A day in the life of a digital analyst

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST BY JIM STERNE WHI TE PAPER ABOUT JIM STERNE Jim Sterne is an international consultant who focuses on measuring the value of the Web as a medium for creating and strengthening customer relationships Sterne has written eight books on using the Internet for marketing, is the Founding President and current Chairman of the Digital Analytics Association and produces the eMetrics Summit and the Media Analytics Summit AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / ABOUT JIM STERNE SUMMARY Introduction Start of a new day Chapter 1: First Interruption: Advertising Chapter 2: Second Interruption: Product Marketing 12 Chapter 3: Third Interruption: Product Merchandising 15 Chapter 4: Fourth Interruption: Customer Experience 19 Chapter 5: First Actual Meeting: 22 Lunch with the New CMO AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / SUMMARY INTRODUCTION Do you know if your company’s digital strategy is truly working? Is your digital performance reflective of your business goals? When it comes to making choices, are the best decisions immediately clear? Our solutions are designed to help crystallise insights, enabling you to answer these questions with a confident "yes." Intuitive and fully customisable, our tools let everyone at your company access, visualise and share the specific data they need, right when they need it The result? More agile, effective, intelligent decisions In this white paper, renowned digital analytics expert Jim Sterne explores how different teams might use AT Internet’s tools to go beyond the data and make truly agile business decisions Step into the shoes of John – a digital analyst on a mission to ask the questions that truly matter – and learn how to awaken decision-makers company-wide to the power of real-time, flexible data AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / INTRODUCTION START OF A NEW DAY AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / START OF A NEW DAY CHAPTER 1: FIRST INTERRUPTION: ADVERTISING "Hey, John Sorry to pop in unannounced but I was sent to get the first trends of the new campaign on our fives top sites We started it yesterday with our top ‘sponsors’ We’ve got this meeting this afternoon and we really need to show that display ads on identified websites are performing." JOHN "We want to know if the new campaign is having a good start and how the audience is responding to it." "Good morning, Andrew Nice to see you I hope you had a nice weekend." "I, well, yes Uhm, thank you and, uh, you too." JOHN "Thank you." "The numbers?" JOHN "Not this time This time, we’re going to discuss what business decisions you’re making with these numbers and why it’s so important to show those particular ads are better That way, I can actually help your whole team accomplish your goals." "Well, it’s no big thing it’s just a meeting We want to know if the new concept/campaign is having a good start and how the audience is responding to it." JOHN "And what if they’re not?" AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST "Well, then We might stop it sooner after giving it a try for a few days Depends on the results Actually what we are expecting is that the KPIs are above the average so we can justify extending it to more sponsors That’s the second step of the campaign plan Can you show me those numbers?" JOHN "You can that tagging thing yourself We can show you how to create your own tags And then we can give you all the results." "Certainly What was the campaign label?" "We didn’t get the chance to label it." JOHN "I see Tell me something Last night, did that 2012, blue Peugeot drive by this office faster than the 2013, green Citroën?" "What? I’m sorry I didn’t I wasn’t " JOHN "My point exactly You want to know how well your ads performed after the fact, but you didn’t ask us to track them." "But we only had an hour to get that ad delivered and it would take days for the 20 sponsors to add the tag " JOHN "You know, you can that tagging thing yourself We can show you how to create your own tags and make sure nothing leaves the building without one and then we can give you all the results And fortunately, AT Internet, that’s our digital analytics tool, has this great feature called the Data Manager This is one of those tricky situations where it can save the day You sent that banner ad to 20 partners and I can, right here, integrate a custom source for the 20 different referrers." Fill in the referer URLs They will be associated with the right campaign AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST Just need to push it live JOHN "So here’s exactly what you were looking for But for next time, we have a very straightforward process for tagging anything we put out there so we can track it and tell you how well it did." "But if we only have an hour to " JOHN "Then you’ll have to squeeze in another fifteen seconds to get the right tagging in place." "Fifteen seconds? And I can that?" JOHN "Yep." "But we need this for display ads and search ads and emails and sponsored links and we need to track which did the best in a given campaign." JOHN "We’re all set up for that and we can show you how to use our Data Manger in about half an hour Each banner within a given campaign is uniquely identified and we can see how many times it was displayed and all the traffic generated to your landing page by traffic source." "But we’ve got so many requirements from publishers Sometimes it’s JavaScript or in an iFrame and sometimes they use different adservers like DART, and then we’ve got all the search engines." JOHN "Yes, we can handle all of that See, the thing I’m trying to explain is – if you will take just a moment to put the tags onto