Forrester Research

	Tom Grant Senior Analyst, Technology Marketing

Research Coverage

Marketing Measurement, Marketing & Advertising, Customer Relationship Management, High-Tech, Tech Product Management, Packaged Applications

Research Focus

Tom serves Technology Product Management & Marketing professionals. He helps these individuals succeed and helps technology companies better use product management resources. Product management varies widely from company to company: product road maps, requirements collection, internal and partner product training, competitive analysis, feature planning, early demos, productization, release management — you name it. Therefore, Tom's job is to help product managers in TI companies hone these critical skills and help the company decide which areas the product management organization needs to emphasize.

Tom has broad experience in different segments of the technology industry, such as content management, collaboration, Web 2.0, databases, application servers, compliance, portals, BI, and data warehousing. He also has extensive experience in making these technologies part of other applications, including CRM. Tom has helped launch several products and product lines in many of these areas.

Previous Work Experience

Tom has been a part of the technology industry for the past 15 years at large and small companies such as Informatica, Oracle, Platinum, and PostPath. Just before joining Forrester, Tom was vice president of product management at Xythos Software. He has worked in the trenches of product management and product marketing, as well as built and run product management teams.

Education

Tom holds a Ph.D. in political science from University of California, Irvine. Effective product management, he argues, requires a mix of computer science and social science skills.