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Elena Hutchison
Executive Vice President, Strategy and Product Marketing at Medallia
Elena Hutchison is an accomplished professional with diverse experience in the technology sector focusing on strategy, product marketing, and analyst relations.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and Psychology from Claremont McKenna College and has pursued advanced studies in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland College Park.
Elena currently serves as the Executive Vice President, Strategy and Product Marketing at Medallia, a prominent customer experience management company.
Her previous roles at Medallia include Senior Vice President for Solutions Consulting, Product Marketing, and Analyst Relations, Global VP for Solutions Consulting and Analyst Relations, Global Head of Analyst Relations, Area Vice President for Solutions Consulting (Sales Engineering), Director of Solutions Consulting for Southeast & LATAM, and Sales Engineer.
Before her tenure at Medallia, Elena Hutchison worked as a Customer Success Manager and Research Analyst at Confirmit, gaining valuable insights and experience in customer-centric roles.
Elena's educational background, coupled with her extensive professional experience, positions her as a seasoned expert in strategy development, product marketing, and enhancing customer experiences in the tech industry.
Highlights
🚨 Today Forrester released an update to their Wave methodology with some significant changes. Here’s everything you need to know:
Goodbye to “Challenger” - With this update Forrester will eliminate the “Challenger category - vendors will be ranked Contender, Strong Performer, or Leader only. Forrester says in their vendor guide that Challengers has generally been fewer than 10% of vendors and they expect these to be redistributed into the Leaders and Contenders bands, with Strong Performer staying roughly the same. ↗ My take: it has been interesting to watch how many no-Leader waves have been published this year, and I have heard from several sources this has been a source of frustration to Analysts - hopefully the new methodology will help address this.
Forrester gets even more Startup Friendly - Market Presence goes away in the new version - all vendors will be represented as the same dot size, but those with especially strong Customer Feedback will earn a single or double halo highlight emphasizing their customer feedback strength. ↗ My take: Forrester’s Wave methodology was already the more startup friendly of the big two, but removing Market Presence in favor of customer feedback makes these evaluations even more open to new companies performing well.
A New Leader in Reference Quality - Along with this, Forrester will make live customer interviews standard, and do away with survey reference feedback. ↗ My take: The decision to do away with survey reference data collection is a great one - that methodology left a ton of reference nuance on the table, not to mention creating security risks for participating vendors. Reference richness will now be a significant differentiator versus the Gartner Magic Quadrant, which uses the easily-gamed Gartner Peer Insights for MQ reference data.
A New Writeup Format - Based on the example provided, new Vendor Profiles will start with a sentence of the company’s offering in the space, plus a sentence of its recent innovations and news. The body of the writeup will include paragraphs dedicated to “Strategy Analysis,” “Capabilities Analysis” and “Customer Feedback”. Write-ups will end with a sentence of “Forrester’s Take” - typically who in the market the company is a good fit for. ↗ My take: Time to go update the Mad-lib exercise I use to kick off every wave!
A New Interactive Experience - Forrester Clients will now have a “find a vendor offering” wizard that allows them to create their own shortlists based on the underlying wave data and their needs. ↗ My take: Forrester has long said publicly that they believe buyers use their macro-enabled spreadsheets to customize the reports to their own needs and “create their own graphics.” Vendors have long known that the released graphic is the only graphic that matters. Making the customizable version more accessible is great, but it’s still gated. This change seems the least consequential to me.
—- Big AR news day!
What do you all think?
