Web Analytics needs IT and the Business needs Web Analytics
I’ve been so busy folks, I’ve had no time to blog, so forgive me for my two week hiatus.
The classic problem of “marketing versus IT” is real. If you are lucky, you work with an excellent IT team (like me!), then this problem will be minimal if at all. But in most cases, based on what I hear from my industry colleagues, the analytics team often has issues with IT resources being sufficiently delegated to supporting a web analytics implementation and program.
The classic problem goes something like this:
- Marketing: We need advanced customizations, deep integrations, increased scalability, better performance, and more control overall over Web Analytics.
- IT: We don’t have resources, time, or budget to help you right now. Fill out these forms and in the future maybe we can help.
In a nutshell, this is one of the reason why hosted solutions exist (SaaS, ASP, on-demand, whatever). While it’s hard to do web analytics, it’s even harder to do it internally using actual software that you run.
Wouldn’t we prefer it to go something like this:
- Marketing: We need advanced customizations, deep integrations, increased scalability, better performance, and more control overall over Web Analytics.
- IT: Yes. Can do. Will do. What do you need and when do you need them by?
My belief is that to “do web analytics” the right way, you need an allocation of IT resources to support your implementation and extend it to fulfill strategy and improve business performance. After all, I firmly believe web analytics is for optimizing business performance, guiding strategy, and supporting tactical decisions. And to do all that, you need resources when you need them. The larger your site or portfolio of sites, the more resources you need. It’s all pretty logical. Getting back to IT, if you’re using a hosted solution, you need fewer IT resources. The vendor takes care of a lot of IT stuff. If you are running your analytics in-house, you need a team of IT resources because you will be doing it all yourself.
I would prefer those technical resources report into Web Analytics, but I’m not sure if the general business world (as in non-Internet companies) sees the ROI of Web Analytics clearly enough to immediately delegate a full-time “mini IT” team to support analytics at phase zero (i.e. when you first get hired and plan the rollout). And that’s why you need to be very wary of what vendors tell you about IT requirements and web analytics.
If management expects that you just need to tag the pages and you the analyst can do that yourself, your company will be in for surprise. It’s never that simple. Smaller companies with one or a few sites that use the same technology may be able to pull off the solo cowboy analyst including tags and doing all the tech work. Google has made that fairly easy. But larger companies that have many sites and many different technologies serving those sites are a much different animal.
My advice is that you can’t be fooled by vendor messaging that claims “you don’t need IT.” That’s bull$4!+. Marketers can’t do Web Analytics alone and in isolation. You will need IT to help you extend your web analytics solution. And as I’ve already stated, the level at which you need IT will vary on how you “do” web analytics. It differs greatly if you are running an in-house proprietary solution, an internal vendor solution, or a hosted solution.
If you are doing web analytics using a proprietary solution you created internally, you may probably then already understand what I mean when I say ”web analytics needs IT.” Chances are you are using an OLAP-based solution that has huge BI infrastructure behind it and the cubes contain latent information. Your data model may be limited compared to the major vendors. Your tool may be overly complex, hard for business users to use, and limited in terms of features, or it may be the coolest thing since sliced bread, and the people who created it may know more than the vendors. Still, unless resources are adequately delegated to support analytics and extending the implementation, your tool users and report consumers will make thousands of requests to IT, and they will go unfulfilled leading to user frustration.
If you are running an in-house software solution, such as that provided by Unica, WebTrends or Visual Sciences, you will rely on IT for all sorts of things, like hardware and software maintenance, database administration, network support, and will need to leverage help desk and ticketing systems. In addition, web analytics projects become part of the IT project planning cycle with budget requests and consideration.
If you are having your web analytics tool hosted. IT may be the ones who actually put the tags you field on your web site. Modifications to any javascript may need to be done by IT. You will need to reach out to IT for help with setting up cookies, changing the DNS, and writing any code that assists with web analytics. “Change management” will be required. ;)
If a business wants to succeed with Web Analytics, it must determine how to effectively resource the implementation and ongoing extension of an analytics platform. Here are some tips for ensuring you get the resources you need:
- Factor web analytics resource needs into the capital budgeting and yearly planning process. Business stakeholders must identify the IT resources they need in advance, and then align the IT team according to business goals. Resources must be allocated according to financial guidelines that maintain corporate profitability.
