Late last week I had an interesting meeting with Dell. They commented on the amount of work that must go on behind the scenes in order to produce the content that we do on the front end; the inference being that with so much content at the interface there must be even more substance in the boiler-room. In effect, they recognised that the website is just the tip of the iceberg and cemented our difference in their mind from many other portal-based content companies. 

That was an important observation for us as it recognised so much of what we have been striving to achieve- a traditional analyst firm focused on the Australian and near-shore markets and serving the explicit needs of local companies.  Yet perceptions about what traditional means in this business vary. I heard one analyst say the other day that traditional analyst firms do research "by the kilo", and while at the time I didn't wish to debate it in front of the client it's certainly a statement that deserves more comment. 

One of the common forms of positive feedback Longhaus receive is about the content, data, commentary and general insights we provide for free. Some of it is research but by-and-large we call our opinion opinion, editorial is editorial, a blog is a blog and tweets belong in twitter. We occassionally do free events and even post those presentations for free on our website. But when it comes to research, we ask that our clients pay because research is all together different. And they all get that. It is only when syndicated opinion and generalised reports are passed off as customer-specific that research loses its mojo, and analyst firms lose their customers.  

The thing that we have found about research by the kilo is that it is intrinsically linked to the value proposition that customers have for research and advisory services. That is, come the end of the year, customers absolutely love to see kilos of customised inquiry responses sitting on their desk(top). Here is the custom piece we did for you on "x", here is the custom piece we did for you on "y". Verbally telling a client the best approach for them to take over the telephone is one thing. Formally documenting it for them so that it is meaningful for a strategic lifecycle is quite another. The debate squarely rests on how you define a customised inquiry.

But that is the catch-22. Customisation and regionalisation are the basic tenets of the traditional analyst firm yet rarely practiced today. Perception is now that syndication is the bastard son of something far nobler. That is a myth too, and dead with the concept of the analyst rock star.

The other basic tenet of traditionalism is transparency because we are an industry founded on the principles of stock market analysis and brokering advice. Yet it seems the further we have travelled as an industry from our roots of Buy-Sell analysis on tech stocks, the further removed we have become from all things transparent.

So in the interest of transparency we clearly articulate which companies we speak with, which media publications take our comment and at who's events we appear as paid speakers. It is again the reason we separate opinion and research. We can have an opinion on the Oracle-Sun acquisition but we'll have to formally document for you our position about how it affects your Sun maintenance renewal.

And that transparency pays dividends for everyone. Just through the weblinks that we publish for all industry interactions, in the last month alone www.longhaus.com has redirected 877 browsers to various news media sites, 557 browsers to various event landing pages, and 673 browsers directly to vendor websites based on briefings taken since February.

So getting back to Dell's tip-of-the-iceberg comment, the website culmination of all these things for us is an average visit time of over 8 minutes on our website (that is a stellar annual average per visitor), and never less than 70-100 concurrent individual visitors on our site at any given time of the day. Most of those visitors aren't even the ones who have officially registered with us. Beyond the web-presence though, this approach has given our customers and future customers the confidence to seek us out as the traditional firm of choice or at least the one with the biggest ears and most tangible outputs.  

Sydnication has a place. Research by the kilo is important; and the value of traditional approaches for customer delivery in this business is beyond debate.