Gartner Reprint
Gartner Reprint
Excerpt
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools
Market Definition/Description
Gartner defines the market for Enterprise Architecture Tools as tools that allow organizations to examine both the need for, and the impact of, change. They allow users to capture the interrelationships and interdependencies within and between an ecosystem of partners, operating models, capabilities, people, processes, information, and applications and technologies. They provide a central repository to capture data and metadata about the artifacts that an enterprise cares about, and their related life cycles. Models represent the relationships between these artifacts and are themselves treated as assets that help describe and shape the future of the enterprise.
EA tools provide a means to model the business and IT aspects of the enterprise in support of business outcome delivery. Doing so requires the collaboration of multiple stakeholders across the organization — each playing a different role at a different time. The models and methods used by the stakeholders will vary depending on their role and must be integrated and connected to other models to be useful. To support these needs, EA tools have two aspects. The first provides a modeling environment, along with a supporting repository. The second facilitates collaboration between a diverse group of stakeholders across the organization, right from business strategy to IT.
A broad array of architectural and IT disciplines, such as business, information, solution, security, applications and infrastructure use EA tools. EA tools operate at many levels and across a wide spectrum to enable insights and support informed decision making. With such a broad array of stakeholders, EA tools must also facilitate their consumption of, and contribution to, the information contained within the repository. As they undertake their work, these users switch between an ever-expanding set of views and visual representations of the datasets contained in the repository.
The standard capabilities for this market include:
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Repository: Provides a single source of truth for the organization with storage, categorization and versioning of objects, models and artifacts of various sorts, as well as the relationships between them, and related business artifacts and views.
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Modeling: Structures relationships across entities, such as business strategies, objectives, goals, constraints, capabilities, personas, customer journeys, activities, processes, value streams, policies, decision models, metrics, applications, technologies, roadmaps, projects and programs.
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Presentation: Displays and illustrations of information in the form of dashboards, heat maps, models and scenarios that contribute to the presentation capability of the tool. A variety of visual presentations helps colleagues understand and assess the impacts associated with decisions and proposed solutions.
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Analysis: Identify, assess, prioritize and track gaps, challenges, opportunities and risks within and across portfolios of business capabilities, investments, processes, projects, applications and technologies.
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Configuration and management: Setup and administration features to support the EA tool’s security, along with setting up different classes of users, their access rights and feature alignment including controlling access to information stored in the repository.
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Publication: Enables wide consumption of the data contained within the EA tool across the enterprise and beyond. Tools should also be able to capture comments and feedback on that content and/or score elements contained in repository views.
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Integration: Expose and import data to and from other products, enabling the EA tool to be a hub uniting other common tools in the enterprise technology ecosystem. This includes categories such as product management, configuration management database (CMDB), PPM, business process management suite (BPMS) and process mining.
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Extensibility: Extend the metamodel of the EA tool through the definition of new modeling concepts and relationship types — up to new graphical representations and enforcing domain-specific rules.
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Innovation management: Mechanisms that support the creation and tracking of innovation and change initiatives. This includes support for ideation, trendspotting and the engagement of colleagues, PPM links and benefits realization.
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Intelligent automation: AI-assisted and automated features that help EA practitioners industrialize their activities and outputs delivering value more quickly and reliably, while keeping information up-to-date and fresh. These features should focus on process and policy automation functionality used within the tool (rather than served up externally).
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Frameworks: Starting point for structuring the repository and the relationships among artifacts, focusing on support for different architectural methods and vertical industry models. This includes support in choosing the EA frameworks to adopt and to identify overlaps and gaps.
Magic Quadrant
Figure 1: Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools
Source: Gartner (November 2023)
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
The inclusion criteria represent the specific attributes that Gartner analysts believe are necessary for inclusion in this research. In this inclusion criteria:
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The vendor product or offering refers to the vendor’s primary EA product (not a suite of products) — software acquired under a single license, using the same codebase and repository, not requiring any customized integration to access and exchange data. Such products can comprise multiple modules or features unlocked as part of pricing schemes within the license.
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License revenue includes software license and software maintenance, and software upgrade revenue for higher tiers of the vendor’s single primary EA product and additional functionalities, modules (not services related), but excludes hardware and professional services.
