• Do you comply the the "Independence" criteria as suggested by the accounting and auditing professions? Refere to a guiding paper for auditor independence? Click here
• Have you been paid for work by any of the OLAP vendors you cover in your commentary and what was the nature of this work? How often have you provided services to these vendors and what are the values involved?
• Do you regularly speak on behalf of OLAP vendors and are you paid for this service?
• Do you, or have you earnt any royalties from any OLAP vendors?
• Do you get paid for providing advice to clients for recommending particular OLAP products?
• Have you competed with OLAP vendors you cover, or have not covered in your OLAP commentary?
• What OLAP products have you had access to evaluate? Are these included in you commentary?
• What OLAP products have you not had access to, or covered, or requested to review and why?
• Have you contacted OLAP vendor “XXX” to evaluate their product? If not why?
• Have you always been a market commentator and what did you do prior to becoming a market commentator?
• Did you know any of the vendors or work with vendor products before becoming a commentator? Which OLAP products and what is your relationship to the vendor?
• Do previous work colleagues or friends hold influential positions or shares within OLAP companies that are covered by your commentary? Is their line-of-business (lob) dependent on OLAP products you commentate on. Have you disclosed in your documentation your personal relationships within the OLAP arena?
• Have you had OLAP products demonstrated to you that you have thought were good but currently do not comment on and why? How some commentators are working is that if you do not supply them with a product they will only recommend the products which they have been supplied to evaluate. This is fine, but it also indicates a bias when they in fact know of some good products so the people in the market never get a true independent view?
• Why have you not reviewed these OLAP products? [It would be advisable to contact the companies concerned as well so as to check the representations of the commentator and to establish the reasons as to why. Alternatively, review the OLAP product yourself and make your own evaluation.]
• Have you not answered product vendor questions during seminars or through discussion groups. Why? [There have been some sweeping comments in some discussion groups that when questioned the commentator has not answered. This could be a true indication of their lack of knowledge and bias towards certain OLAP products covered on the market. This has indicated a lack of knowledge of products in the OLAP industry and may influence subsequent discrimination against vendors.]
• Do OLAP vendors sell your commentary?
• Does your documentation, web site or financial statements reflect financial information relating to transactions with OLAP vendors? If not, can you now disclose this please.
• Have you been involved in the sale of any OLAP companies in the OLAP arena and what is your relationship to any of the shareholders or key personnel involved in the transactions? Have you earnt any revenue from the parties involved in the transactions?
• Are you a director in any form for any business intelligence or OLAP companies. Please disclose all your directorships.
• Which companies have you been a director of?
• Has your domain name always been owned by you or your company? If not, has this been owned by anyone that has a connection to the OLAP industry?
• Do you have a statement of independence and does this cover any personal, whether direct or indirect, relationships with entities and/or people in the OLAP arena?

Some indicators that may suggest a lack of independence include:

• Consistent slanted comments against companies, individuals or products provides a good indicator as to the independence, preference or bias of commentators. The reasons for this needs to be identified and indicates a total lack of willingness to act in the interests of the OLAP market and on behalf of users who are looking for independent advice.
• Has the slanted commentary changed when there has been a change in shareholding?
• Non-contact with vendor companies. Some commentators having been made aware of significant developments in the OLAP market but they have chosen not to disclose OLAP market developments. The reasons for this need to be established although some of them may be very predictable.
• Non-access to vendor products. Some vendors may not have provided commentators access to products due to being aware of the commentator relationships within the OLAP arena which put their functionality and investment at risk. This is one good reason for some products not being included in OLAP market commentary.
• Commentators providing consultancy services in the OLAP industry, in principle, cannot be independent as they are competing with vendors. Commentators should only provide commentary.
• Consistent promotion of OLAP products which they, their partners or former work colleagues are involved with.
• Continued support for OLAP companies that have been involved in unethical practices within the OLAP market. This includes trying to download competitor company products using connected parties.
• Non disclosure of OLAP vendors they promote who are, or have been, investigated by the SEC in the last ten years.
• Selective disclosure of strengths and weaknesses of OLAP products reviewed.
• Domain name ownership history where this was not originally registered by the commentator.

Where there is a lack of independent commentary, the risk to OLAP vendors can be significant. Due to this isssue some vendors are electing not to have their products reviewed by non-independent commentators, but rather to have their product’s functionality verified through more independent testing methods and client reference stories. The risks to the OLAP vendor of non-independent commentary include;

• The loss of a competitive advantage by the disclosure of unique product features to competitors.
• Biased, unrepresentative an potentially slanted reporting by market commentator.
• The product’s unique features are not shown or disclosed.

If anyone would like to contribute to these factors in helping determine the independence of market commentary then please feel free to contact us. Click here