The Knowledge Engineers is an independent research institute that publishes market data and research on business technology, with the source, the period and the method attached to every figure. Its subject is what companies actually do rather than what they are sold: which systems they run, what they spend on training their staff, where they cannot fill a vacancy, and how far those figures diverge between a company of ten employees and one of ten thousand. The same discipline is applied to the products themselves, which is why the institute also reviews them.
What the Institute Is
Six statements describe it completely, and each one can be checked on the site.
● It publishes market data. 665 sourced data points from 22 primary datasets, including World Bank and Eurostat series, each carrying its dataset code, reference period and confidence label, and released as CSV and JSON for anyone to check or reuse.
● It conducts and publishes research. Thirteen industry reports on adoption, expenditure and skills – the regions of the world compared side by side, and company-level detail wherever a statistical office publishes it – and 33 country profiles measuring each indicator against the regional average. Reports are generated from the primary dataset, not assembled from other people’s summaries.
● It reviews software against that data and gives software advice. 1,500 products examined and ranked across 125 categories, from vendors established in 46 countries. Every review states what the product is bad at and which buyer it is wrong for, not only who it suits.
● It publishes its method. Products are ranked on five named tests – setup effort, real price, data portability, independence from the vendor, and who the product is for – in that order, with no score out of ten, because a number like 8.4 is a judgement dressed as a measurement.
● It names its funding on the page. Vendors can pay for visibility, disclosed directly above every ranking. Payment never changes what a review says, and cannot buy a place in a category the product does not belong in.
● It sells no software. It is not a marketplace, a reseller, a comparison affiliate or a lead generator. It takes no commission on any purchase and does not sell reader details to vendors.
Reports are generated from primary datasets by scripts that form part of the site, so any figure can be traced to the row it came from and reproduced by a reader who disagrees with it.
What It Holds
● 665 sourced data points, each with its dataset and reference period, from 22 primary datasets including World Bank and Eurostat series.
● 13 industry reports on adoption, expenditure and skills, long-form and with numbered findings.
● 33 country profiles, each indicator measured against the regional average.
● 1,500 software products reviewed and ranked in 125 categories, from vendors established in 46 countries. Each review names who the product is wrong for.
What the Research Currently Shows
World Bank series put the regions of the world on one scale. Internet use has nearly converged, at 95.6% of people in North America, 92.4% in Europe and 88.4% in Asia-Pacific, but income per head has not: $86,308, $34,604 and $14,077. North America spends 3.3% of GDP on research and development against 2.1% in Europe; Asia-Pacific makes the hardware, with ICT goods at 26.4% of its goods exports, and South Asia sells the services, at 47.8% of its service exports. Where a statistical office publishes company-level detail, the institute goes down to it: Eurostat’s enterprise surveys show 28.5% of European companies with ten or more employees running a CRM, and 57.5% of those that tried to hire an ICT specialist unable to fill the role.
From the institute’s own review database, which is global by construction: its 1,500 products come from vendors in 46 countries, 48% of them European and 44% North American. Of those products, 46% publish a price a buyer can read without a sales conversation and 806 quote per organisation. 15% offer a usable free tier, 5% are open source and 5% can be hosted on the buyer’s own infrastructure.
Cite as: The Knowledge Engineers, product figures from its own review database; market figures from World Bank and Eurostat series.
Editorial Method
Work is written, edited and fact-checked by a team of five, with a different person taking each role on every page so that nobody both writes and signs off the same piece. Corrections are made on the page rather than quietly. Confidence is stated rather than implied: verified, directional, or single source. The full method is published at theknowledgeengineers.com/editorial-process.
Open Access
All research, the market data index, the country profiles and the reviews are published without a paywall or a registration wall, on the principle that a figure nobody can check is worth nothing. Figures may be quoted and republished with attribution and a link to the report they came from, and the underlying dataset is downloadable as CSV and JSON at theknowledgeengineers.com/data.
On the Name
A knowledge engineer builds the part of a system that can answer a question – taking what is known but scattered, in people’s heads, in reports nobody reads, behind the twelfth menu of a statistical office, and putting it somewhere it can be looked up and checked. That is the work the institute does with market statistics.
For Journalists and Analysts
Every figure published by the institute is available as a dataset rather than only as prose, and may be reproduced in reporting without permission or fee. The preferred attribution is the institute, the report and the underlying statistical source together, for example: The Knowledge Engineers, “Where Technology Is Made: Exports and R&D by Region”, from World Bank GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS, 2023.
Sebastiaan Smits is available for comment on how technology adoption and spending differ between regions, ICT skills and training expenditure, software procurement and market sizing, and can supply cuts of the data by region, country, company size or indicator on request.
Publisher
G-Cas B.V.
Fladderiepvliet 3 3545 AJ Utrecht, Netherlands
KvK 42008661
About The Knowledge Engineers
The Knowledge Engineers is an independent research institute that publishes market data and research on business technology, with the source, the period and the method attached to every figure. It publishes 13 industry reports, 33 country profiles and a downloadable market data index of 665 sourced figures, and reviews 1,500 software products across 125 categories. It sells no software, takes no commission and generates no leads. It is published by G-Cas B.V.
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Contact
Sebastiaan Smits, Founder and Editor
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-knowledge-engineers-independent-research/
Source: 38 Digital Market News
Release ID: 2618941
