Web Analytics Practitioners Talk Shop

Brent Dykes Director of Industry Consulting Adobe Systems

At the annual Adobe Summit in Salt Lake City in March, I hosted a session essentially focused on the critical topic of Web governance. During this session, I introduced a new governance framework and maturity model, which you’ll be hearing more about in the coming months. I also had the opportunity to present with Andrew Carr, senior director of analytics and metrics at Oracle, who shared some valuable insights about some of the challenges his organization faced with its Web analytics program, and how his team was able to overcome various issues.

Another key component of this Web governance-focused session was the roundtable discussions that followed afterward. Volunteer moderators led groups of four to eight people in discussions about various Web governance topics, including leadership, strategy, people, process, and products/technologies. Ten moderators provided me with their groups’ key takeaways. Here, I’ve summarized some of their key discussion points:

Winning

• If you want to take your Web analytics to the next level, several groups mentioned that you need to demonstrate value (wins, results, etc.) to the organization.
  • If you’re driving value for your company, then you will need to move beyond just focusing on reporting.
  • A few groups recommended outsourcing all regular reporting or automating reports to free up analysts’ time for more meaningful projects.
  • Look to partner with a willing internal group on a project that could help drive some momentum internally.
• Multiple groups mentioned how difficult it can be to work with multiple business units. In order to be successful, you need to manage your stakeholder groups effectively.
  • Be proactive; don’t wait for their requests to come to your team.
  • Schedule regular meetings to align priorities and review progress.
  • Assign different team members to manage different stakeholder groups.
  • Ensure you have solid, well-documented business processes in place.
  • Add project management staff (PMO) to your program.

Strategy

• A couple of statements stood out, such as: “In general, people do not know what the goals are” and “Hard to get [the strategy] because no one agrees on what the Web site’s focus should be.”
• Multiple groups recognized the importance of clarifying the organization’s goalsas it directly impacts the quality and relevance of the data provided by the implementation.
  • One group mentioned that the lack of strategy on the initial implementation has continued to impede their progress.

Leadership

• Many people expressed frustration aboutnot having a “true” executive sponsor or champion.
• You need someone who has authority and influence within the organization, but is also both involved and committed to helping the company become more data-driven.
• A lack of top-down accountability was also mentioned as a key stumbling block.

Next: An age-old question revisited.