To qualify for inclusion in this Magic Quadrant, vendors must meet all the criteria set forth across the following three dimensions.
Performance: In 2022, the vendor had to have either realized:
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At least $8 million in licensing revenue over the calendar year for its primary EA product (not a suite of products) or
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A 30% year-over-year revenue growth for the last three calendar years (as validated by the vendor’s most senior financial officer) for its primary EA product
Market Momentum: To qualify for inclusion, the vendor had to have demonstrated market momentum in 2022 for the primary EA product through a minimum of:
- At least five new customer wins (net new logos), headquartered in each of a minimum of two of the four major geographic regions (major global regions are defined as EMEA, the Asia/Pacific region, North America and Latin America) with its primary EA product in production for a total of 10 new customers in two regions in 12 months
EA Tool Market Focus: To qualify for inclusion, the vendor had to have in 2022:
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An installed base of at least 50 customers (unique logos) that used its primary EA product in production and
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General availability as of 30 April 2023 for its primary EA product and
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Its primary EA product demonstrably supporting all use cases and including/embedding all capabilities, as described in the Market Definition/Description section
Evaluation Criteria
Ability to Execute
We evaluated the vendors’ Ability to Execute in the EA tool market by using the following dimensions and criteria.
Product or Service: We assessed how and what the vendor’s EA tool offers EA practitioners. This includes current product/service capabilities (including differentiating capabilities), quality and feature sets, as defined in the Market Definition/Description section, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships. Where responses rely on third-party products or products requiring separate licensing, these must be clearly identified. We assessed products on how well they meet the critical capabilities and support the use cases.
Overall Viability: We assessed the viability of the vendor’s overall financial health, focusing on growth in revenue, profitability, customer base, etc., and the financial and practical success of the business. This also includes our assessment of the likelihood that the vendor will continue to offer and invest (R&D, sales, vertical and regional strategies etc.) in the product, as well as advance the product’s position within its current product portfolio. We compared organic growth to growth by other means, including growth by acquisition or by securing additional funding. We value organic growth more highly than other types of growth.
Sales Execution/Pricing: We assessed the vendor’s sales execution and clarity in pricing including presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes responsiveness in sales engagement, deal size and management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, scalability, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness and Track Record: We assessed each vendor’s recent history of responsiveness to customer requests and the timeliness of these responses in terms of the product life cycle (updates and releases, etc.). This includes mechanisms for both responding quickly and changing development and/or company direction to meet the needs of an evolving marketplace. We also examined each vendor’s recent track record in the field.
Marketing Execution: We assessed the clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of each vendor’s programs, campaigns and events designed to deliver its message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of customers.
Customer Experience: We assessed each vendor’s products and services and/or programs that enable customers to achieve anticipated results with the products evaluated. This includes track record of successful implementations, mechanisms for ensuring customer success/support, and at what cost. We assessed the responsiveness of each vendor, customer experience of doing business with it and customers’ overall perceptions of each vendor.
Operations: We assessed each vendor’s ability to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure and its resources across all functions. This includes skills, experiences, programs, systems, applicable standards, the underlying infrastructure and other vehicles that enable a vendor to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Table 1: Ability to Execute Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria | Weighting |
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Product or Service |
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Medium
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Overall Viability
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High
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Sales Execution/Pricing
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High
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Market Responsiveness/Record
|
Low
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Marketing Execution
|
Low
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Customer Experience
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Medium
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Operations
|
Medium
| | |
Source: Gartner (November 2023)
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: We assessed each vendor’s understanding of the market dynamics, including trends, competitor activity, customer needs, and emerging use cases and personas, and how they translate these into products and services over a three-year time horizon. Vendors that show a clear vision and expression of their market are those that listen, understand customer demands, and can shape or enhance market changes with their added vision.
Marketing Strategy: We sought clear, differentiated messaging that was consistently communicated internally and externalized through the vendor’s website, social media, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.This included differentiating strategy based on regions, specific countries and buyer personas, and ways to measure and adapt the strategy.