- Document your web analytics projects and business requriements and share the documentation with IT. Whether your web analytics projects are related to implementation, campaign optimization, data description, or integration, you need to share that information with IT so they can determine how to support analytics.
- Identify and document why you need IT resources. In other words, identify and document what IT will be doing for web analytics and how their work is necessary for improving corporate performance. On the business side, explain that you won’t be able to fulfill X business goal without IT resources.
- Leverage a project manager. Project managers are critical and important to cross-functional team success. They focus work, align people, determine tasks, monitor completion, and allow a multifaceted team of business marketers and IT to do what they do without worrying about managing the project.
- Share your analytics success with IT and let stakeholders know how IT has helped you. Often times corporations forget that these very talented IT folks are working really hard behind the scenes, often without getting much (or any) credit for the complex work they do. When you have an analytics success, share it with the folks that helped you tag the pages or configure your servers. When people are singing your praises in the cafeteria because they now have the data they need to do their jobs and/or you’ve improved their business performance, let them know IT backed you up and helped you deliver. There’s enough glory to go around.
If you do what I’m saying in this blogviation, the problem of ”marketing versus IT” will be minimized. IT will be able to keep up with all of your constantly-evolving business requirements and the dynamic, high-maintenance nature of your web analytics program. And your marketing department, business stakeholders, and executive team will be very happy with the results.
Anil added the following ...
Hey Judah
Awesome post!
Ah! this isn’t new ain’t it ? a classic problem indeed.
My belief is that to “do web analytics” the right way, you need an allocation of IT resources to support your implementation and extend it to fulfill strategy and improve business performance
Totally Agree! but how many Project managers do actually agree with this! very few iam afraid. For them web analytics is only adding JS codes and dedicating a “individual” takes a back seat
“mini IT” team to support analytics at phase zero
True, i guess that’s a great thing to start with! and also gives a fair idea on the complexity of implementations
Marketers can’t do Web Analytics alone and in isolation
Web Analytics forms a bridge between the Marketers and the IT Team! Until both ends meet a firm is no where close to optimization and achieving Business Goals
“Change management” will be required.
This is probably something which is “most important” IMHO, when you sit with IT team and explain them that “hey we are testing 7 versions of this page,the reason, the expected outcome, how this test will help us!” and after 2 weeks your back with them again.. ok we are testing this part of site now! … Testing, experimentation might piss them off!
It’s a great challenge and i love it!
and this is one of the reason i agree with you that having a dedicated IT reports who reports to web analytics is of utmost important!
The other thing we’ve observed is when the IT is a third party agency! and there comes the picture of budget, resource and SLA… alas!!
but nevertheless! great post and lovely tips
Cheers
Anil
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Judah added the following ...
Steve: LOL! You bring up super points obviously based on your deep experience and comprehensive technical knowledge. Especially in large political organizations where agendas may conflict, it could be that Marketing hasn’t convinced the Business of the importance of sufficient IT resource allocation, which is why things need to be documented and dicussed so priorities can be aligned. There’s also the issue that the company just doesn’t have sufficient resources to do the work, which is like the Business not understanding Marketing.
I’m of the mindset that IT does matter, and they should be your best friend in web analytics. If IT came to me, and said “we need your help,” I say “of course, what can I do?” But you are right about sharing success - people are much more likely to complain about things being too slow, then about Warp 10 server speed. Thanks for the nice words, and for your excellent comments as always! 
Anil: I hear the voice of experience in your comments! Excellent points. As we see WA continue to move rapidly from decision support to strategic influence, I think resource allocations will be delegated by those in more powerful positions, so the project manager could have less choice over the type of resources to enable the full strategic vision of the WA implementation.
I also totally agree with you that WA becomes the conduit between the Business and IT, and that’s why the best analysts can interoperate in both worlds. The “mini IT” does give a provide a sense of the complexity of implementation, and that’s a smart way to think of it. Your comments about “change management” and third-party IT support are spot on too, and I love the challenges as well. They get us out of bed in the morning! Thanks for reading my blog, and commenting Batman!
