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The Forrester Wave: EnterpriseListening Platforms, Q2 2012by Zach Hofer-Shall, April 24, 2012

FOR: Customer

Intelligence

Professionals

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The Listening Platform Landscape Is Still Maturing And Moving

Although this is Forresters ourth Wave evaluation on the space, we still see new

entrants and the market still experiences its share o mergers and acquisitions.

Radian6 and Visible Technologies Lead The Market

Due to the varied unctionality in their current offerings, Radian6 and Visible

echnologies meet todays needs, and both presented competitive road maps to

extend their offerings.

The Enterprise Listening Platform Landscape Holds Many Viable

Options

Along with the two Leaders, many vendors offer competitive technology and

services in this crowded market.


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2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best availableresources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar,and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Topurchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

FOR CUSTOMER INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS

WHY READ THIS REPORT

In Forresters 64-criteria evaluation o enterprise listening platorms vendors, we ound that Radian6

and Visible echnologies lead the pack because o their variably unctional dashboards and innovative

road maps. Te landscape consists o many Strong Perormers: Attensity with its data-processing ocus,

Converseon with its research reporting, Networked Insights with its ocus on media planning and buying,

NM Incite with its consulting services, SDL with its data collecting, and Synthesio with its international

expertise. Te evaluation identified a single Contender, Lithium echnologies, whose strength comes rom

its easy-to-use sel-service dashboard.

Table Of Contents

Listening Platforms Make Social Intelligence

Possible

The Listening Platform Landscape Continues ItsEvolution

Enterprise Listening Platform Evaluation

Overview

Defining The Enterprise Listening PlatformMarket

Enterprise Listening Platforms Serve Large,Complicated, And International Customers

Varied Offerings Meet Todays Demands

Vendor Profiles

Leaders Provide The Most Functionality

Strong Performers Come In All Shapes AndSizes

Contenders Make Listening Easy

Supplemental Material

Notes & Resources

Forrester conducted lab evaluations in March

2012 and interviewed nine vendors and more

than 30 user companies.

Related Research Documents

The Enterprise Listening Platform Landscape

April 24, 2012

Its Time For Listening Platforms To Grow Up

January 25, 2012

The State Of Social Intelligence, 2011

January 9, 2012

The Forrester Wave: Enterprise ListeningPlatforms, Q2 2012How Nine Vendors Stack Up In A Constantly Changing Market

by Zach Hofer-Shall

with Suresh Vittal, Dave Frankland, and Allison Smith

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8

6

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APRIL 24, 2012
http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES73702http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES61248http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES61095http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2593http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO1716http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO1733http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO1733http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO1716http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO2593http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES61095http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES61248http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES73702http://www.forrester.com/


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The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Listening Platforms, Q2 2012 2

2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited April 24, 2012

LISTENING PLATFORMS MAKE SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLE

Social intelligence the process o turning social media into actionable business insights

requires technology assistance.1Te social Web is simply too big, too ast, and too ull o irrelevance

and spam to manage alone. As a result, businesses turn to listening platorms to help capture social

data, manage and analyze its content through text analytics, and deliver insights in dashboards

and reporting services. Listening platorms are part o the way through their evolution and

are currently at a point between the social media monitoring tools they started as and the critical

enterprise business analytics tools they must become.2

The Listening Platform Landscape Continues Its Evolution

Businesses evaluating the listening platorm market have a tough task ahead: Hundreds o offerings

compete or attention, selling solutions to simpliy social media.3Differentiating among vendors in

the crowded landscape can be difficult and, due to recent market movements, is only getting morecomplicated. Since our last evaluation:

Mergers and acquisitions swept the market.Since the last listening platorm Forrester Wave,the space has experienced a great deal o movement. Tree o the vendors participating in this

evaluation have arrived here through acquisition: Attensity by acquiring Biz360, Lithium

echnologies through its acquisition o Scout Labs, and SDL through its acquisition o Alterian

which previously acquired echrigy. And, although Radian6 still operates under its same name, it

now sits under its large parent, salesorce.com, ollowing the 2011 acquisition. Most recently,

during the process o this evaluation, Visible echnologies acquired one o the market

competitors, Cymony.

Technology giants started dipping their toes in the listening waters.Over the past 18 months,many o the worlds largest technology companies have launched listening technologies. Both

Adobe and SAS launched social analytics offerings; IBM now offers Cognos Consumer Insight;

and, with every release, Google Analytics adds more social media coverage to its web analytics

offering. Its clear that this is a space that will have a new series o competitors in the near uture.

