Forrester: Customer Engagement Agencies, Report Q4 2012

FOR: Customer The Forrester Wave™: Customer
Intelligence
Professionals Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012
by Fatemeh Khatibloo, november 19, 2012

key TakeaWays

Customer engagement agencies are evolving From Two Legacy
Models
CEAs, in their evolution from database MSPs and digital/direct agencies, bring the
best of the capabilities from their legacy models to their most strategic enterprise
clients. The most mature of these agencies have made strides to strengthen their
capabilities in areas like customer journey mapping and business strategy consulting.

The Cea Model Faces a Long Road ahead To Reach Maturity
The agencies we evaluated are taking various approaches to acquiring the people,
processes, and technology required to become leaders in the CEA landscape.
However, finding the right talent and restructuring agency compensation, growth,
and KPI models are proving especially challenging. As a result, these firms face a
long road to maturity.

Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, mA 02140 UsA
Tel: +1 617.613.6000 | Fax: +1 617.613.5000 | www.forrester.com

For Customer Intelligence Professionals November 19, 2012

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement
Agencies, Q4 2012
How 13 Vendors Stack Up In An Emerging Market
by Fatemeh Khatibloo
with Suresh Vittal, Dave Frankland, and Allison Smith

Why Read This Report
In Forrester’s 19-criteria evaluation of emerging customer engagement agencies (CEAs), we found that
only OgilvyOne Worldwide has made a significant-enough shift in this segment of its business to be
considered a Leader. Two clusters of Strong Performers, grouped loosely by legacy business models, have
also emerged: Ansira, Epsilon, Havas Worldwide Digital, Precision Dialogue, Rapp, Rosetta, Targetbase,
The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks, True Action, and Wunderman. Contenders Meredith Xcelerated
Marketing and Quaero meanwhile bring unique capabilities to clients looking for a CEA-type partner
within specific verticals.

Table Of Contents Notes & Resources
2 Customer Engagement Agencies Connect CI Forrester conducted executive interviews
To The Brand and case study evaluations, interviewed
more than 20 client references, and
CEAs Must Hone Several Capabilities To Meet
conducted an online survey of more than 100
Clients’ Needs
client companies during Q3 2012.
3 Customer Engagement Agency Evaluation
Overview
Related Research Documents
In An Emerging Market, Vendors Must Meet Should Your Firm Work With A Customer
Three Requirements Engagement Agency?
Evaluated Vendors Are Poised To Evolve The May 10, 2012
CEA Category The Evolution Of The Customer Engagement
Agency
6 A Nascent Market Requires Further Work For
February 13, 2012
Clear Leaders To Emerge
9 Vendor Profiles

Leaders

Strong Performers

Contenders
11 Supplemental Material

© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
resources. 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. To
purchase reprints of this document, please email clientsupport@forrester.com. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.

For Customer Intelligence Professionals
The Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 2

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AGENCIES CONNECT CI to the brand
CEAs help their clients marry data, analytics, marketing strategy, and customer experience to
improve the organization’s profitability. Forrester defines CEAs as:

Agencies that focus on defining customer-oriented business strategies and mapping them to
tactics and execution. They help clients maximize customer profitability and optimize customer
experiences by applying data and analytics to every interaction.

CEAs focus on improving customer experiences, placing customers at the core of the business, and
infusing customer intelligence (CI) and insights throughout the organization — beyond marketing
and into areas like product development and operations planning. Organizations that work with
CEAs look to them to:

■ Streamline their agency relationships. Clients tell us that they work with too many agencies
to maximize efficiencies and ensure that everyone is working toward a common enterprisewide
customer strategy. They look to their CEA to become the “hub of customer engagement efforts,”
typically in one of two ways: 1) consolidating multiple agency relationships into one CEA with an
expanded portfolio of capabilities, and 2) using the CEA to orchestrate and lead the other agencies
the client works with, from public relations agencies to search engine optimization vendors.

■ Measure and optimize every customer’s value. A key mandate for CEAs is to help clients
maximize customer value, which requires significant organizational shifts away from ubiquitous
channel and line-of-business silos. CEAs, with their focus on data, measurement, and creating
“a single view” of the customer, can provide much-needed enterprise-level insights into how,
when, where, and why consumers interact as well as the impact that each touchpoint has on the
value of every customer relationship.

