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Forrester Wave™ Reports

Qualtrics is consistently named as a leader or Strong Performer in Forrester Wave™ and Forrester New Wave™ reports, spanning a range of use cases. These include Customer Feedback Management, Test Analytics, Real Time Interaction Management, Journey Orchestration Platforms and Employee Experience Management and Text Analytics.

Read the latest analytics reports from Forrester to find out why.

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Qualtrics named a strong performer in real-time interaction management

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Measure journeys to drive emotional engagement

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The state of evidence-based experience design

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The Total Economic Impact of Qualtrics CustomerXM

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What is the Forrester Wave™ ?

The Forrester Wave™ is a guide released by Forrester to help buyers choose which vendor in their emerging technology marketplace is right for them. These reports span a wide array of markets and capabilities from broad markets like Customer Feedback Management to individual technology capabilities like Journey Orchestration.

The standings in the Forrester Wave reports are based on Forrester’s analysis and opinion of vendor’s products and services, ranking them based on a set criteria, which is publicly available.

This methodology is applied consistently across participating vendors, ensuring rankings start on a level playing field. Whether it’s the emerging hardware, software or services market being evaluated, the transparent methodology means that buyers can take confidence that their decisions are well-informed. The evaluation takes into account information provided by the vendor, a demo or product briefing and customer testimonials.

It’s up to the vendor if they want to actively engage in this process. If a vendor does not participate in the formal Forrester New Wave evaluation process, Forrester will evaluate them in accordance with The Forrester Wave And The Forrester New Wave™ Vendor Participation Policy.

All of the products that are evaluated are generally available at the time of the Wave questionnaire due date, ensuring that buyers can be confident vendors are ranked on what their hardware, software or services actually offer to customers now, not what they claim to offer.

Frequently asked questions

The Forrester Wave™ evaluates and ranks vendors within an emerging field, comparing those at the top of the market, to the challengers nipping at their heels. The reports give buyers an impartial analysis of where vendors excel, where they have room to improve and what to expect if you choose them. It’s important to note that it doesn’t represent the entire vendor landscape.

The process is broken down into stages.

Preliminary Planning And Kickoff. Here Forrester researches the category and defines the scope, then they draft inclusion and evaluation criteria and hosts a vendor kickoff teleconference.

Gathering evaluation data. Invited vendors fill out a questionnaire and brief/demo their product or services to Forrester analysts. Customers are also interviewed.

Scoring and feedback. Vendors are then evaluated based on the set criteria

Publishing. Rankings are released in the Wave report, which is available to prospective buyers.

You can read more about Forrester’s methodology here.
There are two primary axis that vendors are evaluated on in the Forrester Wave™ report including Current Offering and Strategy. Prospective buyers benefit from vendors being ranked through a Wave, which highlights Leaders, Strong Performers, Contenders and Challengers.

After being evaluated and scored against a set of criteria, vendors are plotted on the Wave based on their scores.

The Y-axis measures the strength of the current product offering and the X-Axis measures the strength of strategy. Vendors are also placed in their own “bubble”, and the size of the bubble indicates that particular vendor’s market presence.

Each vendor then gets its own write up, highlighting their strengths, weaknesses and any other insights or opinions analysts feel prospective buyers might find useful.
At the beginning of a Forrester Wave™ or Forrester New Wave™, Forrester invites vendors that meet their specific inclusion criteria to participate in their research into the market.

When a vendor returns the Wave questionnaire and provides Forrester with a briefing/demo session, that vendor becomes a full participant. If a vendor declines to fill out the questionnaire or provide a briefing/demo session, that vendor will not be treated as a full participant during the Wave process or in the final report, but may still be included.