Earnings Labs

Forrester Research, Inc. (FORR)

Q3 2012 Earnings Call· Thu, Oct 25, 2012

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. Thank you for joining today’s call. With me today are George Colony, Forrester’s Chairman of the Board and CEO; Kelley Hippler, acting Chief Sales Officer; and Mike Doyle, Forrester’s Chief Financial Officer. George will open the call. Mike will follow George to discuss our financials. We‘ll then open the call to Q&A. A replay of this call will be available until November 22, 2012 and can be accessed by dialing 1 (888) 843-7419 or internationally at 1(630) 652-3042. Please reference the passcode 5077393#. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that this call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as expects, believes, anticipates, intend, plans, estimates, or similar expressions are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are based on the company’s current plans and expectations and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause future activities and results of operations to be materially different from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Some of the important factors that could cause actual results to differ are discussed in our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. I’ll now hand the call over to George Colony.

George Colony

Management

Thank you for joining the call. Before Mike gives his overview, I would like to update you on the state of Forrester’s business through the third quarter. As I referenced on the first and second quarter calls, we are moving the company through series of transitions in leadership, in sales, in the ways that we deliver research to clients, in technology and in the ways that we operate globally. While these moves are resulting in short term disruptions in the business, I believe that they will put the company in the best position for long-term growth. Now it is customary for me to use the quarterly conference call to update you on our 3 business imperatives; for this call I’m going to depart from my typical outline and instead give you details on the transitions I’ve mentioned above. I’d like to start by talking on leadership transitions at the company. As you know, I’ve added 3 strong executives over the last year, Steve Peltzman as Chief Business Technology Officer; Ellen Daley as the Head of the Business Technology Client Group; and Tom Pohlmann as Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer. While Steve joined us from the outside, Ellen and Tom have 20 years of Forrester experience between them. These executives have brought change, progress and renewed energy through our efforts. Two weeks ago, we announced that Mike Morhardt will be joining the company as Chief Sales Officer, and his start date is November 12. Mike has spent his career selling research services including 14 years at Gartner Group. As we scale our sales team from 450 to 1,000 we believe that Mike’s experience, process focus and leadership make him the right person to navigate that voyage. The goal is to build a world class sales organization at Forrester, and we have…

Michael Doyle

Management

Thank you, George. I will now begin my review of financial performance for Forrester’s third quarter results, the balance sheet at September 30, our third quarter metrics and the outlook for the fourth quarter of 2012. Please note that the income statement numbers I am reporting are pro-forma and exclude the following items, amortization of intangibles, stock-based compensation expense, duplicate lease costs, reorganization costs, acquisition and integration costs and net gains from investments. Also for 2012, we utilized an effective tax rate of 39% for pro forma purposes. The actual effective tax rate for the first 3 quarters of 2012 is approximately 13%, as we recognized a $5.5 million deferred tax benefit this quarter based on the settlement of a tax audit at one of our foreign subsidiaries. For the third quarter, Forrester met revenue guidance and exceeded its quarterly guidance for both pro forma operating margin and earnings per share. Our key customer retention metrics continue to perform at healthy levels and our balance sheet remains strong with cash and marketable securities increasing 5% from December 31, 2011. As George mentioned in his comments, we have embarked on a number of initiatives and organizational changes designed to improve efficiencies, accelerate growth and better serve our clients. We reorganized our sales force to better align sales efforts with client buying behavior. We reorganized our client group structure to remove complexity from the buying process and increase client engagement. We pivoted our research products to net key client initiatives and issues in the form of Playbooks and we’ve made deep investments in technology, both customer-facing through our new website and internal, through our new CRM systems. We believe that these changes will result in long-term productivity gains across the business and will improve client engagement and satisfaction, translating in business results…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Timothy McHugh from William Blair & Company.