whatever promotion you’re running – we can manage all the data collection and report generation AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST JOHN That means you and I can talk about what you’re trying to get out the other end rather than spending all this time on the minutia of tagging So now, let’s shift this conversation a little What you want to know about your campaigns?" "There’s a lot of interesting behavioral and contextual information that can help you leverage your campaign globally." "Like I said, we need the regular campaign KPI for each of our five websites and the details per sponsor, and then need to compare it with the sales of the promoted product as well as the ‘side effects’ on other products " JOHN "Why?" "I beg your pardon?" JOHN "What you hope to learn from those particular numbers?" "Well obviously, we want to know which ads are doing better when shown on which websites or networks." JOHN "The campaign optimization is mainly based on campaign performance comparison Do you use other metrics and analyses feeding the optimization?" "Where is this going?" JOHN "My question exactly There’s a lot of interesting behavioral and contextual information that can help you leverage your campaign globally For instance, if we look at the timing, here, you see that generally all the navigation and content consumption is happening during the day, but if we add the conversions, we see they’re mostly made in the afternoon or on weekends." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST "That’s interesting! Especially for basket abandonment, special offers and all the campaigns we’re running to accelerate the purchase process and " JOHN "Our system is flexible enough to accommodate all the weird things that happen in real life." "And there is a lot more to dig into and get, but for that we have to get away from the Emergency Tagging thing Basically, you want to know which ads are getting the most attention, bringing the most people back to our landing pages, encouraging the most engagement with our website and eventually causing more people to buy stuff so you know where you should spend your advertising budget next time, right?" "Yes, of course." JOHN "Great! Let’s focus on that end of the conversation instead of on the bits and bytes First, let’s map out your next campaign and together, we’ll set up the tracking, the reporting, the dashboards and the majority of the work we will be in place for next time And, our system is flexible enough to accommodate all the weird things that happen in real life, like grabbing data from a live event on a tablet or tweaking our dashboards on the fly." "Can you come to our meeting this afternoon and explain " JOHN "Explain why I didn’t just give you the numbers your boss wanted? Sure, but I’m going to send Margaret instead She’s our liaison to your department and you’ll be working directly with her She can walk your whole team through insight creation and data-driven business decision-making, and sign up the right people for do-it-yourself tagging training I’ll let her know." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 10 JOHN "Right over here Let me introduce you Jessica, I’d like you to set up some meetings with Melissa and get her up to speed She’s our latest convert and wants to get her hands on the data." "Wonderful! Nice to meet you, Melissa." JOHN "I’ll leave it to you two while I see what Edward wants Hi, Ed." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 18 CHAPTER 4: FOURTH INTERRUPTION: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE "Hi, John I’m hoping you have some magic data that can tell me how our customers are acting differently on different devices." JOHN "I’m headed over for lunch with our new CMO Care to walk and talk?" "You want to be sure you’re tracking from, say, a mobile ad to an app to our website to the store?" "Yeah, that’d be nice Listen, I just got back from a conference where the head of one of the biggest retailers and the head of one of the biggest online publishers talked about how people of different ages are behaving differently on tablets versus phones, and how they act differently depending on whether they started their product search on one or the other We’re putting hashtags on billboards so tracking website data alone just doesn’t cut it." JOHN "So you want to be sure you’re tracking from, say, a mobile ad to an app to our website to the store?" "Yes, I know, it’s too much to ask, but that’s the direction we have to go in." JOHN "We are going that way In fact, we have the technology to that now." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 19 JOHN "We just need to sit down with you and your team to figure out how to incentivize people to identify themselves on each of their devices." "But nobody does that." JOHN "We can this without fingerprinting or IP addresses?" "I that with Amazon I want Amazon to recognize me on every device I have and if they had a store, I’d use my loyalty card every time." "That’s right Me too So we can this without fingerprinting or IP addresses?" JOHN "That’s right We just have to get them to want to log in, like we on Amazon Once they log in, not only will we have a clear vision of each specific behavior on each device, but we’ll have it at the visitor level so we can correlate it to any action made on any platform." "Like, did he put the product in his basket on his mobile phone, and later buy it on his computer?" AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 20 JOHN "Right, and we can combine mobile, tablet and computer funnel performances the whole thing We’ll have a real endto-end, multi-device perspective Then, we just have to ask the right questions So, when can you come by? We’ll map out the next few months of promotions to see how we can capture the brand experience from the customer’s point of view." "How soon can you convince our new CMO that it’s a good idea?" JOHN "In about a minute when I sit down to lunch with him That’s him over there." "Good luck!" JOHN "Thanks." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 21 CHAPTER 5: FIRST ACTUAL MEETING: LUNCH WITH THE NEW CMO JOHN "Hello, Paul, I’m John." "Thanks for making the time, John Have a seat." JOHN "How can we dramatically improve things within our current resources and solution?" "Thank you I understand you’ve worked with our new CEO before." "Twelve years That’s why I’m your new CMO Mary brought me in to help get this place into shape We’re certain that this company is primed for leveraging data so we’re here to shake things up." JOHN "Once we shifted our focus to getting a decent data governance plan in place, we zeroed in on the best analytics engine we could find I’m enthused by our tech, so now it’s all about people We simply have to have more people " "You know we have zero budget for new hires? Let me ask you a straight question How can we dramatically improve things within our current resources and solution?" JOHN "Indeed! My current team could pull so much more value from the data and tools we already have if only we could be insights creators instead of just generating thoughtless, useless reports The people who come in see the value AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 22 JOHN .I just had four encouraging conversations this morning, but I can’t get everybody to see the whole picture all at once I don’t need more people, I just need managers to switch gears and start leveraging the data We have to have more buy-in to the idea that analytics is a tool and not a judgment." "This is all about the business value of our analytics investment Is our current implementation of AT Internet easy enough to use that we can get our business decisionmakers comfortable slicing and dicing?" JOHN "I want to raise revenue, lower costs and increase customer satisfaction How well is the money we’re spending contributing to the growth of our higher value customers?" "Yes, it is But let’s start with the business problems we’re trying to solve If you want to drive from Paris to Berlin, our conversation about data is very different than if you want to get from Paris to London." "Well, I want to both and get to San Francisco as well So here’s the problem: I want to raise revenue, lower costs and increase customer satisfaction, but the most important question to answer is how well the money we’re spending on all our different promotional efforts in different marketing channels is contributing to the growth of our higher-value customers For example, we have a content marketing program but no strategy We barely have a content marketing philosophy How can we measure the success of our videos, white papers and blog posts so we know what we should be doing more of and what we should stop doing?" JOHN "Well, first we have to define success What’s the goal?" "Standard marketing metrics, right along the customer life cycle: intent to purchase, purchase, customer satisfaction." JOHN "OK So, Jennifer runs the Behavioral group and they share intent with Research Research does the text analysis stuff – what people say – and Susan’s group looks at what people do: clicks, time on site, recency, frequency and such Think of it as Research looking outside the company and Behavioral watching what happens on our own properties." "OK But I’ve been thwarted by tools that offer a massive number of reports, but throw up technical roadblocks or charge exorbitant fees when we want to drill People learn not to ask really good questions because of how long and how much money it takes to get answers I’m not as familiar with the AT Internet suite as I’d like, so walk me through it." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 23 JOHN "It’s a really flexible system but without the pain and suffering of a raw SQL query so yes, we can slice and dice without the questions needing to go through a programmer We just need to get people trained on asking really good questions." "OK, fine Let’s say people get beyond the regular, basic behavioral or consumption stuff Can we readily derive more important metrics like customer lifetime value?" JOHN "Well, this is a bit more complicated because of the variables I mean, one piece of content can be consumed in multiple versions across multiple devices and even on lots of different websites because we syndicate it through affiliates It’s not as daunting as it sounds; with the content tagged appropriately, we can tell you which type of content in which format works best on which devices." "But let’s say some new business unit wakes up to the power of analytics, comes to your team and starts asking a bunch of questions The first answer is inevitably, ‘We don’t know,’ because they haven’t followed your tagging protocol Their data is meaningless How you keep them interested?" JOHN "The AT Internet Data Manager is powerful, but like any tag management system, it relies on a straightforward tagging protocol in order to assure current and historical data quality and consistency So, to keep them from walking away and not coming back, maybe our new CMO can make our tagging protocol law Then we could answer questions, provide insights and turn this place into a data-driven insights machine." "Are we getting enough detail out of AT Internet to let product managers and merchandisers and store managers freely ask a wide variety of questions?" JOHN "We’re tagging and tracking the usual stuff from up at the category level to monitor the marketplace, down to internal search to see where our menus are failing We can multivariate testing