FAQ Home / Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Recognition
Peer Insights Customers’ Choice Recognition
Updated 4 February 2019
How will vendors be chosen for the distinctions?
What will you do to recognize vendors?
Which markets will you recognize?
Does this replace the Magic Quadrant (MQ) view of a market?
Will recipients always be leaders in the associated MQ?
Will other vendors who received Customers’ Choice distinctions be recognized at Gartner events?
Why are you excluding reviews from companies that are less than 50M USD in annual revenue?
Will the methodology change from year to year?
For how long is the distinction current?
Can I see my status for eligibility towards Customers’ Choice in a specific market?
Are you compromising the Gartner brand by tying it to a distinction?
Gartner Peer Insights is a robust enterprise IT product and service review platform that hosts more than 180,000 verified customer reviews across 320 defined markets. In markets where there is enough data, Gartner Peer Insights recognizes the vendors that are the most highly rated by their customers through the Customers’ Choice distinction. This peer-rated distinction can be a useful complement to expert opinion, as it focuses on direct peer experiences of implementing and operating a solution.
To qualify for the Customers’ Choice distinction, vendors must have a product that is aligned to the market, have their overall rating (out of 5 stars) equal or higher than the mean rating for that market, and have equal or higher than median Product Adoption Review Coverage (PARC) in the same market as defined below. You can view the full description on the Methodologies page.
Note: Customers’ Choice distinctions that will be announced in May 2019 and beyond will be determined based on Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice methodology 1.4.1.
We will announce the vendors online on the Gartner Peer Insights platform. We also encourage vendors to drive awareness of their achievement through various marketing channels. We will provide digital marketing collateral and templates to help with these efforts. Vendors who are Customers’ Choice will also be included in the Customers’ Choice Zone of Figure 1 in the corresponding Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer document.
We plan to recognize Customers’ Choice vendors in these markets.
No, Gartner Peer Insights complements Magic Quadrant & Critical Capabilities reports by offering perspectives solely about what a vendor’s customers think of its products. Based on end-user feedback, our clients value having a holistic view of Gartner expert opinion and end-user perspective when evaluating vendors and their products in a market.
Not necessarily. As mentioned above, the Customers’ Choice distinction represents a customer view of the highest-rated vendors in a market based on volume of reviews and overall ratings. It is complementary to an analyst’s broader perspective.
Back to Top
How will this data be used in the MQ? Will receiving the distinction put us in the Leaders’ quadrant
The raw data from Peer Insights reviews is made available to our analysts, but it is only one factor among many that they consider when creating an MQ.
Back to Top
Will other vendors who received Customers’ Choice distinctions be recognized at Gartner events?
We are committed to recognizing vendors whose customers love their solutions. While we think our events are a good way to do this, we also don’t want to be constrained by our event calendar. All future Customers’ Choice distinctions will be announced online in the Gartner Peer Insights platform.
Back to Top
How will you eliminate vendors/products that don’t belong to a given market? Will only vendors in the Magic Quadrant be recognized?
A dedicated Peer Insights content team evaluates whether a technology provider’s products and/or services align with the Peer Insights markets based on a series of market guidelines defined by Research. The Peer Insights markets are periodically reviewed throughout the year to ensure alignment is maintained.
Back to Top
Are reviews for products that are no longer sold included in the distinction analysis? What about reviews for products that are in beta test?
Reviews for products that are in production / general availability, along with beta products are included in the analysis of this distinction. Reviews for legacy products (that are no longer sold by the vendor) were not included in the analysis in this distinction.
Back to Top
Why are you excluding reviews from companies that are less than 50M USD in annual revenue?
Gartner Peer Insights was developed with the global enterprise customer in mind. We define enterprise customers whose company sizes are greater than 50M USD in annual revenue.
Our goal is to be analytically sound and transparent. To meet these goals, we expect our methodology will evolve over time as we learn from the process. We are committed to being completely transparent about our criteria for this distinction. View historical list of all methodologies.
Customers’ Choice distinctions are made annually starting May 2019. Our schedule for the announcement is determined based on the publish date of the corresponding MQ/MG and is subject to change based on the research calendar at the discretion of the Peer Insights team in conjunction with Research. As we receive higher volumes of reviews in a market, we may increase the frequency of consideration. We will do so if the volume of data supports more frequent synthesis, and we hear from end users that this would be helpful to their buying process.
Back to Top
Right now the reviews come sourced by Gartner as well as from vendors’ sourcing links. Aren’t vendor-sourced reviews inherently biased because vendors select their best clients and offer them incentives to write reviews?
Our interviews with reviewers suggest that most of them are motivated by a desire to give back to the broader IT community. We’ve decided to include honest vendor-incentivized reviews as part of the relevant data set used to determine the distinctions. Our vetting process for reviews is extensive (see our FAQs here for a summary), and we investigate any anomalies to ensure that users can trust the reviews in Gartner Peer Insights. Our vetting process for reviews is extensive (see our FAQs for a summary), and we investigate any anomalies to ensure that users can trust the reviews in Gartner Peer Insights.
When a specific Peer Insights market is about 2 months out from a Customers’ Choice announcement, the vendors Technology Provider Tool will update the Dashboard view to show eligibility towards the Customers’ Choice in that market. This information is dynamic, updating once daily at midnight EST. Please note, the counts shown in the Dashboard are not final and may change after sourcing periods close as part of our moderation and auditing process.
Note: Customers’ Choice distinctions that will be announced in May 2019 and beyond will be determined based on Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice methodology 1.4.1.
No, if anything, we expect to reinforce our brand with this distinction among clients and non-clients alike. Our brand strives to provide trusted guidance to end users to improve decision making, and Peer Insights is the first Gartner offering that gives both clients and non-clients access to verified reviews to aid in software purchase decisions. Our goal is to have a transparent and analytical methodology, and we expect that this will reinforce the confidence and trust that people already have in the Gartner brand.
If you have any further questions, send us an email at PeerInsights@gartner.com and we will get back to you as soon as we can.