Simplify Your Vendor Evaluation: A Guide To The ABM New Wave Report

June 12, 2020 | Blog, Resources

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It’s been two years since Forrester first evaluated the account-based marketing (ABM) platform market and much has changed. The recently published report, The Forrester New Wave™: ABM Platforms, Q2 2020, shows an increasing consensus on solution focus and scope.

As a participant in both the current and previous Forrester ABM New Wave Report, we can appreciate the sheer volume of work for both vendors and analysts alike. Honored by the recognition as a Leader in the 2020 report, we’re always excited to participate in this research. This year is no different. A big thanks to Steve Casey and his team at Forrester.

Before diving into the research, it’s important to decipher which elements of this report MRP believes are actionable for you.

To start that journey, it’s critical to appreciate the point that there are no winners and losers. Predictably, as each report is issued, some vendors are excited and happy, others are shocked and disappointed, and more interesting are the ones who fall between that range, they’re shocked by their placement but happy. There are headscratchers at times.

Examine the highs and the lows – When a vendor participates, they believe that their solution matches the needs of the analysis, the criteria for which are shared in advance by the analyst. However, that’s not always true and, if incorrect, will result in low scores. Even then, the low score doesn’t necessarily indicate that they’re a terrible company; it may merely mean that they didn’t relate as closely to the topic and evaluative criteria as they first thought. Point solutions tend to fall into this category, especially in evaluation of “platforms,” where the vendors whose solutions do the most score the highest. Contrasting that, sometimes vendors who are directly positioned in the context of the report score interestingly low or high, or their ratings change significantly between reports – which can be based on changes in the criteria between reports or changes in the functionality provided by the vendor during the time between reports (which was two years for the ABM platform evaluations we are discussing). The latter point, changes in ratings, interest me the most and should raise your eyebrows.

Now the most significant point of all, no Wave Report captures the needs of every marketer. They’re scored to reflect a picture in the analyst’s mind, typically the needs of a B2B marketer in the “sweet spot” of the market, in this case, a mid-market-to-enterprise organization.  If that’s who you are, then great, no translation necessary for you. However, your needs are not directly reflected in the segment placement if you’re a larger company. In this case, it would be best if you read the “Forrester Take” section for each vendor.

A “Leader” placement for the MRP Prelytix platform is an honor. That said, critical defining capabilities of the platform, the elements that best fit our “enterprise-class” sales and marketing audience, are primarily represented in our “Forrester Take” section.

MRP believes we are an innovator and offer the only enterprise-class, predictive ABM solution. MRP Prelytix is purpose-built to simplify the complexity of our client operating environment. Our clients aren’t merely trying to drive website visits and deliver media impressions. They already have a half-dozen or more channels they use to deliver millions of messages per month. Their reality is already multichannel, MRP Prelytix helps them to coordinate and control their marketing based upon account-level insights, and to drive measurable revenue impact across channels, teams, product lines, geographies, and languages.

In the Forrester Take section about MRP in their report, Forrester found that:

  • MRP ”best suits large enterprises with varied solutions and marketing resource models.”
  • “MRP offers the most native and integrated engagement channels of any vendor in this evaluation.”
  • MRP “leads with a comprehensive range of native functionality and managed services.”
  • “MRP can support mature omnichannel ABM programs that multiple departments, business units, or partners execute through multitenant deployments of its platform and complementary managed services.”

We believe this ABM New Wave report not only places MRP as a Leader in ABM but also validates our market expertise, the enterprise-class sales, and marketing organization. Thank you!

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