Today we’d like to introduce you to Marc Beattie.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Marc. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I was an early member of Polycom, a high tech communications company in San Jose, CA, and as head of business development, I always needed third-party market sizing and forecasts for new initiatives. Gartner, Frost & Sullivan, and a few other analyst firms were tracking our market and had this data, but I always found the studies expensive and often lacking in accuracy and real insight. A lot of the reason was that these firms covered hundreds of products, services, and vendors – they were generalists marketing themselves as specialists. After I left Polycom, I spent a year figuring out what I wanted to do next where I could provide some real value. My first job out of college was as an analyst and it was one of the roles I kept gravitating back to. At the time, enterprise communications began going through a huge transformation – from analog to digital, and from standalone to integrated services – what we now refer to as unified communications, e.g. Microsoft Skype for Business, Cisco WebEx, Google Hangouts Meet.
Wainhouse was formed from the idea that we could be specialists who provided 360 degree coverage of unified communications and collaboration with greater depth and accuracy. Eventually, I sought out an independent industry consultant and analyst, whose reports I had read while at Polycom. On our first call, I asked where he was and he said California. I was disappointed as I had just moved back to Boston from California and didn’t want to start a new business based on a long distance relationship. Then he said, “I’ll be back in Boston next week”. Back in Boston? He was being literal – just like an analyst – while on the phone he was physically in California, but lived in Boston. We made plans to meet and quickly thereafter formed Wainhouse. Today, we are 8 full-time analysts with a staff of 15 and enjoy client relationships with the largest technology companies around the world, helping them with their strategy and delivering deep insight for their most critical decisions.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has been a fairly smooth road. We have been blessed with great clients, and a deeply committed staff to serve them. We have the traditional challenges that any successful organization has – big clients often require complicated and long master service agreements that require 3-6 months to negotiate and finalize. Every client outside the US takes longer to pay – Western European clients take 60-90 days, Asia Pacific clients often 90-180 days. It is also very hard to qualify new analyst talent before working with them – so we are very slow and methodical in hiring new talent. Finally, like most analysts firms, our team works virtually, and this makes it hard to hire younger talent who often require a community of peers and benefit from mentoring and modeling from more experienced talent in-person.
Please tell us about Wainhouse Research.
We are expert analysts and consultants in the field of unified communications and collaboration. This means enterprise voice and team collaboration – voice & video conferencing, persistent messaging, streaming & webcasting, and associated applications such as Learning, Talent & Education. Typically we provide insight and advice to strategy and product management at service providers and their technology partners, assist private equity firms in due diligence, transformation, and portfolio company strategy, and provide assessment and roadmaps to IT management at enterprises.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
I always enjoyed building something. As a child, I would build elaborate towns and cities outside in the dirt.
Contact Info:
- Address: 34 Duckhill Terrace, Duxbury, MA 02332
- Website: www.wainhouse.com
- Phone: 7813126015
- Email: mbeattie@wainhouse.com
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