Senior Manager, Analyst Relations - Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Position Title: Senior Manager, Analyst Relations - Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Company: Progress OpenEdge Division
Department: Corporate Communications
Working Location: Bedford, MA
Position Status: Full-Time Regular

Responsibilities:

Join the company that is creating infrastructure software for the next evolution in IT!! Become a member of the Progress Software team and ride the SOA wave!



Recently named in "The 12 companies that will matter the most in the upcoming year? by Intelligent Enterprise Magazine, Progress Software is on a quest to become the leading provider of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructure software. Haven't heard of SOA... just wait you will. SOA is a significant evolution in systems architecture principles focused on breaking down the barriers of communication between business applications in multiplatform environments.





The Industry Analyst Relations Manager, who reports to the Director of Corporate Communications, is responsible for creating and managing all aspects of the Industry Analyst Relations at Progress Software Corporation.
There are two primary areas:
? The first area involves managing those industry analysts that cover and watch Progress and ensuring Progress is mapped into all relevant Tier 1 Analyst vendor rating programs (i.e., Gartner Maqic Quadrants, Forrester Waves, etc) to promote a broad and integrated understanding of Progress?s corporate strategy and capabilities within the Industry Analyst community. These analyst relations programs will require significant collaboration and coordination with various product teams across the company.
? The second area of responsibility is a ?one-to-many? communication program that provides an ongoing stream of corporate information to the larger analyst community, including the development of a monthly corporate analyst newsletter, ongoing programmatic analyst outreach, the development of an analyst Portal, corporate news and quarterly earnings announcements. Responsibilities include managing company analyst relations policy, executive participation, managing analyst interactions, promoting analyst usage, acting as and developing spokespeople, and coordinating with product teams from around the company.

Specific Duties
? Create and implement analyst relations objectives, strategies and tactical campaigns working with appropriate product groups; coordinate and participate in press and analyst tours, briefings and interviews;
? Develop strong relations with industry analysts; develop and maintain an industry analyst outreach program in support of company news, product announcements, technology positioning, acquisitions, and other key company activities;
? Develop and implement analyst relations programs to influence key analysts regarding Progress?s overall strategy and how the various products both stand-alone and together complement each others? ability to deliver customer value;
? Develop and implement a ?one-to-many? communications plan, including leveraging content into multiple formats, soliciting topics and spokespeople, developing a rolling 12-month calendar and exploring alternative delivery methods and media, such as interest profiles, podcasts, blogs and RSS;
? Encourage the use of analysts in Progress events, strategy development, planning and message creation;
? Create and publish an analyst newsletter by soliciting content from various sources as well as writing articles;
? Coordinate all corporate briefings and ensure both a detailed Industry Analyst briefings schedule is captured and kept up-to-date, and the PR/AR/IR Calendar is maintained and kept up-to-date in coordination with EMEA and Asia Pacific marketing teams; Additionally, capture and update all analyst interaction database within the ?Vocus database? to provide a record of all analyst briefings and meetings and their subject matter;
? Proactively anticipate, Identify and articulate the key research issues that impact Progress;
? Coordinate with all product teams to ensure that a Progress Watch List and key tier 1 analysts responsible for vendor rating activities and surveys are being managed, coordinated and not overlooked;
? Working with IT, create an analyst portal, maintain website materials for analysts;
? Manage speaking opportunities;
? Coordinate industry conference shows and sponsorships; identify and recommend research analysts and their firms for subscription purposes to each constituency or stakeholder in the company;
? Manage and maintain contracts, agreements, payments, and purchase orders of all analyst subscriptions; Ensure key constituencies have appropriate levels of access to research and manage the list of people who have legitimate access to the research;
? Analyze and disseminate finished [analyst] research to all appropriate levels of the company and key constituencies ~ especially important or pertinent research that could have an impact on any specific product group; Develop a program that communicates tactical intelligence (technical feature comparisons, competitive strengths and weaknesses, competitor positioning, and analyst philosophies) to the sales force and marketing teams ~ ideally working with product marketing/portfolio and product planning groups; Contribute to the ?Alert? online newsletter with research updates and news;
? Ensure that the ?Rules for Analyst Relations Success? is well-communicated and fully exploited across the company;
? Coordinate and manage industry analyst firm ?drive-bys? and courtesy meetings, identify their ?true? agenda? and ensure the appropriate people are identified to meet with the analysts (per the ?Rules for Analyst Relations Success?);


Qualifications:
? Five years of business-to-business Industry Analyst Relations or Press Relations experience in corporate, business unit, or agency settings, or a combination in a high tech environment ? preferably, in the software market and specifically middleware, application infrastructure development and data infrastructure segments;
? Strong familiarity with analyst relations best practices, processes, and planning;
? Demonstratable experience working with key industry analyst firms for both inbound and outbound activities; Relationships with North American and International analysts are a plus;
? Experience in strategic communications planning, development, and execution, including project management is required. Ability to work autonomously with minimal guidance; and the flexibility to support a wide variety of internal clients;
? Proven ability to anticipate needs and initiate action independently; ability to analyze complex situations, recognize resources and make recommendations to accomplish objectives and resolve issues;
? Strong relationship-building and interpersonal skills; excellent verbal and written communications skills, including public speaking; experience working with top Senior Executives is essential combined with the ability to inspire a virtual team to achieve dramatic results;
? Bachelors Degree is required. Major in Journalism, Communications, or Marketing a distinct advantage;
? Superior writing and editing skills are essential coupled with significant amount of previous writing experience;
? Advanced skills in the use of MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, MS Word, with strong computer literacy.
? Ability to travel.



About Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation is a $500 million+ global leader in application, service and data infrastructure software. Progress has pioneered many recent innovations including the invention of the enterprise service bus with its Sonic ESB(R) product, and the commercial application of event-stream processing with its Apama(R) ESP platform. Progress' broad software portfolio also includes the Progress(R) OpenEdge(R) business application platform, Actional(R) SOA and Web service management, EasyAsk(R) natural language search and query and an unparalleled range of data connectivity and mainframe integration with its DataDirect Technologies(TM) portfolio. For more information about Progress Software, visit www.progress.com






Required Experience: 6-8 years
Required Education: Bachelors Degree
Travel Required: True
Travel Percentage: 20%

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