NEW YORK—Edelman has forged a partnership with The Knowledge Capital Group, a leading industry analyst relations strategy consultancy, integrating the industry analyst relations practices of the two firms.  The integrated practice will offer influencer benchmarking and measurement tools to allow companies to track the effectiveness of their industry analyst relations programs.

The service offering is designed to turn industry analyst relations “into a proactive program with targets, measurements, task lists, and an execution calendar,” says Edelman. The service will allow companies to integrate their contract negotiations, messaging, and briefing tours into a single, measurable plan. Companies will thus be able to better focus their money and time into outreach that more effectively positions a company and sells its products.

“As IT budgets and the margins for IT buying error shrink, industry analysts have grown in importance in the decision making process on the buyers’ side,” says KCG’s chief executive William  Hopkins. “This means that technology companies must increase their focus on creating a strategic, proactive and bottom line oriented industry analyst relations program.

“Our experience with hundreds of client companies of all sizes, combined with our industry leading analyst profile database, our relationships with the major analyst firms and our proven methodology will guarantee our joint clients the most cost effective analyst relations programs possible.”

KCG has expertise in telecommunications, enterprise software, hardware and networking and has worked with clients including AT&T Wireless; Cisco; Hewlett Packard; IBM; Microsoft; Motorola; New York Times, Nortel; Oracle; Peoplesoft; Sprint; Trilogy; Verizon and Vignette.

“Edelman’s focus is on an integrated, research-based approach to industry analyst relations that has become increasingly important in this competitive technology environment,” says Ephraim Cohen, a member of Edelman’s technology steering committee. “KCG’s ability to provide industry insight benchmarking tools fit perfectly with our approach to measurable outreach programs that help technology vendors win business.”

Edelman and KCG will be offering a series of seminars to introduce the new service.