Timothy McHugh

Analyst

First, I want to ask about the weakness in the consulting business. I was just trying to understand your comments, it sounded like the volume of business book was up, but you just couldn’t deliver on that. So I’m trying to understand if the volume was up, how much of the impact or least of the booked business was macro-related versus how much was related to some of the challenge with the research analysts being busy working on Playbook and things like that?

Michael Doyle

Management

Tim, it’s Mike. Yes, I would say that it’s primarily, I think the challenges are a couple of places, one would be our analyst headcount is below where we had targeted, right. So we’ve had analyst attrition that both analysts and sales attrition began to subside in Q3, but from a planned headcount standpoint, we’re still below where we expected to be. So literally a capacity deliver is a little constrained. Then through our existing analysts, I think that they’re incredibly busy, but they’re being pulled with Playbooks and that’s stretching their time a bit. So that’s certainly impacting. We are seeing some macro -- I would say primarily in Europe that’s affecting us, and that seems to be the case both in consulting and in our normal syndicated businesses. So more the macro I would say outside the U.S. but within the U.S. I think it’s more primarily a combination of existing analysts’ productivity due to Playbooks and just the sheer numbers of analysts being lower than what we had targeted.

Timothy McHugh

Analyst

Is the macro environment worse than it was, say 3 to 6 months ago or is it kind of more the same of what you’ve seen?

Michael Doyle

Management

In Europe, I would say it’s just more of the same. I think it has been a soft environment all year. And it has been difficult, I think it’s been a difficult environment to sell over there.

George Colony

Management

We’ve not observed a change in the domestic market -- in the U.S. domestic market, despite all of this earnings mess that are coming out right now from companies but we did not observe any major change. Do you have any comments here, Kelley?

Kelley Hippler

Analyst

No, I would second that, George.

Timothy McHugh

Analyst

Okay. And as we think to your comment towards next year, the margins specifically I guess I was going to ask about. Was that a full year comment or was that more related to the first part of the year? Just kind of curious and then I’m assuming the big issue is if revenue is not up but you are going to accelerate sales force growth, that, that is going to depress the margins. But any more color on kind of what you are talking about?

Michael Doyle

Management

The comments were relative to the full year. I think what will happen as you think about the way the model went up working, Tim, is that, I think that revenue will build as the year progresses. Because what is happening now is we are hiring salespeople, we are getting them back in and they are going to ramp. And then figure 6-plus months to ramp, so they will start booking business. That revenue, we’ll start to see, but you are going to start to see it beginning really in Q2 and then rolling out. It will continue through our hiring [ph] process. So revenue will grow relative to prior year over time. But I think for the full year it is going to be a single digit number. So that would suggest obviously first half softer than second half and we will continue to invest in the sales force. So what’s going to happen is, you are going to have headcount continuing to be added as we build out the business. And honestly this was not where we expected to be in the model, I think we expected this year to be the rebuild year and that next year we would lever up. I think the thing that hurt us is the high levels of attrition. So what’s happening is we’re having to hire a lot more and later than we ever anticipated and therefore it’s impacting up our ‘13 numbers, which is why I’ve said that I think success process is going to be looking at balance sheet numbers like deferred revenues, a steady growing headcounts on the sales front and the analyst front and that to me is going to signal that we’re doing absolutely all the right things. And you’ll see the revenue and the P&L progress in a meaningful way as the year progresses, and we’ll obviously going more detail in February, but I wanted to, if nothing else, shade the conversation so you get some senses how we’re thinking about next year.

Timothy McHugh

Analyst

Okay great. And my last question which is the repurchase authorization, can you talk about how aggressive you plan to be on that and within that context, the limitations, I guess that the trading volume puts on you. I mean can you, just buying day-to-day in the market, can you buy $100 million of stock in the next year, and I guess is that the intention?

