too many bullet points, obvious capitalization of titles, overuse of em dashes, articles that start with “in today’s challenging world…In today’s fast-paced environment” or some variation of it, overuse of short lists with bold titles. I’ve also started seeing ChatGPT-generated charts and diagrams, which don’t really make sense. Plus, some of these analyst articles sound like some corny American journalists in some blah magazine.
Dig deeper – don’t just skim the surface. Too much analysis feels like it’s been written after a quick skim of a press release and a glance at LinkedIn – too much seems generated. If you want to say anything of interest, you must get beyond the obvious. Ask the difficult questions. What’s really going on behind the trends? What are the implications people aren’t talking about? The best analysts cut through the fluff and reveal the real story – not just what happened, but why it matters and what to do about it. Bring insight, not just information. That’s how you earn trust and deliver value.
Be authentic. The one thing good analysts bring to the table is a human voice that should rise above the AI-manufactured cacophony of bullshit. They need to talk plain English to their subscribers. People are turned off by AI-generated content and the same old buzzword bingo, so rise above it, folks! Pretend you are explaining agentic AI to your Mom or the immigration officer who asks what you do for a living…
Lose the attitude. I hate to say it, but people don’t like assholes anymore. They want to like the voice they are hearing, to identify with the analyst, to learn from them, to empathize with them. They don’t want to be lectured and preached to constantly. If they identify with the analyst, they may actually pay to engage with them and get support and ideas from them. Why would you pay for a human being you don’t care about when you get your information from ChatGPT?
Just get to the bloody point. No one has time to read paragraphs of preamble these days. They need to know immediately what you are writing. The days of the waffling intellectual analyst are over. You have a tiny piece of attention-time to make your mark these days, and you need to scream to your audience why you are declaring something profound for their insight pleasure.
Invest in personal relationships – and not just with vendors. The most effective analysts today are those who have invested in their networks and relationships across their ecosystem. I can attest to the fact that you can gain from a lifetime’s knowledge from a person in an hour. Great analysts get to know the people buying technology and services, not just the ones who are marketing themselves to the buyer. You will be such a better analyst for being able to convey real buyer experiences than one who is merely parroting vendor marketing jargon. Great analysts tend to be great people with great personalities and relationships.
Use AI as an ally, not a competitor. The old saying that you won’t lose your job to AI, but to someone who can use AI better than you is VERY true with analysts. Use AI as a research assistant and sounding board, but NOT as your brain.
The Bottom-line: Be honest with yourself if you really want to stay relevant
Analysts need to accomplish three things if they want to avoid being replaced by agents and LLMs:
- Influence people. You need to convince people that your experience and views matter, and that they actually follow you.
- Advise people. You need to convince people that your research and wisdom matter, and they actually listen to you.
- Connect people. You need to prove to people you have a great network of stakeholders across your value ecosystem, so they actually want to know you and spend time with you.
Posted in : Agentic AI, AGI, Analytics and Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, GenAI