Sales Strategy: We wanted to understand the vendor’s sales strategy and how it leveraged direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication. We also examined the use and reliance on partners to extend the scope and reach of the vendor, focusing on the levels of expertise and technology required, as well as the partners’ services and customer base. Our assessment also included target customer personas and sales strategies differentiated for their context, size, level of maturity and geographic locations.
Offering (Product) Strategy: We explored the vendor’s approach to developing a compelling product and service vision with an emphasis on market differentiation, functionality, methodology and features as they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: Our assessment explored the design, logic and execution of the vendor’s business proposition to achieve continued success. This included support for customers in different deployment modes, alongside a vendor’s business capabilities, its overall value propositions, related profit models and the resources at its disposal.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: We assessed the vendor’s strategy to direct resources (sales, product and development), skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual industry segments, including any focus on specific industry verticals and associated standards, and an illustration of revenue performance from its top sectors.
Innovation: We explored the vendor’s innovation vision, considering its resources, expertise and capital for investment. We were looking for a strong product vision that pushes the market forward while considering the disruptive and opportunistic forces of digital on businesses. We also considered the vendor’s ideas for innovation and future development of the market.
Geographic Strategy: We looked at the vendor’s strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the “home” or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries, as appropriate for that geography and market.
Table 2: Completeness of Vision Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria | Weighting |
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Market Understanding |
|
Medium
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Marketing Strategy
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Medium
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Sales Strategy
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Medium
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Offering (Product) Strategy
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High
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Business Model
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Medium
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Vertical/Industry Strategy
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Medium
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Innovation
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High
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Geographic Strategy
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Medium
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Source: Gartner (November 2023)
Quadrant Descriptions
Leaders
Leaders have a deep understanding of the realities of the market, a reliable global delivery record and an ability to influence the market’s direction, along with an ability to attract and keep a growing customer base. In the EA tool market, leadership implies understanding, facilitating and supporting the strategic role that enterprise architects play at a much broader level. They are more business-strategy-focused, with a shared operating model at the business level that helps drive the relationship with IT. Leaders must not only demonstrate a market-leading vision, but also the Ability to Execute on that vision. At this point in development of the EA tool market, 10 vendors have sustained excellence in both execution and vision long enough to demonstrate effective leadership. Customers should note that a Leader is not always the best choice. A focused, smaller vendor also can provide excellent support and commitment to suit individual needs. Other vendors may provide a certain capability — such as a focus on your industry, a better cost-performance ratio, or a commitment to specific features or functions — that is important to your organization. This more focused type of vendor would not appear as a Leader in the overall EA tool market but, within a specific market segment, it may well be treated as one.
Challengers
Challengers excel in their ability to attract a large user following, but this ability is limited to a subset or segment of the market. For that target audience, Challengers are effectively Leaders, but that specificity presents a barrier to adoption for those outside that subsegment. For example, in the EA tool market, a Challenger may have a strong, proven presence or following, but lack sophistication in the evolving use cases for EA tools. Alternatively, a Challenger might understand those use cases well and achieve a strong following in its home market, but still struggle to deliver the same levels of success on a global scale. One vendor rated as a Challenger in the EA tool market this year. Although Challengers are typically of significant size with significant financial resources, they may lack elements of the vision we expect, innovative ideas and plans, or an overall understanding of market needs. In some cases, Challengers may offer products that dominate a large, but shrinking, segment of the market. Challengers can became Leaders if their vision develops. Large companies may move between the Challengers and Leaders quadrants as their product cycles and market needs shift.
Visionaries
Visionaries in a market are the innovators driving the market forward by responding to emerging, leading-edge customer demands and offering new opportunities to excel. Typically, these vendors appeal to leading-edge customers and may even have minimal mainstream presence or name recognition. Their ability to deliver sustained and dependable execution in the mainstream enterprise market is not sufficiently tested. Visionaries enable model-driven enterprises, focusing deeply on the business and its strategy rather than on the traditional fixation of EA on the scope of IT. Within the EA tool market, there is only one Visionary vendor in this year’s Magic Quadrant. This vendor is highly disruptive to the established players with its open-source offering for unlimited users and low-cost support service subscription. Visionaries can eventually grow to become Leaders. Alternatively, they may decide to limit their target markets to focus on their core competencies, core technologies or existing customers, and become Niche Players. They could also develop their specialties to advance in execution and become Challengers.