Michael Doyle

Management

Yes, I mean I think, first of all, yes it is our intention, absent as I said material change, material can beat things like a great acquisition comes along and we decided that should preempt and would be a better investment than even buying back shares, that certainly would be one, if we believe float [ph] becomes materially smaller than we would obviously have to rethink it. What our feeling is Tim is that we’re going to be out there, we will be buying in the regular market, but we also have the ability to buy blocks, and we’ll be looking for block activity, if there are folks who want to rotate out, we certainly want to be there to absorb it, we believe our shares are undervalued, but we understand there might be some shareholders who aren’t going to be patient, and I think it’s the Board’s feeling that at this pricing level, this is -- it’s a great buy. And so we will be ready to buy in block. To some degree, if we can’t buy all of it, that’s a good sign. I mean people are holding on to their shares, and they believe in the long term piece of the business, and frankly I’d take that probably as a positive. And then, we will look to actively deploy that cash in other ways perhaps to reward shareholder value so. And as the year progresses well, and as the quarter progress, we will be updating you on the activity. Obviously be visible in the balance sheet. You will be able to see what we can buy, and we’ll try on a very timely basis to keep you folks abreast of everything we are doing.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Dan Leben from Robert W. Baird & Co.

Daniel Leben

Analyst

George, could you talk a little bit more about the comp plan changes that you talked about making and kind of what changed in the quarter. Help us understand both the impact to the expense base, but also how you were able to help stem the tide on the attrition.

George Colony

Management

I’m going to actually pass the answer over to Mike. He is very close to this.

Michael Doyle

Management

Yes, Dan, I’m going to give you my take on the specifics then I think Kelley can give you some color particularly in terms of how they have been received by the sales organization. So I think that to the points George made early, we took an approach on comp in the beginning of the year that I think conceptually was -- head us in the right direction. This concept of base versus growth and rewarding growth more than base, but some of the -- I would say material changes we made, particularly more recently, get around to when do we begin rewarding reps. Do we reward beginning on dollar one, that’s not how we started the year. So we looked at that. And I think the plan we rolled out also was too complex. It had a series of linkages in it that we unbundled and made simpler. And I think the result is, and the feedback we are getting from reps is that these are meaningful changes, it’s -- I better understand how I make my money, there’s a clear path to reward and when it’s simpler and easier to that, we think it's going to drive business. So we got simpler, we focus more on dollar one, we still have leverage on growth. You still make more money, if you sell more syndicated, the basic core concepts are in place, but I think we took away some of the complexity, and I think it made it easier for reps to see how they make money, and find a way to reward sooner. So that's sort of the overview, I let Kelley talk to the color in terms of how it’s being received, because we’ve made a number of changes Q2, Q3, but the meaningful ones in Q4 as well.

Kelley Hippler

Analyst

Sure. So Dan, this is Kelley and to Mike’s point, I think that the sales force understands and is in line with the philosophy that was rolled out earlier this year, where we want to be driving a sales compensation plan that incents growth. And I think that the additional improvements that have been made over the course of the last quarter have been very well received, is certainly a contributing factor to the decline that we've seen in attrition and to help motivate us in the fourth quarter and beyond.

Daniel Leben

Analyst

Is there any kind of net change in the overall sales expense from the changes or how should we think about that?

Michael Doyle

Management

What was the question, Dan?

Daniel Leben

Analyst

So I'm just trying to get about the complaint changes, how is that going to show up in the financials in terms of the overall sales expense is that we see gotten more growth in that and lower growth levels or help me understand how that's going to play out on macro basis?

Michael Doyle

Management

Yes, a fair question. Yes, there is a little bit more cost associated with it, I don't think it's meaningful, it actually falls within what we would have deemed to be our targeted ranges. So I don't think that the dollars are meaningful. I mean, as I look at the cost piece, where we really suffered from a cost standpoint was losing reps, because then we have to bring in folks and they have to ramp. So to me, this is a better trade-off. I think the changes in the comp plans net-net are going to result in lower cost, because attritions are going to come down. So I think the dollar trade-off is actually a pretty easy one and as I look at it, we don’t need much of an improvement in attrition to get a payback on these comp changes. So I’m very comfortable from a cost standpoint that these things are the right thing to do and actually are not going to adversely impact the overall P&L in any meaningful way.