ENTERPRISE LISTENING PLATFORM EVALUATION OVERVIEW

o assess the state o the enterprise listening platorm market and see how the vendors stack up

against each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses o top enterprise listening

platorm vendors.

Defining The Enterprise Listening Platform Market

Afer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we

developed a comprehensive set o evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 64 criteria,

which we grouped into three high-level buckets:


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Current offering.We evaluated each vendors existing product and services offering todetermine its strength compared with todays buyer demands. We reviewed the vendors data

source coverage and data processing capabilities such as their automated sentiment analysis

and spam detection to determine the quality o data the vendors provide. We then evaluated

the vendors dashboard unctionalities as well as their technical integration offerings. Lastly, we

evaluated the vendors proessional services and reporting capabilities.

Strategy.We evaluated each vendors overall strategy, ocusing on how its product and servicesmeet both todays and tomorrows demands. Within the strategy component, we reviewed the

management team, the vendors technology and services road maps, and their partner strategies.

Market presence.We evaluated the vendors ootprints in the market to determine the relativesize o each offering. We reviewed the number o customers and the growth in customers as well

as overall customer satisaction. We also covered the vendors financial strengths, evaluatingeach vendors revenue and financial stability. Lastly, we evaluated the vendors employee bases to

determine how well each is equipped to handle enterprise customers.

Enterprise Listening Platforms Serve Large, Complicated, And International Customers

Forrester included nine vendors in the assessment: Attensity, Converseon, Lithium echnologies,

Networked Insights, NM Incite, Radian6, SDL, Synthesio, and Visible echnologies. Each o these

vendors has (see Figure 1):

A large footprint in the listening platform market.o determine the vendors most relevant to

todays market, we evaluated companies with at least $10 million in annual revenue rom theirsocial listening offerings or vendors with at least 100 customers.

A large concentration of enterprise customers.With a new ocus on enterprise listeningplatorms, we evaluated vendors with at least 40% o their customer base serving $1billion

companies or with more than 100 enterprise customers.

A diverse customer base, serving horizontally across the organization.Enterprise listeningplatorms, by definition, must be capable o serving horizontally across the organization not

just a single team. We evaluated vendors that sell to an evenly distributed customer base and

excluded vendors that have a customer base o more than 40% o any one organizational role,

such as market research or public relations.


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Figure 1Evaluated Vendors: Vendor Inormation And Selection Criteria

VARIED OFFERINGS MEET TODAYS DEMANDS

Social intelligence means many things to many parts o the organization. Social data inorms

marketing measurement, inspires market insights, identifies customer data, and tracks customer

issues. As a result, there were multiple ways to perorm well in this evaluation either serving

many o these unctions adequately or serving a ew o them specifically well. Te evaluation

uncovered a market in which (see Figure 2):

Radian6 and Visible Technologies lead the market.Radian6 and Visible echnologies leadthe landscape, sharing two key strengths: broadly unctional dashboards and innovative road

maps. Although each has key differentiators Radian6 with its engagement tools and Visible

echnologies with its ocus on data quality they share a ocus on integrations. Radian6

and Visible echnologies received top scores across criteria relating to integration with other

technology systems.

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

Vendor

Attensity

Converseon

Lithium Technologies

Networked Insights

NM Incite

Radian6

SDL

Synthesio

Visible Technologies

Date evaluated

February 2012

February 2012

February 2012

February 2012

February 2012

February 2012

February 2012

February 2012

February 2012

Vendor selection criteria

Selected vendors must have $10 million in annual revenue from their listening offering or at least 100active customers.

At least 40% of the selected vendors customers must be $1 billion-plus companies or they must have aminimum of 100 enterprise customers.

No more than 40% of the vendors business can come from a single business line, such as public relationsor market research.


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Attensity, Converseon, Networked Insights, NM Incite, SDL, and Synthesio are strong. Although there is a large pack o vendors in the middle, each earned its spot or a different

reason. Converseon is a Strong Perormer because o its social research practice; Synthesio due

to its international strengths; SDL or its social data quality; Networked Insights or its strong

connection to the media world; Attensity or its ability to handle a variety o data; and NM

Incite or its strength in consulting services.

Lithium Technologies is a Contender.Although this large landscape contains manyviable options or large companies, the evaluation uncovered a single Contender. Lithium

echnologies has a large ootprint in the market, excelling with its dashboard offering. It

provides simple, sel-service tools or monitoring and analyzing social data.