We can watch Flash content and mobile sites " "But what if we want to create something new, like a tag that denotes a specific interaction like a combination of behaviors over a certain time period that indicates interest in one product segment over another?" AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 24 JOHN "Yes, we can create custom metrics which means unlimited customer dimensions In other words, we have a true analytics engine instead of pre-canned reports." "Alright, let’s try this: We have multiple stores online and offline, selling the same product in different colors and sizes sometimes under different brand names Can you tell me how many blue, size 6, cap sleeve, knee-length dresses we sold in each store and in total, and what sort of customers bought them and what got them to us in the first place?" JOHN "We can analyze the interaction between online and offline .AT Internet’s system gives us a real end-to-end view." "Yes to all of that You can also break it down by zip code or customer catchment area, which not only shows the sales turnover generated on and offline, but identifies cannibalization between the two We can even integrate our CRM data or use an AT Internet profiling partner to link consumption to specific profiles We can recognize the difference between online and offline shoppers and serve relevant content and offers in real time and then we can analyze the interaction between online and offline For example, a customer who bought online and picked up their order in store, but cancelled one item AT Internet’s system captures the updated order information and gives us a real end-to-end view." "Good But how well are we doing with data integration?" JOHN "We look at three types of data integration First, new data sources come into the Analytics Center of Excellence and I monitor all of that Second, we make sure those numbers show up properly in dashboards We’re very big on automating reports, so we spend a lot of time getting the dashboard right and as little time as possible grinding them out Think of these two as input and output." "I’ve found reports are fine for accounting, but we need to operate based on thresholds, alerts and the development of insights I have yet to see a new idea pop up out of a dashboard." JOHN "Our delivery team prides itself on providing meaningful dashboards with standard gauges to assure you things are running fine We show pops-and-drops, which are the alerts, and then comments, which are inklings and hunches and questions This is where they work with our senior analysts who are the discovery folks AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 25 JOHN .They are the ones who liaise with business units and the product managers to figure out if they can glean meaning out of the numbers and come up with insights to drive the business." "To that well, we need ultimate flexibility with the data Lay out the restrictions for me How far back can we go and how granular is the data we can look at?" JOHN "This isn’t a black box We own all of our data It doesn’t go away unless we want it to, and I believe we want at least two years in order to seasonal comparisons." "How much you trust the data?" JOHN "You mean, data quality?" "I mean, if an analyst comes to me and says the data suggests we should place all of our bets on red products this season, how seriously should I consider it?" JOHN "That’s a matter of confidence I trust our behavioral data and our transactional data with 97% confidence and " "Not 100%?" JOHN "Stuff happens – real life But there are quality assurance steps throughout – when we capture the data, when we process it, when we plug it into dashboards and when we export it to other systems." "Once we get people to understand that some data is more trustworthy than others, how we get them comfortable asking questions?" JOHN "’The data suggests,’ is the important thing here So far, intellectual capacity and gut feel are more capable – flawed, yes, but capable – of weighing a massive number of variables and coming to a conclusion The data might suggest something, but people with years of experience are much more astute at ‘knowing’ if the advice makes sense or is a statistical anomaly." "So you’re not all about the data, all the time." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 26 JOHN "A clock tells me it’s lunch time, but can’t tell me if I’m hungry." "Your watch should be able to someday." "The magic happens when people understand the possibilities, and their ad hoc questions are less about proving last quarter’s good decisions, and more about making informed decisions today." JOHN "And your product managers should be able to determine if there’s a market for it." "Now I want to ask about the real value that comes out of the far end of all this data diving I need to really understand where, how and when we get orders of magnitude return on our investment on technology, process and people I need to defend all of this to the Board They get it, but they don’t quite believe it yet." JOHN "Well, now we’re back to the fact that we have a decent data governance plan and a solid analytics engine in place So now, it’s all about people." "We need to bring them on board." JOHN "Right, and there are multiple issues First, they have to understand the upside For that, we have Lunch-and-Learn sessions, success story case studies and online tutorials, but they won’t come or read or participate until they are convinced, and they won’t take the time to be convinced unless there’s a downside to staying away Put analytics in their performance reviews to make them viscerally interested in the process rather than just the result, and they’ll stop ignoring the analytics Once they see what the ACE can for them " "ACE?" JOHN "Sorry, Analytics Center of Excellence Then they’ll start getting creative about using data That’s when you start getting orders of magnitude return on investment The ACE can get them started, but the magic happens when they really understand the possibilities and their ad hoc questions are less about proving that they made a good decision last quarter and more about making a more informed decision today." "But you’re still going to have to get them to tolerate this governance scheme you have in mind." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 27 JOHN "We have to get them to comply with the data governance structure we have in place First they get it, then they like it, and then they want it That makes them willing to the work to make it work." "You sure you don’t have some marketing experience hidden in your resume?" JOHN "This is a new way of thinking about business .Gut feel has worked for humans for millions of years, but data-informed gut feel is demonstrably better." "Scout’s honor So, you motivate them, I educate them, their peers convince them by example and once they’re on board with the governance process " "So spell out the orders of magnitude return." JOHN "This is about a new way of thinking about business Once our directors and managers understand the depth of our data and the ways we can slice and dice, they will start to ask more kinds of questions That’s going to make all of them more willing to turn to data as part of their decision-making process Gut feel has worked for humans for millions of years but data-informed gut feel is demonstrably better." "You want to see all of them to log in and start asking questions?" JOHN "Some of them, certainly But not all of them have the time to acquire the in-depth knowledge about which data are trustworthy, and to what degree." "So you’re not a proponent of data democratization?" JOHN "I’m also not a proponent of everybody managing their legal problems or medical diagnoses There are certain skills that take a while to hone and business decision-makers are not usually trained in those areas That’s why we have policies and oversight committees." "But you agree that we want to get them to the point where they can ask ad hoc questions." JOHN "Yes, that is the goal If we can get everybody excited enough to really get creative with their questions then we end up with orders of magnitude return on investment." "But if they get good at it and ask a lot, then they overrun your ACE with query after query I’ve seen whole reporting processes grind to a halt because too many people started asking too many questions and since they couldn’t manipulate the data themselves " AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 28 JOHN "I’ve seen that too and that’s another reason we went with the AT Internet approach This engine is capable of interactive, drag-and-drop, on-the-fly segmentation that lets me slice on any dimension, preview the results to see if it makes sense before pushing it out to a hundred dashboards We need the business side of the house to use their intuition and experience to see if our results make sense in terms of reality on the street, but we can’t give them the keys or it’s too easy for them to tweak their questions ever so slightly to get the answers they want, rather than surfacing new truths That’s where the analyst and the business person need to work together And that’s why I think we have the technology and the processes now we just need to get the people in this company to see data as a valuable tool and not an accounting of their abilities." "This engine is capable of interactive, dragand-drop, on-the-fly segmentation that lets me slice on any dimension, preview the results to see if it makes sense before pushing it out to a hundred dashboards." "I get your point But I want to be very sure your team and tech are up to the task Let’s say somebody comes up with a unique, custom variable and then wants to use it in other calculations that get used elsewhere? Like people with formulas in spreadsheets?" JOHN "Not only can we create those kind of metrics, we can encode them so that when somebody asks a complex question that references that calculation, the query for that variable executes against the most current data we have You can create a multidimensional variable and stick it in a dashboard and then it’s built in." "But if we really get on a roll, I don’t want my people to be stymied in the middle of a brainstorming session by being told they’re asking for too much, too fast For instance, how long would it take you to give me a report highlighting which content elements and on which platforms were most likely responsible for driving sales of red shoes in the past two weeks?" JOHN "About three minutes." "And if I said I wanted it to be month-over-month by demographic and personality type by region?" JOHN "Another three minutes." "Updated daily with three threshold alerts to be emailed to five different people." JOHN "One more minute." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 29 "And show the difference in profit between purchase journeys that started on a phone versus those that started on a tablet versus a desktop." JOHN "Two more minutes." "Broken down by whether they received and/or opened a promotional email." JOHN "Another minute." "Who were also exposed to a specific display ad." JOHN "Another minute." "For people who purchased within two days, five days and ten days." JOHN "Another two minutes." "As compared to blue shoes, by size and brand." JOHN "Three hours." "Wait Why?" JOHN "Because it will take the first hour to round up all of the people whose business decisions will be based on the results of that query, and the next hour to find out why they are asking the question Then I’ll know enough to use other data they are unaware of to give them much more nuanced answers they can use for lots of decisions." "And the third hour?" JOHN "Lunch." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 30 About AT Internet AT Internet is one of the world’s major players in Digital Analytics Its decision-making solutions and services provide companies with an integral analysis of their performance and presence on all online digital platforms: the web, mobile and social media The strength of AT Internet’s technology and the quality of its customer relations are recognised worldwide AT Internet has more than 3,500 clients all over the world from all sectors The company, which has more than 200 employees, is present in 32 different countries through its clients, subsidiaries and partners Credits: Author: Jim Sterne Illustrations: Mark Hill Layout & graphics: Romain Zampieri Copywriting & editorial coordination: Ashley Kibler, Bernard Segarra Legal notice: The brands and logos contained in this document are registered or nonregistered trademarks, property of the AT Internet Corporation, or third parties Any use not explicitly authorized by the holders of the aforesaid brands is strictly prohibited Any reproduction, partial or total, of this document without the express authorization of AT Internet is prohibited AT Internet reserves the right to update the current document at any time and without prior notice Non-binding document and informations © AT Internet - 2014 AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER 31 Contact Bordeaux (HQ) / Paris +33 (0)1 56 54 14 30 London +44 (0)20 3178 5356 Madrid +34 (0) 119 800 17 Moscow +7 903 144 96 93 Munich / Hamburg +49 (0) 89/ 32 49 27-0 / +49 (0)40/ 360 29 95 82 São Paulo +55 11 3192 3991 Singapore +65 (0)6391 9965 www.atinternet.com © 2014 AT Internet DE.CL.3-000001090 [...]... good at it and ask a lot, then they overrun your ACE with query after query I’ve seen whole reporting processes grind to a halt because too many people started asking too many questions and since they couldn’t manipulate the data themselves " AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 28 JOHN "I’ve seen that too and that’s another reason we went with the AT... business decisions will be based on the results of that query, and the next hour to find out why they are asking the question Then I’ll know enough to use other data they are unaware of to give them much more nuanced answers they can use for lots of decisions." "And the third hour?" JOHN "Lunch." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 30 About AT Internet... going to have to get them to tolerate this governance scheme you have in mind." AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 27 JOHN "We have to get them to comply with the data governance structure we have in place First they get it, then they like it, and then they want it That makes them willing to do the work to make it work." "You sure you don’t have... want to see all of them to log in and start asking questions?" JOHN "Some of them, certainly But not all of them have the time to acquire the in- depth knowledge about which data are trustworthy, and to what degree." "So you’re not a proponent of data democratization?" JOHN "I’m also not a proponent of everybody managing their legal problems or medical diagnoses There are certain skills that take a. .. AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 25 JOHN .They are the ones who liaise with business units and the product managers to figure out if they can glean meaning out of the numbers and come up with insights to drive the business." "To do that well, we need ultimate flexibility with the data Lay out the restrictions for me How far back can we go and... online tutorials, but they won’t come or read or participate until they are convinced, and they won’t take the time to be convinced unless there’s a downside to staying away Put analytics in their performance reviews to make them viscerally interested in the process rather than just the result, and they’ll stop ignoring the analytics Once they see what the ACE can do for them " "ACE?" JOHN "Sorry, Analytics... "This is about a new way of thinking about business Once our directors and managers understand the depth of our data and the ways we can slice and dice, they will start to ask more kinds of questions That’s going to make all of them more willing to turn to data as part of their decision-making process Gut feel has worked for humans for millions of years but data-informed gut feel is demonstrably better."... get them comfortable asking questions?" JOHN " The data suggests,’ is the important thing here So far, intellectual capacity and gut feel are more capable – flawed, yes, but capable – of weighing a massive number of variables and coming to a conclusion The data might suggest something, but people with years of experience are much more astute at ‘knowing’ if the advice makes sense or is a statistical anomaly."... to assure current and historical data quality and consistency So, to keep them from walking away and not coming back, maybe our new CMO can make our tagging protocol law Then we could answer questions, provide insights and turn this place into a data-driven insights machine." "Are we getting enough detail out of AT Internet to let product managers and merchandisers and store managers freely ask a wide... certain time period that indicates interest in one product segment over another?" AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 24 JOHN "Yes, we can create custom metrics which means unlimited customer dimensions In other words, we have a true analytics engine instead of pre-canned reports." "Alright, let’s try this: We have multiple stores online and offline,