This summer, NelsonHall held its annual global team meeting in London, and for the first time we invited AR professionals to join us for part of the meeting. After a group lunch, we ran a dedicated AR session with our analysts, which I had the pleasure of facilitating (and if you know me, you know we ended on time!). John Willmott, NelsonHall CEO, kicked off the meeting with a summary of recent developments and an open invitation for our AR guests to provide feedback on our services and the relationship with NelsonHall.

Dave Lees, NelsonHall Analyst Specializing in End-User Interviewing, led a discussion about client references and shared some tips for making this process easier: as we know, this is often the most difficult part of the AR role. The group wanted to learn more about our Client Perspective Reports, so Mike Smart shared an example from a recent Payroll project. The group found the Client Perspective Reports to be a valuable thank you gift for their client references.  

Paul Connolly, NelsonHall Communications Director, led a discussion about promoting vendor placement in our NEAT evaluations. He shared tips on getting the most out of NEAT promotional rights. He also discussed the importance of educating key people in your organization who will have a hand in promoting the placement, so that you can realize maximum benefit from NEATs.

Guy Saunders, NelsonHall Client Services Director, spoke about NelsonHall’s influence. The group was interested in how our buyside contacts access our reports, and Guy shared how they can register on the NelsonHall site to receive free access to explore NEAT vendor evaluations. Guy also shared details about our buyer outreach. Finally, he talked about the strong webinar attendance we are seeing from vendors and buyside organizations alike.

I shared details about the NelsonHall AR Portal, which contains dedicated materials for AR professionals (including a project schedule). Since the meeting, lots of AR folks have arranged portal tours for their teams to make sure they are familiar with the resource, and I am always happy to run tours whenever needed.

We received a great deal of feedback and questions from AR professionals on the above topics, and we appreciated everyone taking time out of their day to join us in open discussions. Feedback from our AR guests suggests that they also valued the open dialog and the fact that we covered some of their key AR pain points. In addition, guests found it valuable to meet analysts they had not met previously, or who they don’t see very often in person.

We ended the day with drinks on the patio of the Lensbury hotel on the banks of the Thames, on what was a gloriously sunny afternoon.

We look forward to holding further AR sessions in future, with a get-together in New York next spring on the horizon. If you have any suggestions or questions… as ever, just ask.