Tis evaluation o the enterprise listening platorm market is intended to be a starting point only.

We encourage readers to view detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fittheir individual needs through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.

Figure 2Forrester Wave: Enterprise Listening Platorms, Q2 12


Go online to download

the Forrester Wave tool

for more detailed productevaluations, feature

comparisons, and

customizable rankings.

RiskyBets Contenders Leaders

StrongPerformers

StrategyWeak Strong

Current

offering

Weak

Strong

Market presence

Attensity

ConverseonLithium

Technologies

Networked Insights

NM Incite Radian6

SDL

Synthesio

Visible

Technologies


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Figure 2Forrester Wave: Enterprise Listening Platorms, Q2 12 (Cont.)

VENDOR PROFILES

Leaders Provide The Most Functionality

Radian6.Radian6 has the largest market ootprint, with more than twice the number ocustomers o the next closest enterprise listening platorm. In early 2011, salesorce.com

acquired Radian6, and, under this giant umbrella, Radian6 remains the most innovative vendor

in the landscape. It continues to add eatures to its dashboard on a regular basis. But even afermany improvements including a dedicated insights dashboard, which utilizes third-party

data analysis tools Radian6 customers still report data quality issues. o remain a Leader,

Radian6 must double its efforts toward fixing its automated analysis tools or lose customers to

more data-ocused vendors.


Attensity

Converseon

LithiumTechnolog

ies

NetworkedInsight

s

NMIncite

Radian6

SDL

CURRENT OFFERING

Background information

Data sources

Data processing

Dashboard functionality

Integration

Consulting and analysis services

STRATEGY

Strength of management team

Corporate strategy

Product strategy

Cost

MARKET PRESENCE

Customers

Financials

Employees

Forresters

Weighting

50%

0%

10%

15%

45%

10%

20%

50%

15%

15%

70%

0%

0%

70%

20%

10%

2.63

0.00

3.19

3.25

2.95

2.40

1.30

2.97

3.00

3.70

2.80

0.00

3.13

3.23

2.15

4.40

3.02

0.00

3.37

3.10

2.85

1.60

3.90

3.68

4.00

2.80

3.80

0.00

2.52

2.18

3.15

3.60

2.66

0.00

2.43

1.90

3.25

2.50

2.10

2.25

3.00

3.60

1.80

0.00

3.93

4.15

3.50

3.20

3.03

0.00

3.24

3.35

2.75

2.10

3.80

2.96

3.00

2.70

3.00

0.00

3.78

3.76

3.80

3.90

2.95

0.00

3.06

2.80

2.35

2.65

4.50

2.37

2.00

2.80

2.35

0.00

2.91

2.70

2.85

4.50

3.28

0.00

3.73

2.65

3.95

3.75

1.80

4.36

4.00

3.60

4.60

0.00

4.18

3.97

5.00

4.00

3.24

0.00

3.43

3.45

3.10

3.25

3.30

2.78

2.00

3.20

2.85

0.00

4.00

4.35

3.15

3.20

Synthesio

VisibleTechnologies

3.15

0.00

2.97

3.15

2.95

3.15

3.70

3.38

4.00

2.90

3.35

0.00

3.33

3.46

3.10

2.90

3.52

0.00

3.19

3.45

3.65

3.25

3.60

3.70

3.00

3.00

4.00

0.00

3.42

3.67

2.15

4.20

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).


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Visible Technologies.In late 2010, Visible echnologies launched a completely revampeddashboard which now receives the top customer reerence scores in the market. Visible

echnologies dashboard provides broad unctionality, serving measurement, research, and

engagement needs. In April 2012, Visible echnologies acquired a market competitor, Cymony.

By adding Cymonys international ootprint and consulting resources, Visible echnologies

only increases its enterprise offerings. But while the acquisition fills in many o its existing

holes, the company must stay ocused on its data integrations and technology offers, all while

combining the two parties research and consulting services.

Strong Performers Come In All Shapes And Sizes

Converseon.Converseon offers a combination o technology and services to provide acustomized approach to managing and analyzing social data. In 2011, Converseon launched a

new dashboard, and the vendor continues to add to its already strong consulting and customreporting offerings. But, to become a Leader, Converseon must ocus on data, both inside its

dashboard and out. Converseon with its strength in consulting services currently misses

the opportunity to extend its offerings by helping its clients integrate social data with their

marketing and business data.