Daniel Leben

Analyst

All right. and then just to follow-up on Tim’s question around the consulting side of the business. Are you at the point now where you are actually having to turn down some engagements, just because there is not the availability, are you able to book these and give them in backlog, and we’ll see in fourth quarter and more in 2013?

Michael Doyle

Management

Yes, I give you my view and Kelley can give hers. I’ve not heard of anything where we’re turning down engagements. I don’t think that’s an issue. I think that we can manage our way through this, and I’m comfortable that we’d be able to do that. But we’ve not turned down any engagements. Kelley you add...

Kelley Hippler

Analyst

No, none that I’m aware of.

George Colony

Management

The pool is large enough to support the revenue.

Daniel Leben

Analyst

Okay, great. And then last one just on the dividend if we do get meaningful tax law changes, any thoughts about what’s the right mix between your purchase dividend et cetera?

Michael Doyle

Management

Yes. I would say we did talk about at the Board Meeting, and I think clearly, we would -- the Board plans to look at where we sit obviously is we’ve declared a dividend for this quarter, and that would get paid out. And when the Board meets in February, they’ll have a decision to make about what we do with the dividend going forward. And I don’t think there’s a clear answer there, because one of the board members made the right observation that many companies have been paying dividends when dividend tax rates were a whole lot higher. So the question is, and a number of people hold our shares, half of that is probably in 401(k)s, so it’s -- we’ll have to evaluate that when we get to that point, Dan. Share repurchase activity at $100 million is a pretty big piece. So if we, just to give you a perspective, we paid a little under $10 million to date in dividends. If we were to modify that in any way, it doesn’t -- it’s not like it adds a huge pool of money back into the repurchase. So I think those become really 2 separate events, and that’s how I would think about them right now.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Brian Murphy from Sidoti & Company.

Brian Murphy

Analyst

I was hoping to get some color on conference attendance. I don’t know if you or how many events you had in October, but maybe give us some color on sort of actual attendance or forecasted attendance, what that looks like for 4Q events?

Michael Doyle

Management

We forecasted tenants; the events we have that are scheduled are little smaller for fourth quarter. So I don’t know if any appreciable difference there? In terms of event attendance to date, our events business, off a bit, but not significant, right. So it was definitely a delta for us during the course of this quarter, but I think it tends to be so mixed by event too, Brian. We have some events that continue to be incredibly popular and well attended and some that are little bit softer. So I don’t think there is any meaningful trend yet. I mean we typically look at that. I think George historically sort of labeled that, one of the canaries in the coal mine as you think about our business, but I don’t think the clear picture that is emerging there.

George Colony

Management

I would say not appreciably up, but not appreciably down, I was just at the Orlando event, which was 5 DT roles and that event was very well attended FLBs were, I think, at the highest point they’ve been at, as far as attendance goes. The CFP [ph] event I think I talked about on the Q2 call, was one of the largest event Porsche’s ever held. So I think it’s inclusive at this point. Not really down -- sort of in the middle.

Michael Doyle

Management

I would make a comment because we referenced it briefly. We are looking at our events business and that’s more of a strategic look, not an operational sort of fix it. Look, it’s really trying to take our events to the next level and that’s something that I think George has been pushing to say, how do we take events to sort of this next place. So more to come on that, but we plan to look at them in a more strategic way and think about taking them to a different place.

George Colony

Management

In the world of TENEX [ph] , in the world of TED, in the world of South by Southwest and the World Economic Forum, our forums, I think look a little bit long in the tooth and so Cliff Condon has taken over events over the last several months and we are going to be really changing the way we do them, what is on the stage, there is a -- there is a renewal events which I’d call kind of Phase III of events which will be undertaking next year. So we will improving the events as an experience for the clients.