■ Inform strategy using customer intelligence and insights. In all but the most mature CI
organizations, influencing business strategy beyond marketing is difficult. CEA strategy teams
have deep and broad business management expertise, so they are able to 1) translate customer
intelligence into practical and aspirational business objectives using business cases based on
return on investment (ROI); 2) identify opportunities for product adjacencies, operational
efficiencies, and organizational improvements; and 3) communicate these opportunities and
objectives to the most senior leaders in the client organization.

© 2012, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited November 19, 2012


CEAs Must Hone Several Capabilities To Meet Clients’ Needs
The nascent CEA landscape is emerging primarily from two sectors: digital/direct agencies and
database marketing services providers (MSPs). Each vendor category brings a different set of
strengths and weaknesses to the conversation — the agencies have stronger creative and cross-
channel capabilities, while the MSPs deliver better technology and data strategies. But both groups
must deepen their expertise in a few critical areas. They must:

■ Deliver management-consultancy-quality strategy. As CEAs evolve, they’ll need to
supplement their existing strategy teams with individuals who can 1) manage business-line
profit and loss, and 2) provide change management expertise. They will help client organizations
meet the changing requirements of customer engagement, from key performance indicator and
compensation planning to business process design. These business strategists must be part of
the core client team, often embedded on-site, to deliver the kind of impact most often seen from
firms like McKinsey and Accenture.

■ Develop customer-experience-agency-quality journey mapping skills. Customer journey
mapping in CEAs today still tends to be a “bottom up” exercise. Their maps, while offering rich
insight into the cadence and flow of marketing touchpoints, miss crucial experiential elements
like product packaging and the quality of employee interactions at retail. CEAs need to augment
their bench of customer experience/user experience professionals to bring a brand ecosystem
lens to their contact-strategy-oriented journey maps.1

■ Increase their analytics expertise/staff and bring predictive analytics into every engagement.
CI pros turn to firms like Buxton and Fractal Analytics for advanced analytics, because their
agencies and MSPs typically don’t retain the same level of marketing and decision scientists.
CEAs need to bolster their ability to deliver advanced techniques like causal modeling, spatial
analysis, and entity analytics, especially when they are managing the client’s customer database
in addition to delivering cross-channel strategy and execution.

CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AGENCY EVALUATION OVERVIEW
To assess how well emerging CEAs meet the needs of a nascent but growing market, Forrester
evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of 13 agencies across a range of business, marketing, and
technology criteria.

In An Emerging Market, Vendors Must Meet Three Requirements
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we
developed a set of evaluation criteria and evaluated vendors against 19 criteria, which we grouped
into three high-level buckets:



■ Current offering. Forrester’s criteria to assess the strength of a CEA’s offerings are weighted
toward the enterprise customer. We evaluated each vendor against nine groups of criteria:
business strategy, orchestration of customer engagement activities, technology integration,
customer data strategies, customer metrics and measurement methodologies, analytics
capabilities, cross-channel enablement and execution, cross-channel expertise, and customer
journey mapping capabilities.

■ Strategy. We compared the strategies of each company in the context of Forrester’s forward-
looking vision for strategically mature CI organizations to assess how each vendor is positioned
for future success. We examined their market strategy, CEA vision, account management model,
onboarding and change management strategy, pricing strategies, and customer satisfaction.

■ Market presence. To determine current market presence for our evaluation, we combined
information about each vendor’s base of CEA-type engagements with the extent of revenues
derived from those relationships.

Evaluated Vendors Are Poised To Evolve The CEA Category
Forrester invited more than 50 agencies that deliver cross-channel data-driven customer
engagement strategy and services to provide us with details about their services. Thirteen of the
submitting agencies met our selection criteria: Ansira, Epsilon, Havas Worldwide Digital (formerly
Euro RSCG 4D), Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, OgilvyOne Worldwide, Precision Dialogue
(formerly Metrics Marketing), Quaero, Rapp, Rosetta, Targetbase, The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks,
True Action, and Wunderman. Each of these vendors has (see Figure 1):

■ Extensive cross-channel enablement capabilities. Vendors/agencies must exhibit a breadth
of skills across digital, offline, and emerging channels. They must engage with both inbound
and outbound channels and have experience managing customer-controlled channels like
ratings and reviews, preference centers, and nonbranded social media. Finally, they must have
marketing database hosting expertise.