Synthesio.Synthesio is the smallest and youngest vendor o the list but has one o the largerootprints with enterprises in Europe. Based in Paris, Synthesio takes an internationally ocused

approach that combines multilingual human analysis on top o its technologies. But Synthesio

must look beyond social media to become a Leader. Although its current strengths come rom

social analytics, research, and consulting, Synthesio may become trapped selling to social media

teams. o grow into a Leader, Synthesio must scale its offering across the organization.

SDL.At the beginning o 2012, SDL a large global sofware vendor acquired Alterian,which previously offered its SM2 social media analytics dashboard. Now, through the SDL

relationship, SM2 remains a popular dashboard but increases its international capabilities and

presence. SDL provides a broad variety o social content and a series o technologies to address

multiple languages automatically. But or SDL to become a Leader, it must ocus on improving

its sel-service dashboard while dealing with its recent acquisition.

Networked Insights.Networked Insights ollows the same processes as the other vendors in themarket but specializes in a targeted insight delivery: media planning and buying. Te vendor

built its SocialSense dashboard around these marketing needs, giving it an unrivaled advantage

or socially inormed media planning and buying but leaving it lacking in some broader social

intelligence applications. Networked Insights services team also provides strategy and reporting

around many marketing and business needs, but its core ocus remains in the media space.


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Attensity.Following the acquisition o Biz360 in 2010, Attensity now integrates social mediadata into its overall text analytics offering. Due to Attensitys legacy in the unstructured data

world, it excels at handling sources beyond just social data and offers integrations into a variety

o technology systems. But with Attensitys data strength come dashboard issues. o become

a Leader, Attensity must uniy its user experience across its currently ragmented product line,

improve its dashboard interace, and provide more o the data analysis tools that social buyers

expect.

NM Incite.NM Incite is the joint venture between Nielsens BuzzMetrics team and McKinseysmanagement consulting practice, which offers technology and strategy services to help

companies manage social media. NM Incite offers a variety o research and consulting offerings,

garnering positive customer reerences. But while NM Incite continues to excel in its social

research practice, it must address a ew issues to become a Leader. Most prominently, NM Incite

must improve its dashboard offering, improve its data quality, and address its limitations aroundnon-social data.

Contenders Make Listening Easy

Lithium Technologies.Following the acquisition o Scout Labs in 2010, Lithium added socialmedia monitoring capabilities to its existing social business sofware suite. Lithiums core

product is its community platorm offering, which it also eeds into its monitoring tool. Tis

gives Lithium an advantage or customers o its community platorm technology or customers

looking or a social technology suite. But Lithiums strength in integration with its communities

is also its problem. By ocusing on internal integrations, Lithium lacks external integrations,

both with nonsocial data and into other external technology systems. And while Lithiumcustomers reported positive experiences with the dashboard, the vendor must also address its

data quality issues.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Online Resource

Te online version o Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed

product evaluations and customizable rankings.

Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave

Forrester used a combination o our data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses o each

solution:


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Hands-on lab evaluations.Vendors spent a hal day with Forrester, conducting hands-onevaluations o their products using a scenario-based testing methodology. We evaluated each

product using the same scenario, creating a level playing field by evaluating every product on

the same criteria.

Vendor surveys.Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluationcriteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where

necessary to gather details o vendor qualifications.

Product demos.We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations o their products unctionality.We used findings rom these product demos to validate details o each vendors product

capabilities.

Customer reference surveys.o validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester alsoconducted reerence checks with at least three o each vendors current customers.

The Forrester Wave Methodology

We conduct primary research to develop a list o vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated

in this market. From that initial pool o vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these

vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate

vendors that have limited customer reerences and products that dont fit the scope o our evaluation.

Afer examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop

the initial evaluation criteria. o evaluate the vendors and their products against our set o criteria,we gather details o product qualifications through a combination o lab evaluations, questionnaires,

demos, and/or discussions with client reerences. We send evaluations to the vendors or their

review, and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view o vendor offerings and

strategies.

We set deault weightings to reflect our analysis o the needs o large user companies and/or

other scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document and then score the vendors based

on a clearly defined scale. Tese deault weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we

encourage readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based

tool. Te final scores generate the graphical depiction o the market based on current offering,

strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product

capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.


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ENDNOTES

1 For more inormation about social intelligence, see the March 12, 2010, Deining Social Intelligence

report.

2 Forrester describes a mandate or listening platorms uture road map. See the January 25, 2012, Its ime

For Listening Platorms o Grow Up report.

3 o learn more about the listening platorm vendor landscape, see the April 24, 2012, he Enterprise

Listening Platorm Landscape report.
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