Brian Murphy

Analyst

Okay, great. Also, Mike I know you changed the methodology on how you count clients, but that client count has been stuck in the 2,500 range for the past 5 years and I think in aggregate, the sales force is probably up 50% over that time. I mean on the historical numbers if you made the adjustments I’m guessing it would just be a single digit percentage modification. So I’m just wondering how to think of it -- does that say anything about the number of addressable clients for you guys and as you think about scaling the sales force from 450 to 1,000, I’m wondering what you think the client count looks like with the FAS in reps?

Michael Doyle

Management

It’s a really good questing, Brian. A couple of things. When we went to the new structure this year, we consciously said that other than the vendor world, we were no longer pursuing clients less than $500 million of revenue, so that’s a conscious shift. So by default, what we're trying to do is concentrate our efforts very much in larger companies and that is a smaller universe when it's all done, but the idea was to penetrate and grow within those companies. And so that's our by design piece, I think it’s fair to say and I let Kelley give some color, we have a lot of opportunities just within the clients that we have today. It’s not to say we aren’t still going to add a lot, we have a new business team, they’re out actually adding clients and with small companies, too, small vendors, is a natural level of churn that create some noise in client count, but there’s no question I think as we go forward, and we move to a 1,000 reps, it’s not -- I don’t think it’s a doubling of our clients, it’s really going to be a growth within the clients that we have in a meaningful way as well as adding more and Kelley I don’t know what’s your thoughts are, but you’re closer to it than I am.

Kelley Hippler

Analyst

Sure, absolutely so just to add to that, I do think that we’ve tried to refocus a lot of our energies into driving up the spend within some of the accounts that we have. That was a key driver behind the move to segments, and we do expect to get there over the fullness of time. We do have a new business team that is focused, to Mike’s point, on the net new logos of clients that are about $1 billion, which are in a specified target market that we have, but those tend to have longer sales cycle as we move forward. So that's a contributing factor to why the needle hasn’t moved much on the client count front, but we’ll continue to focus on both growing and spending our existing clients and bringing on more net new logos as we move forward.

George Colony

Management

It really a potential market, some of our larger competitors, their client had, as you know in the 10,000, 11,000 range so we have a lot of problems, but this is not one of them. There are many, many companies who are still to be clients of Forrester.

Brian Murphy

Analyst

Okay, great and Mike, with deferred revenue up, is it fair to say that bookings picked up a little bit in September quarter?

Michael Doyle

Management

No, I would say, no. I think they actually I think deferred revenue because it runs out a bit, I think syndicated bookings were okay. So I think consulting bookings, I think we are seeing a little bit of a lag there. So it was not, from our perspective, I will say, we weren’t happy with the quarter. Again we are not, I think, being down even in single digit land on deferred revenue is not great. So we are not super thrilled with the quarter. So we didn’t see an uptick quarter-over-quarter from Q2 to Q3. So...

Brian Murphy

Analyst

Okay and George, you referenced some pretty impressive metrics in terms of better engagement on Forrester.com and in terms of document downloads et cetera. Curious if you have if you’d seen any improvement in the metrics a little further down the funnel, maybe on the conversion side?

George Colony

Management

I would say that when we went very social and I talked about the social numbers are pretty impressive. We did that to -- ultimately to gain more clients, to create more leads. I would say that we are seeing some of that but not as much as we want to see. I think there is a linkage between our social content and our content behind the pay wall could be better. There is -- Tom Pohlmann, our new Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, is very focused here. He is actually just hired a #2, Jeff Ernst, who is a technical marketer who is spending lots of time on trying to understand exactly how we are getting hard conversion rates from social over to clients. So what I will say is lot of potential here, not as tapped as it will be in future.

Michael Doyle

Management

One comment I would make, Brian, just in general, I mean we -- this has been the year really of learning. I mean just as these sales folks have to master all roles, the analysts have to master all salespeople, in the old world, they sort of had a smaller subset of sales folks to work with, now they have a whole lot, so there’s a transition in terms of how we operate to George’s point, where we’ve made a number of improvements at the front end, where clients are coming in, and we’re working our way through to the back end to take that into something that’s very actionable, so once we get this process to really nailed down, it’s going to be interesting in a very good way in terms of what the potential is.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Vincent Colicchio from Noble Financial.