Niche Players
Niche Players choose to operate in a subsegment of a market, or they have a limited ability to innovate or outperform other vendors in the wider market. This limitation may result from a focus on a particular area of functionality, vertical industry or region, or because they are new entrants. Alternatively, Niche Players may struggle to remain relevant in a market that is moving away from them. Niche Players may have reasonably broad functionality, but limited implementation and support capabilities and relatively limited customer bases. The EA tool market has three Niche Players. Some of these vendors have transitioned from other markets and need to focus fully on EA in order to progress. A couple remain stagnant in their vision and have limited Ability to Execute. Others lack the modern architecture of many of the vendors in the Challengers, Leaders or Visionary quadrants. Assessing Niche Players is more challenging than assessing vendors in other quadrants. This is because some could make progress, while others may not execute well and/or lack the vision and means to keep pace with broader market demands. Even if a Niche Player seems perfect for your requirements, it is probably developing contrary to the market’s overall direction, in which case it can be a risky choice with limited long-term viability.
Context
This Magic Quadrant focuses on EA tool vendors’ placement in the market, not specifically on the capabilities of their products (for a more detailed evaluation of the products, see Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Architecture Tools). Only two of the 15 evaluation criteria in this Magic Quadrant relate to product or service functions. The other 13 evaluation criteria focus on the vendors’ ability to meet the requirements of this market (for details, see the Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria and Evaluation Criteria sections). In response to changing client needs, Gartner adjusts the weight of different evaluation criteria in order to accurately reflect the state of the market. This year’s Magic Quadrant analysis has shifted to a balanced focus on growth and market share, which enables a more informed view of how the current market is evolving and its future direction.
As part of our evaluation process, we used five key use cases that we believe are important to enterprise architects, as well as to the senior leadership that vendors need to support to maintain relevance in the EA tool market:
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Enterprise transformation management. EA practitioners must be able to produce and manage models that can help the enterprise understand how it needs to transform to changing strategy, objectives and outcomes in the most optimal and resilient way.
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IT portfolio management. EA practitioners must be able to use enterprise transformation models and other data to help build, analyze, manage and assess IT portfolios and related risks, opportunities and recommendations in preparation for execution.
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Advanced roadmapping. EA practitioners need to be able to build, present and communicate roadmaps that describe enterprisewide transformation and investment decisions for a broad range of enterprise viewpoints, where these viewpoints correspond to changes in the market, regulations, enterprise (business and IT) strategy, objectives, outcomes and architecture.
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Solution architecture design and delivery. EA practitioners need to be able to efficiently design and communicate strategic, tactical and emergent solution architecture that is aligned to enterprise standards. At the same time, these designs must be able to be easily consumed and implemented by teams to deliver products and services at pace and at scale.
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Innovation and sustainability. EA practitioners must be able to help organizations track and leverage emerging trends and technologies through structured, flexible and iterative methods. This includes identifying and tracking improvements in sustainability.
Market Overview
EA tools provide a centralized, consolidated source of truth about the enterprise. They capture the constraints of the IT assets, processes, value streams, change programs and projects. EA tools relate these to support business strategy and the enterprise’s ecosystem of relationships up and down the value chain. They provide a critical resource to help organizations mature and improve their business operations, as well as the enterprise’s operating model. They are increasingly integrated directly with tools in adjacent categories, such as PPM, CMDB and innovation.
Many of the vendors considered in this research provide tooling to integrate directly with leading providers, such as ServiceNow and Jira. This trend will continue, with EA tools providing the ability to accurately describe the connective tissue that ties together all the different elements of the “patchwork quilt” needed to support the modern enterprise. We also expect to see players in these adjacent territories, such as asset management and strategic portfolio management, flex their muscles, either buying or launching their own EA tools.
Many vendors in this market have taken advantage of recent developments in generative AI to provide enhanced features that ease the management of data in the repository and generate recommendations and artifacts. We expect to see continued enhancement of tools in this market through introduction of additional AI/ML functionality as the technology matures.
