A caveat to the 10 / 90 rule for Magnificent Web Analytics Success
The great thing about the blogosphere is that it gives you an easy way to share your opinions and explore ideas with a wide range of folks. The lousy thing is that once you publish something it’s out there for everyone to critique. Avinash Kaushik from Intuit hasn’t even been in the blogosphere for a full week and here I go, disagreeing with something he’s said.
When Avi says to:
- “Cancel the contract with your favorite expensive analytics vendor and take that $50k or $100k or $200k and: 1) Hire a smart analyst for between $50k to whatever maybe your areas great salary 2) Put the rest of the money in your pocket.”
He presupposes one very important thing: That you’re able to find and hire a dedicated web data analyst for the money you’re saving that has enough experience to use an “unsupported” application successfully within your organization.
Don’t get me wrong, I am perhaps the world’s most full-on champion for hiring dedicated resources into the organization to manage the web analytics business process … any of you who have heard me talk about the Framework for Using Web Analytics Data to Drive Business Success that I developed at JupiterResearch know that I agree that the absolute lynchpin behind succeeding with any web analyics application is the dedication of human resources to manage the data collection, reporting and analysis.
But, perhaps by virtue of being such a visible proponent for hiring people, I am also privy to the trials and tribulations that a great many companies are going through trying to hire said resources. Not a week goes by that I’m not fielding a half-dozen inquiries from companies looking to hire smart folks to manage their web analytics infrastructure. Some of them (like Intuit) are very successful in finding bright folks (hi Dylan!), others are not quite as lucky and may be forced to wait until the entire market matures before experienced web data analysts are available in large enough numbers to hire into some smaller organizations.
Especially when Avi shrewedly points out that …
- “… you are going to have to have people who are smart and have business acumen who can tie clickstream behavior to other sources of data / information / company happenings.
… hopefully most human resources groups will immediately recognize that Avinash is not talking about someone fresh out of college but rather someone experienced with the nuances of both data and business on the Internet.”
Trust me: People like this are still relatively rare.
So perhaps this is less a disagreement and more a caution: Given that all of the top-tier analytics vendors provide some type of Strategic or Consulting Services organization that surely would be more than happy to help you re-align your web analytics practice around your business (DISCLAIMER: That is what I do for Visual Sciences as the Vice President of Strategic Services), you might be better off working to leverage your existing investment than culling code, waiting for Google to issue you an account, and starting over from scratch.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Avinash!