Vincent Colicchio

Analyst

Yes, George I’m curious, have you seen any competitive response to the introduction of Playbacks?

George Colony

Management

No.

Vincent Colicchio

Analyst

Okay, this one is for you Mike, did I hear you say that operating margin will decline next year or...

Michael Doyle

Management

Yes, I think that we get see some compression, I’m not going get into how much, Vince, so I mean I don’t -- again I don’t think it’s traumatic, because we haven’t finalized our plan, and we haven’t made a lot of final decisions, but I just look at just trying to give you a macro view of how we think about next year, and think about how revenue is going to roll out, and also looking that the sales investments we plan to make and analysts investments and some remaining technology investment. It’s my view that is potential the margin could compress a bit from where we are today in the near term, and then obviously expand it as we move out, and again thinking about the year is going to be more pronounced in the first half and then the second half of the year should -- progress and get better, so. Again, I wanted to talk in generalities, normally I don’t like to talk about the upcoming year until we’re new in the beginning of February, but I think it’s appropriate, given all that went on, just so people really understand that -- there’s whole cycle of attrition has a very real impact, and we’re starting to come out of that now, and that’s a good thing, and we’re starting to move forward. But it is just the nature of the dynamics of how this business works, particularly with the bulk of our revenue being syndicated and deferred. So as people come out and start booking business, it spreads out over the 12-month tail.

Vincent Colicchio

Analyst

Okay, George, another one for you. I think as you said, you lost more senior salespeople than expected over the past year, which impacted productivity. Did that trend continue in the quarter?

George Colony

Management

No, that trend was down in Q3. We expect it will down in Q4, Vince.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Bill Sutherland, of Northland Capital.

William Sutherland

Analyst

What kind of level is established attrition running at, Mike, relative to where you normally see it?

Michael Doyle

Management

Without getting too specific, overall research attrition is typically runs us, I would say mid to high teens and we’re breaking the 20% barrier. And that's overall research ranks. Now embedded in there is usually and is very much in this case, typically higher numbers with our research associates, our most senior people. And those folks tend to run higher, and analysts tend to run lower. Analysts, right now, are on an annualized basis, running below a 20%. So we're not too far out of range, but I think in the year where some of our analysts are offline, working Playbooks, it's exacerbated, Bill. And so any little incremental, coupled with the Playbook activity, we really feel it. And so I think that's what's pressuring a bit. And so I put it out there, just because we are really, we’re watching it closely. Again, I don’t the numbers are terrible. The downside to analysts, it's a good news, bad news. We tend to higher really, really good people but it tends to take longer to hire analysts and it does sales folks. And it’s not that -- our sales folks are bad, our sales folks are great. The ones we’ve been hiring are great, it’s just the analyst recruiting cycle is longer than the sales recruiting cycle, so. That’s why I look it my highlighted again. I don’t think it’s terrible but it is different than what our run rates have been.

William Sutherland

Analyst

Okay. Can you give us a little more feel for the difference -- I know attrition in sales is been more of an issue. I think it’s been more of an issue in Europe, complicated by the, obviously, headwinds in economy over there. So are you closer to normal attrition in North America than in Europe?

George Colony

Management

I think it’s society and I would say couple of things to, when we built our plan in ’11, Bill, going into ’12, we actually hired -- we had a -- for the most an across-the-board hiring plan that was almost equal as a percentage basis by region, right? And in hindsight, given what happened and has been happening in the macro, we would have been better served probably putting fewer new reps in Europe and putting more in North America and Asia Pacific. So we definitely feel that pain so it’s a resource allocation issue that will rebalance and we are rebalancing as the years progress, right. So that’s a big piece of it. So as we've seen some attrition, we are hiring some back, Bill, but we're not adding net new in Europe right now. We're going to wait and see how that situation progresses. So yes it's been a little better and I think that it continues to get better in North America and that’s encouraging. And again, we are continuing to watch it. I'm not yet ready to say this is a permanent trend, but I do believe it's going to subside in Q4. There could be some noise in Q1 as there always is as people sort of roll into the New Year, hiring picks up, but by and large I think we’re moving in the right direction, and I feel like all the things we’re doing are sending the right signal to the selling organization that we want to make the necessary changes and keep people on board and make things perfect.