■ Enterprise interest. Despite their varied capabilities, the agencies on this list find themselves
competing against each other with increasing frequency. We selected the vendors that are
frequently mentioned or inquired about by enterprises looking for a single agency to help them
manage customer data, measure customer value, and build customer engagement strategies
across channels.

■ Corporate revenues in excess of $50 million. Although cross-channel enterprise-level
customer engagement accounts are not the sole revenue source for many vendors evaluated,
Forrester reviewed firms that exhibit corporate sustainability, with more than $50 million in
annual revenues.



This evaluation of CEAs is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage readers to view
detailed product evaluations and adapt the criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through
the Forrester Wave™ Excel-based vendor comparison tool.

Figure 1 Evaluated Vendors: Vendor Information And Selection Criteria, Q4 2012

Vendor Date evaluated
Ansira Q3 2012

Epsilon Q3 2012

Havas Worldwide Digital Q3 2012

Meredith Xcelerated Marketing Q3 2012

OgilvyOne Worldwide Q3 2012

Precision Dialogue Q3 2012

Quaero Q3 2012

Rapp Q3 2012

Rosetta Q3 2012

Targetbase Q3 2012

The Agency Inside Q3 2012
Harte-Hanks

True Action Q3 2012

Wunderman Q3 2012

Evaluation criteria
Extensive cross-channel enablement capabilities. Vendors/agencies must exhibit a breadth of skills
across digital, offline, and emerging channels. They must engage with both inbound and outbound
channels and have experience managing customer-controlled channels like ratings and reviews,
preference centers, and nonbranded social media. Finally, they must have marketing database hosting
expertise.

Enterprise interest. Despite their varied capabilities, the agencies on this list find themselves competing
against each other with increasing frequency. We selected the vendors that are frequently mentioned or
inquired about by enterprises looking for a single agency to help them manage customer data, measure
customer value, and build customer engagement strategies across channels.

Corporate revenues in excess of $50 million. Although cross-channel enterprise-level customer
engagement accounts are not the sole revenue source for many vendors evaluated, Forrester reviewed
firms that exhibit corporate sustainability, with more than $50 million in annual revenues.

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.



a nascent market requires further WORK For CLEAR LEADERS to EMERGE
As this is Forrester’s first evaluation of an emerging market, it’s not surprising that none of the
evaluated vendors has fully realized Forrester’s vision of a world-class CEA yet. For CEAs to become
the lead agencies for their enterprise clients, they must exhibit a breadth and depth of capabilities
that compares with specialist providers in several categories. Interviews with nearly 30 reference
clients and online surveys completed by more than 100 clients reveal that these agencies continue to
have limited reach within client organizations (see Figure 2).

■ OgilvyOne is the current category Leader. Overall, OgilvyOne is the agency that’s closest
to Forrester’s vision of a fully developed CEA, with a strong focus on developing business
strategies, supported by change management, to drive customer engagement. These capabilities
push it over the line from Strong Performer to Leader.

■ Ten of the 13 agencies evaluated are Strong Performers — in specific areas. Ansira, Havas
Worldwide Digital, Precision Dialogue, Rosetta, The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks, and
Wunderman are on the leading edge of the Strong Performers. They outperform their category
peers in developing proactive business strategy and tend to have a slight advantage when it
comes to cross-channel enablement and execution.

Epsilon, Rapp, Targetbase, and True Action, also Strong Performers, have a slight edge over their
peers in data strategy and technology integration, but because they tend to be more tactical in
nature, these criteria have slightly lower weighting in our standard evaluation.

