FAQs for Peer Insights Customer Choice Awards (Archived)
Customer Choice methodology has been updated. To read updated FAQs for Customers’ Choice distinctions, click here. For more information about the current Customer Choice Distinction methodology, click here.
Why is Gartner doing this?
Since the launch of Peer Insights in October 2015, we’ve published over 30,000 verified reviews from customers. In a handful of markets, we have gathered enough customer reviews to provide a way to recognize vendors that are highly rated by their customers, as a complement to our analyst-driven research (in the Magic Quadrant and Critical Capabilities).
How will winners be chosen?
The Customer Choice Awards are a ranking of vendors in a given market that take into account both the number of reviews and the overall user rating. All vendors with an overall review score of 4 stars or higher and that qualify according to the methodology will receive an award; the top 3 vendors will be awarded a Gold, Silver or Bronze medal, respectively, and any others will receive an Honorable Mention award. In addition, we’ve added some criteria to ensure that the vendors chosen are representative of the Peer Insights end-user base. We’ve also decided to completely exclude vendor-incentivized reviews from the relevant data set used to determine the award winners. We remain committed to being completely transparent about our award criteria – you can view the full description on the Methodologies page.
What will you do to recognize award winners?
We think it’s a tremendous accomplishment when your customers love your solutions. We will announce the winners online in the Peer Insights platform, accompanied with press releases for each market. For select markets, we may present the awards in a ceremony at the relevant Gartner Events. We will also provide digital marketing collateral to help award winners drive awareness of their achievement.
Which markets will have awards?
We are developing the first of the 2017 Customer Choice Awards in the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) market on June 12th 2017. The next set of Customer Choice Awards will be announced during the week of September 25th in 3 categories: BI and Analytics Platforms, Enterprise Architecture Tools, and Endpoint Protection Platforms. Over the coming months we will continue to roll out awards in markets where we have sufficient review volume and sufficient interest.
Does this replace the Magic Quadrant (MQ) view of a market?
No, the expert-driven methodologies embodied in our Magic Quadrants and Critical Capabilities represent the gold standard which our clients have been using to help select vendors for years. The Peer Insights view complements that perspective by overlaying solely what a vendor’s customers think of its products. We think this is a useful lens to compare vendors that is additive to our clients, and especially helpful for non-client end users.
Will award recipients always be leaders in the associated MQ?
Not necessarily. As mentioned above, the Customer Choice Award represents the customers’ view of the highest-rated vendors in a market. It is complementary with an analyst’s broader perspective.
How will this data be used in the MQ? Will winning an award put us in the leaders’ quadrant?
The raw data from Peer Insights is made available to our analysts but it is only one factor among many that they consider when creating an MQ.
Will other Customer Choice Awards always be given 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 physical event timings. All awards will be announced online in the Peer Insights platform, but for select markets we may present the physical awards at relevant Gartner events.
How will you eliminate vendors / products that don’t belong to a given market? Will only vendors in the Magic Quadrant be allowed to win the award?
Vendors and their products do not have to be present in the relevant Magic Quadrant / Critical Capability to be considered for an award. However, Gartner does move mis-labeled reviews (that is, when an end user has indicated the product they are reviewing belongs in a market to which Gartner Research has determined it does not belong) to their “rightful homes”. All vendors that our Research team has determined have a solution that belongs in the market will be eligible for an award. We will validate that all products “belong” in the market in which they were reviewed prior to the Award date.
Will the methodology change from Award to Award?
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 award criteria – you can view the full description here.
How long is the award for?
The first award is annual– i.e., a year. As we get higher volumes of reviews in a market, we may increase the frequency of consideration for the awards. As indicated earlier, we will only increase frequency if the volume of data supports this kind of more frequent synthesis and we hear from our end users that this would be helpful to their buying process.
Right now the reviews come both directly from Gartner as well as from vendors’ sourcing links. Aren’t vendor-sourced reviews inherently biased as vendors cherry pick their best clients and offer them incentives to write reviews?
We know from many years of conducting MQ reference surveys that it’s hard for vendors to control what even a handful of their customers say, let alone 50+ 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 completely exclude vendor-incentivized reviews from the relevant data set used to determine the award winners. 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 Peer Insights.
Are you compromising the Gartner brand by tying it to an award?
No, if anything we expect to reinforce our brand with this award, with clients and non-clients alike. Our brand strives to provide trusted guidance to end users to improve decision making, and Peer Insights is our first offering that gives clients and non-clients alike 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 our brand.
What if I have more questions?
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.
For Vendor Guidelines on how to use Gartner Peer Insights Customer Choice logo and quote policy please click here.