Analytics can refer to a million things, ranging from a simple report to hardcore machine learning. To make better decisions, you need to be aligned on what people in the room mean when they say “analytics” – otherwise, your implementation plans will go astray.
Google Analytics is one of the most commonly used applications in business today. As useful as it is, it’s not actually an analytical tool - it’s a reporting tool. Here’s the difference between reporting and analytics.
Importantly, these differences mean that the kinds of people who will love building and producing reports are not the same people who will love doing analytics. We find that people who are good at reporting are most happy when things match up perfectly in the data, meaning when you put them in an uncertain situation that requires analytics, they’re not in their element. A data analyst, on the other hand, might get easily bored with reporting but loves the ambiguity of the situations that require solving new problems and coming up with creative solutions. The answer they produce might not be 100% perfect, but it’s useful – and they are okay with that!
If you are building analytics capability and are unsure of your next steps (or you’re not taking steps quickly enough), then we suggest you divide your analytical tasks up between your in-house team and your analytics partner.
The most practical way to do this is to have your internal team focus on what’s happening right now and what has happened in the past, and for the analytics partner to focus on predicting what’s going to happen in the future. Here’s why.
With that said, looking to the future shouldn’t be a fully outsourced analytics function – you need the internal domain knowledge to make it work well, and you'll want to be involved so that your team can learn and capture that future-looking IP into your own predictive capabilities.
When you’re talking about driving value from ‘analytics’, it’s important to have a clear idea of what you mean. Are you talking about getting better reporting and insight into what’s happening? Or getting better at collecting your data and making it available throughout the business? Or using your data to optimise and create business value?
Unsure where to start? Get in touch with us to learn more about how we’ve helped dozens of businesses solve sticky challenges, unlock customer insight and cut costs by millions through data analytics.