Like study-period before final exams, the days preceding the release of a new Groom Energy report can be wearying, filled with Dropbox editing, graphics tweaking, re-reading text for the fourth time and a little Red Bull. The period leading up to the release of our Enterprise Smart Grid Research Report was no different.
And as usual, the flurry of activity just afterwards required lots of patience, as we replayed our conclusions for industry consultants, Groom Energy customers and the press or calmed irritated vendors who we had positioned less dramatically than they had hoped.
It’s during this post-launch process that we always learn a ton: new customer anecdotes, challenging questions about how we came up with our views or market sizing and new vendors who we have yet to interview. And through these interactions we’re better able to assess (1) did people understand our conclusions, (2) did we characterize things correctly and (3) the report card question – did we missed anything important.
So, from our ESG launch these are our observations:
1. The ESG Management Framework was a hit.
Sometimes a single picture can convey a whole market – in this regard our graphic got an overwhelmingly positive response. New pieces will be added over time, but suffice it to say that a link to this image has been emailed to a lot of people in the last several weeks.
2. The term “energy management” will remain universally confusing.
We identified this confusion during our research, but even after we named “energy management” as a sub-category within the ESG framework, people we talked with continue to have a wide variety of opinions about its precise meaning and what it encompasses.
3. We missed some vendors.
While we interviewed over 50 and compiled and categorized a list of over 200, releasing a new report always brings out a whole new set of players – we’re now busy catching up. Apologies to those missed on the first go-around.
4. We need to develop more formal research on each ESG sub-category.
Although the ESG report was meant to frame the overall enterprise opportunity, its clear that each ESG sub-category can justify its own report (especially if you ask to the vendors in that sub-category). So we’re already in process with this project – and hoping this one requires a little less Red Bull 🙂