■ MXM and Quaero are Contenders, with vertical-specific strengths. While Meredith Xcelerated
Marketing (MXM) and Quaero lack some of the deep strategic and journey mapping mettle of
their peers, they each make a compelling offering for certain clients. MXM is especially well
positioned to help publishing and content-focused organizations succeed. Quaero, meanwhile,
has developed strong expertise and proprietary solutions for the media and telecom industries.



Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012

Risky Strong
Bets Contenders Performers Leaders
Strong

Go online to download
the Forrester Wave tool
for more detailed product
Rosetta
OgilvyOne evaluations, feature
Ansira Wunderman comparisons, and
Precision Dialogue Havas Digital
Rapp The Agency Inside customizable rankings.
Epsilon True Action
Current Quaero
offering Targetbase
Meredith Xcelerated
Marketing

Market presence

Full vendor participation
Weak

Weak Strategy Strong




Figure 2 Forrester Wave™: Customer Engagement Agencies, Q4 2012 (Cont.)

Havas Worldwide Digital

OgilvyOne Worldwide
Meredith Xcelerated

Precision Dialogue

The Agency Inside

Wunderman
Harte-Hanks

True Action
Targetbase
Weighting
Forrester’s

Marketing

Rosetta
Quaero
Epsilon
Ansira

Rapp
CURRENT OFFERING 50% 3.28 2.98 3.10 2.26 3.51 3.15 2.66 2.98 3.48 2.93 3.05 2.85 3.23
Business strategy 15% 3.00 2.00 2.50 1.50 3.00 4.25 2.50 2.00 3.75 2.00 3.00 2.00 2.50
capabilities
Orchestration of 5% 3.75 3.00 4.00 2.50 4.00 3.75 2.75 3.75 4.00 3.50 3.50 3.50 4.00
customer engagement
activities
Technology integration 5% 3.75 4.25 3.00 2.50 3.50 4.00 3.75 4.00 4.25 3.75 4.00 3.50 3.50
Customer data strategies 5% 2.75 4.50 3.25 2.00 3.00 3.50 3.50 3.00 3.50 3.75 4.00 3.50 3.75
Customer metrics and 15% 4.00 3.75 3.25 3.00 4.00 3.75 3.50 2.75 3.75 3.75 3.50 3.25 3.75
measurement
methodologies
Analytics capabilities 15% 3.00 3.00 2.00 2.00 3.00 3.50 2.50 3.00 3.50 3.00 2.50 2.50 3.50
Cross-channel enablement 10% 4.00 3.25 3.75 3.00 4.00 3.00 2.50 3.00 3.00 2.75 3.75 3.00 3.00
and execution
Cross-channel expertise 15% 3.25 2.50 3.00 2.25 3.75 2.50 2.75 2.75 2.75 3.00 2.75 3.25 3.00
Customer journey mapping 15% 2.50 2.50 4.00 2.00 3.50 1.25 1.50 3.75 3.50 2.25 2.25 2.50 3.00

STRATEGY 50% 2.66 2.90 3.20 2.80 3.55 2.80 2.35 2.30 3.09 2.99 3.26 3.39 3.18
CEA market strategy 10% 3.00 3.25 3.25 2.50 3.00 2.50 2.50 2.50 3.00 2.50 2.50 2.75 2.50
CEA vision 10% 3.00 3.00 3.75 2.50 3.75 3.00 1.75 3.50 3.50 2.75 3.50 2.50 3.25
Strategic account 25% 2.75 2.50 3.50 2.50 4.00 3.50 3.00 1.50 1.50 4.00 3.00 3.75 4.00
management
Onboarding and change 25% 1.50 3.00 2.50 3.50 3.50 1.50 2.50 2.50 4.25 2.25 3.25 2.50 3.00
management
CEA pricing strategy 10% 3.00 2.00 4.00 3.00 4.00 2.00 1.50 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 4.00 3.50
Customer satisfaction 20% 3.50 3.50 3.00 2.50 3.00 4.00 2.00 2.00 3.50 3.00 4.00 4.50 2.50