William Sutherland

Analyst

And maybe this is for Kim (sic) [Kelley] , as you think about where the sales force is in terms of coming up the learning curve on the new CRM, is it going to be pretty much everyone there this quarter?

Kelley Hippler

Analyst

Hi, Bill, this is Kelley. I would say -- no, no problem. I would suspect that by early Q1, we should be fully leveraging a lot of the tools and capabilities, because Q4 is our busiest selling season, we try to focus our efforts and energies on those core functionalities that are needed to get the jobs done right now, and I think that there are other things around collaboration as George mentioned earlier in the call, that will help us see an uptick in productivity once we get into 2013. The good news is, a lot of my reps are younger than I am, so they are picking it up more quickly than some of the sales managers.

William Sutherland

Analyst

I know how you feel.

George Colony

Management

Now Bill knows it [ph]. Mike Morhardt is coming out of 2 sales force environments, and so he is very familiar with the tool, that the processes and he will be the great advocate for the use of the tool. Yes, the timing might be right too, because I think Mike is going to come in with ideas about what he wants to do with the tool. So I think if we get a foundation complete to Kelley’s point then lot of the enhancements that Mike's got a very strong view about where he wants to go, and I think that's going to be -- it will work out quite well and it’s all said and done.

William Sutherland

Analyst

Last one maybe for you George, I think the key differentiator for Forrester certainly is -- one of them is certainly the focus in marketing strategy, it really stands out there as our consulting firm. And how are you thinking about maintaining or maybe expanding on that competitive advantage that you have?

George Colony

Management

Yes. We are shifting this strategy somewhat on the sales side, in the sales process, Bill, where we are now entering companies in the marketing -- with the marketing strategy roles being called on first. And we call that fleeting with the customer, I mean essentially our unique value proposition is that, in a world where technology is changing your customers, we can help you make better decisions. And every company, I don’t care whether you sell pills or tires or insurance, your customer is behaving in a very different way. So we are finally changing the way we sell in entering with the marketing strategy roles first and then moving to the BT roles second, then we call that leading with the customers. So it’s an obvious advantage we have. And by the way, it’s also highly resonant advantage that we have. As you know Ginni Rometty took over CEO of IBM. In the first conference that she -- that IBM put together and the first one that she spoke at was a conference for marketing executives, and not for IT executives. And in fact, we have [indiscernible] analysts spoke at that event for IBM. So we think it’s a great advantage, it’s one that we are going to leverage. And Tom Pohlmann, as the new Head of Marketing Strategy, is pushing this very, very strongly and we already, as an example that I actually gave you on Playbooks was a marketing executive at in airline, and again, I’ll just reiterate what she said was she loved about it, was it connected her to the IT executives of the airline and that made her job easier.

William Sutherland

Analyst

So has the Playbook rollout kind of been disproportionate in the marketing strategy roles?

George Colony

Management

It’s been about equal both BT and market. I mean you need Playbooks on both sides. So it’s been about equal for the 2 sets of roles.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions at this time. I’ll now turn the call back over to Mike Doyle for any closing remarks.

Michael Doyle

Management

Great. Thanks very much, Ellen. First of all thanks everybody for joining the call. We do appreciate it, and in short time we’ll be out on the road, and we look forward to seeing many of you in the very, very near future. So thanks very much, and have a great weekend.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Forrester Research Q3 2012 earnings conference call. Thank you for participating, you may now disconnect.