There are three merger and acquisition (M&A) activities worth noting in this market for 2023:
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In June 2023, UMT360 was acquired by business transformation consultancy North Highland.
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In September 2023, SAP announced its intent to purchase LeanIX. LeanIX has long had a partnership with SAP, integrating SAP Signavio to support advanced support for business process management and providing IP that specifically supports the SAP platform.
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Also in September 2023, Bizzdesign announced the acquisition of Edifit, a systems integrator for Bizzdesign’s Horizzon product. Along with the system integration talent, the acquisition brings IP developed by Edifit that will now be available to all customers.
Acronym Key and Glossary Terms
CMDB | A configuration management database is a repository that is designed to store many of the components of an information system. A key goal of a CMDB is to help an organization understand the relationships between different components and track their configuration. |
Metamodel | A metamodel or surrogate model is a model of a model, and metamodeling is the process of generating such metamodels. Metamodels catalog each type of component in an EA, provide detailed definitions, document the relationships between one component and another, define the structure and configuration of the architecture itself, and help users understand the structure and behavior of the architecture. |
ML | Machine learning |
SOC 2 | System and Organization Control (SOC) 2 is an auditing procedure that ensures your service providers securely manage your data to protect the interests of your organization and the privacy of its clients. |
Evaluation Criteria Definitions
Ability to Execute
Product/Service: Core goods and services offered by the vendor for the defined market. This includes current product/service capabilities, quality, feature sets, skills and so on, whether offered natively or through OEM agreements/partnerships as defined in the market definition and detailed in the subcriteria.
Overall Viability: Viability includes an assessment of the overall organization's financial health, the financial and practical success of the business unit, and the likelihood that the individual business unit will continue investing in the product, will continue offering the product and will advance the state of the art within the organization's portfolio of products.
Sales Execution/Pricing: The vendor's capabilities in all presales activities and the structure that supports them. This includes deal management, pricing and negotiation, presales support, and the overall effectiveness of the sales channel.
Market Responsiveness/Record: Ability to respond, change direction, be flexible and achieve competitive success as opportunities develop, competitors act, customer needs evolve and market dynamics change. This criterion also considers the vendor's history of responsiveness.
Marketing Execution: The clarity, quality, creativity and efficacy of programs designed to deliver the organization's message to influence the market, promote the brand and business, increase awareness of the products, and establish a positive identification with the product/brand and organization in the minds of buyers. This "mind share" can be driven by a combination of publicity, promotional initiatives, thought leadership, word of mouth and sales activities.
Customer Experience: Relationships, products and services/programs that enable clients to be successful with the products evaluated. Specifically, this includes the ways customers receive technical support or account support. This can also include ancillary tools, customer support programs (and the quality thereof), availability of user groups, service-level agreements and so on.
Operations: The ability of the organization to meet its goals and commitments. Factors include the quality of the organizational structure, including skills, experiences, programs, systems and other vehicles that enable the organization to operate effectively and efficiently on an ongoing basis.
Completeness of Vision
Market Understanding: Ability of the vendor to understand buyers' wants and needs and to translate those into products and services. Vendors that show the highest degree of vision listen to and understand buyers' wants and needs, and can shape or enhance those with their added vision.
Marketing Strategy: A clear, differentiated set of messages consistently communicated throughout the organization and externalized through the website, advertising, customer programs and positioning statements.
Sales Strategy: The strategy for selling products that uses the appropriate network of direct and indirect sales, marketing, service, and communication affiliates that extend the scope and depth of market reach, skills, expertise, technologies, services and the customer base.
Offering (Product) Strategy: The vendor's approach to product development and delivery that emphasizes differentiation, functionality, methodology and feature sets as they map to current and future requirements.
Business Model: The soundness and logic of the vendor's underlying business proposition.
Vertical/Industry Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of individual market segments, including vertical markets.
Innovation: Direct, related, complementary and synergistic layouts of resources, expertise or capital for investment, consolidation, defensive or pre-emptive purposes.
Geographic Strategy: The vendor's strategy to direct resources, skills and offerings to meet the specific needs of geographies outside the "home" or native geography, either directly or through partners, channels and subsidiaries as appropriate for that geography and market.