MARKET PRESENCE 0% 1.00 4.00 3.30 3.00 2.60 1.00 1.00 3.00 3.70 2.00 1.70 1.60 2.60
Installed base 70% 1.00 4.00 3.00 3.00 2.00 1.00 1.00 3.00 4.00 2.00 2.00 1.00 2.00
CEA-derived revenues 30% 1.00 4.00 4.00 3.00 4.00 1.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 2.00 1.00 3.00 4.00
Key technology partners 0% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
Other partners 0% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).



vendor profiles

Leaders
■ OgilvyOne Worldwide. OgilvyOne is the sole Leader in the evaluation, primarily because the
firm has successfully integrated a small handful of sister agencies into one division and leverages
expertise across them seamlessly. The agency’s Fusion process underpins every CEA account,
and the tools within that process are used across the agency to drive everything from strategy
(business-challenge discovery and customer value calculators) to deliverables (briefs and
journey maps). Clients point to its people, and their ability to think strategically at every level,
as a core strength. The agency proactively incubates innovation around emerging channels and
media as well as the opportunities those create for all of its clients

Strong Performers
■ Ansira. One of the few independently-held players in this evaluation, Ansira is a fast-growing
boutique agency. The agency takes a holistic innovative approach to designing and deploying
cross-channel customer engagement strategies and has an impressively long-term view of the
tools and strategies its clients need to execute on its vision. Ansira’s digital work with some of
its retail clients has resulted in several unique proprietary tools — like SocialStorefront — that
stand out as best-of-breed. To stay competitive, Ansira needs to grow its bench of specialist
expertise in areas like journey mapping and change management and ensure that it maintains
the same level of quality as it scales.

■ Epsilon. Epsilon’s 2011 acquisition of Aspen Marketing Services was expected to bring a more
deeply integrated service offering to clients on both sides of the house. While the technology
and data integration has been largely successful — especially where clients leverage Epsilon’s
loyalty offering — analytics and business strategy are still a work in progress. Some clients point
to the need for more innovative thinking around emerging media and more focus on business
strategies beyond marketing.

■ Havas Worldwide Digital. Until recently known as Euro RSCG 4D, Havas Worldwide Digital’s
deep focus on using customer intelligence to drive experiences — not just transactions — is
evident in two proprietary tools: its Customer Engagement Index and Customer Experience
Mapping. The agency applies this thinking across a full breadth of channels, including those that
are both nascent and consumer-controlled. However, like a few of its holding-company peers,
the quality of the strategy (and subsequent execution) often depends on the quality and makeup
of the account team.

■ Precision Dialogue. Until recently known as Metrics Marketing, this Ohio-based agency is
a nicely integrated solution for clients looking for a midsize CEA. Clients praise the agency’s
strategic thinking across marketing, operations, and customer management, which it supports



with rigorous ROI-backed business rationale. As a smaller agency, however, Precision Dialogue
will need to manage the growth of its CEA client base carefully to ensure that it can continue to
deliver on these core strengths.

■ Rapp. Rapp, an agency within Omnicom’s Diversified Agency Services (DAS) group, is a well-
rounded firm that shines when it takes on the role of customer engagement orchestrator — the
agency that brings together the strategy and platforms to enable customer engagement across
a client’s breadth of agencies. Accordingly, it is also one of the agencies with the strongest
approaches to mapping the total customer journey ecosystem, including elements such as
cultural trends and consumer-controlled media. As Rapp takes on this increasingly strategic
role for CEA clients, however, it needs to be careful that basic blocking-and-tackling operations
don’t fall through the cracks.

■ Rosetta. Rosetta, an independent brand within the Publicis Groupe, evolved from a legacy of
marketing and analytics consulting. This is still evident in some of the agency’s core strength
areas: creating holistic business strategies, managing technology integrations, and managing
organizational change, from design to training. However, Rosetta seems to be increasing its laser
focus on the interactive space, which could be a challenge for firms that are looking to integrate
substantial offline customer engagement activities.

■ Targetbase. Targetbase is the data and customer measurement powerhouse within Omnicom’s
DAS group. The agency evolved from its database marketing roots over the past several years to
provide a full breadth of agency services and improved its cross-channel strategy and execution
capabilities significantly. Clients say that Targetbase’s smaller size means that it’s more nimble
than counterpart agencies and that they have significant access to agency executives. However,
they also point to the agency’s need for more process orientation to improve technical delivery
and project management.