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Thomas Molitor added the following ...
Can you tie an rss subscriber to an online sale?
Also, can you match rss subscribers to their email address?
Judah added the following ...
Hi Thomas. The answer is “it depends” on a number of things. There’s no one size fits all solution for what you describe imho. It really varies on a number of site factors, such as the technology you are using to create the site, your backend database technology, the analytics technology, how you register users, your cookie policy, and whether you are using tracking codes in your rss feeds. It’s a lot harder to retrofit an rss tracking solution onto a poor or inadequate site platform running a limited analytics technology with no control over visitor level data or link to your backend database(s).
You are describing a sales process. That means you will require some form of registration to complete the sale where visitor registration data, including an email address, can be passed in a cookie and/or stored in a db, and then associated with the traffic source (in this case an rss feed). Depending on your analytics data model, what you store, and how you track RSS, the rss-to-sale and rss-to-email corrrespondence can potentially be made in the backend. This is a good example of where having in-house IT support (like a DBA/data warehousing expert) or deep vendor professional services can help solve a web analytics challenge. It’s also a good example of where analytics needs to be considered in the site design process to enable the level of tracking required by the client. Thanks for the question and for reading my blog, and I hope my brief response helps!
Thomas Molitor added the following ...
Hey Judah - thanks for your interesting reply!
I’m interested in having RSS drive more targeted or triggered emails. RSS is a transport mechanism which embodies XML data which could be used to transport data to construct emails. I am exploring ways marketers can leverage a RSS subscriber db to create more targeted and relevant messages in other channels, and would appreciate any of your experience in email, RSS, and web analytics working together to trigger more relevant, behaviorally targeted communications.
Judah added the following ...
Hi Thomas:
Here’s an idea: if you register users and have a topical taxonomy from which you derive RSS feed content, you know the taxonomy node (i.e. the content category) that the RSS subscriber clicked through. Create a profile for each visitor consisting of the nodes they clickthrough. Determine commonly occurring, clickthroughed nodes (using analytics) on per visitor or per segment level, then send emails to those subscribers or segments containing related content from those nodes. Easy!
Steve added the following ...
Ahh. Near and dear to my heart.
“2. IT: We don’t have resources, time, or budget to help you right now. Fill out these forms and in the future maybe we can help.”
Translation: We have been given higher priorities to work on by those who out rank you.
Is the cold, harsh & brutal truth that I see all too often. Sadly.
I’ve personally been in situations where I would love to help - but can’t. Higher priority, more business critical! tasks take priority.
It may help understanding to flip it the other way round: If IT came to the Marketing Group and insisted that Marketing drop all their external Marketing tasks to work on an internal Marketing campaign to raise the profile of the IT Group, how would/should Marketing react?
While recognising it’s not always this way - and sometimes the total opposite, the problem - as you so poignantly point out in the tips Judah - is usually not a Marketing vs IT problem.
The problem, I’d suggest, is that Marketing hasn’t convinced the Business of the value of their needs being fulfilled. And hence the task priority is devalued. Rightly or not!
Further and based on my own, hence *highly* biased
, “Marketing vs IT” experiences, many Marketing people really do not seem to get Business Priorities, despite the protestations to the contrary. Everything else MUST be dropped to solve *their* problems. Immediately.
To grotesquely generalise, albeit from multiple direct/personal experiences.
“Doesn’t matter that our #2 customer is currently in the midst of a major outage and that you’re frantically trying to fix it. I’m the VP of Marketing[1] for this company and I’m going to sit here and/or pester you on the phone until you build and configure a new Intranet server for me to do XYZ.”[2]
Not that I’m bitter and twisted or anything….
As for your last tip Judah? How many people reading this far complimented their IT staff on how *well* the servers were running today?
Well. The people I work to do - weekly usually. But then…. I’ve trained them up over several years.
Cheers!
- Bitter, Twisted and Cynical Steve
[1] CMO would be the grandiose title these days.
[2] Which once built and ready to roll, ~ 45 mins later, was completely ignored for the remainder of that person’s tenure with that company.
Grumble grumble grumble.