■ The Agency Inside Harte-Hanks. The Agency Inside’s clients — especially those that it
identifies as enterprise CEA engagements — benefit from a strong, well-integrated offering of
cross-channel creative, strategy, and technology capabilities. Clients say that The Agency Inside
is taking an increasingly proactive approach to delivering strategies that address operational
business challenges, and we find that this is especially evident in the agency’s automotive
business. However, as Harte-Hanks undergoes significant organizational changes, The Agency
Inside needs to ensure that it can support its CEA clients’ data, analytics, and technology needs
and prevent its non-CEA engagements from cannibalizing its capabilities.

■ True Action. True Action, a division of GSI Commerce’s Marketing Services group, is a full-
service agency with a strong focus on digitally-minded retail clients. When it successfully
integrates the solutions offered by its sister organizations, True Action delivers a unique blend of
commerce, content, attribution, and digital deployment. The agency is also one of the few in the



space that has formalized a risk-share model of compensation, which clients say leads to more
transparency on both sides of the relationship. To continue its CEA growth curve, True Action
will need to 1) gain more breadth in offline execution, and 2) execute on its integrated-services
store more consistently.

■ Wunderman. Wunderman’s approach to CEA for enterprise clients is unique. The agency brings
together the best-fit competencies from across its network — notably Blast Radius, KBM Group,
MSC Software, and W3 — to function as an integrated team, under one client leader, and deliver
strategy, data, analytics, and creative across a full spectrum of channels. When this team is
operationally effective, the benefit to clients is tremendous. However, the network’s ability to
scale this model is a challenge, and it needs to take a more standardized approach to how it can
bring an integrated solution to non-enterprise clients.2

Contenders
■ Meredith Xcelerated Marketing. MXM, the agency arm of Meredith, provides a unique
approach to CEA because of its focus on content creation. The agency tends to work with
clients that heavily leverage original brand and editorial content to engage with their customers.
It has some very innovative cross-channel capabilities for content creation and delivery.
However, clients looking for a CEA with the technical chops to host a customer database, create
transaction-oriented customer analytics, and provide business strategies that go beyond content
may find MXM’s expertise lacking.

■ Quaero. Quaero, a division of CSG International, is different from the other providers in this
Wave in two key ways. First, the agency’s legacy as a systems integrator means that it has some
unique strengths to help clients ensure that the organization can successfully execute and deliver
on its customer engagement initiatives, including areas like collections management and ad
serving, where it has built connectors for existing telecom and media clients. Second, Quaero
is the only agency in this evaluation that doesn’t retain any in-house creative services. On
one hand, this makes the firm an attractive choice for clients that have internal creative teams
or strong connections with smaller boutique creative shops. On the other hand, it limits the
agency’s ability to control how its strategies are deployed.

Supplemental MATERIAL

Online Resource
The online version of Figure 2 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed
offering evaluations and customizable rankings.



Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of four data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each
agency:

■ Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria.

■ Executive briefings. We asked vendors to present detailed case studies for at least two current
CEA clients including: customer journey maps, advanced analytics work, creative deliverables,
strategy deliverables, and structure of the account teams.

■ Customer online survey. To validate the vendor’s services and capabilities, Forrester conducted
an online survey with at least eight of each agency’s current CEA clients.

■ Customer reference calls. To further refine the agency’s approach to business strategy, vision,
and commitment to its CEA business, Forrester conducted reference calls with at least two of
each agency’s current CEA clients.

The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated
in this market. From that initial pool of 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 references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.

After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria, we
gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review,
and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.

We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of 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. These default 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. The final scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering,
strategy, and market presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product
capabilities and vendor strategies evolve.



Endnotes
1
To learn more about the customer experience approach to journey mapping, please see the June 22, 2011,
“The Customer Experience Ecosystem” report.
2
KBM Group actually manages its own subset of CEA clients, primarily in the healthcare sector. In these
cases, KBM Group is providing strategy, analytics, data management, and execution under its own brand
exclusively.


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