Succeeding with business analysts

Every organization employs business analysts through different titles, business units, reporting structure, etc. What I often found was a significant disconnect among the duties, organizational goals and qualifications of the employees involved. Here I am not referring to individual qualifications, instead how they fit in with the management’s vision of applied analytics to achieve organizational goals.

I have had financial analysts performing the tasks of a marketing analyst, a web analyst performing the task of a business analyst and so on.

I believe there are 3 key considerations in improving the effectiveness of a business analyst to an organization:

• Qualifications – a business analyst should be numbers savvy, have keen business acumen and be able to visualize and theorize (this is often the most ignored). However trivial this may sound, it is more common than one would imagine.
• Clear goal definition – business unit heads should clearly define the business analysts’ roles, More importantly, they should resist the temptation to “take on more” because the organization is budget constrained and analyst is the “closest fit” to the functional skills needed for say, a tech analyst, tagging/implementation/Q&A analysts, etc. This only helps to dilute the impact a pure thinker and data expert can provide to analyzing and improving the business operations.
• Direction from management – managers should provide continuous direction and help channelize the theories on business performance that analysts come up with based on their continuous interaction with data. The challenge is to stay focused on organization goals, identify high-impact analysis/recommendations and prioritize projects with clear ROI and benefits.

Being in a large organization, I have struggled with all of the above, which resulted in not being able to hire/retain good talent, and/or generate and apply good analytical insights to test our theories. 

The issues in achieving the maximum efficiencies are sometime genuine, but without a qualified analyst, clear goals and leadership, we are not giving ourselves a fair shot at tackling them. Have a story? Share your experiences of how these hurdles were overcome in your organizations.

Guide to making Web Analytics more accurate! - rewind

I felt the need to bring this up again as organizations are pushing for better returns from their online strategies and web analytics.

Understanding business imperatives, setting clear goals, defining success metrics, continuous testing and robust/agile implementation is what it all boils down to ... when it comes to effective utilization of web analytics for business improvement.

Below is an excerpt:

A recent eMarketer study identified top issues with the accuracy of analytics. Most prominently, users said they can't drill into the data (42%), and called out the issues with marketing attribution (32%), campaign tracking code (25%) and cross site analysis (20%). These factors become prominent as the business evolves over time and market driven changes are incorporated across the site. However, with some planning and framework, we can define and implement a robust analytics strategy that is flexible and adapts to the evolving business needs and site-wide changes.


Here's the link to the original post: http://www.analyticsheaven.com/2009/11/guide-to-making-web-analytics-more.html

The data is in abundance - looking at what matters and applying for business success is what matters ... happy hunting!

Is the business Main Page enabling your consumers?

A lot is invested in creating that spell-binding first impression (our main page, or front door!), but are you doing all you can to ensure that the experience is in line with your consumers' expectations? I wanted to draw our attention to this often hyped, yet overlooked disconnect! Applying this concept to our web site may bring amazing results, not just in terms of conversion (this is unique based on our business goal/s), but also, consumer satisfaction, which drives loyalty and a positive "word of mouth" - all very important considerations!

The primary goal of your "front door" should be clearly defined, keeping in mind the needs of your consumers. Assuming, market research has helped you focus on the consumer need, the next step is to focus on your primary goals? Is it; branding, growing traffic, addressing a consumer need in your niche market, growing revenue, driving traffic to other parts of your site, etc. Once you chose the primary goal, the remainder on the list above can still be addressed as secondary goals, while staying focused on a positive consumer experience. One could also address more than one primary goal from the main page, but that starts to get into addressing a specific need within a niche market segment. A case in point - Google, which meets a critical consumer need for search and achieves several goals - high traffic, positive branding, etc.

So, the strategy should be identify/target a consumer need in the market segment, and tailor the experience to closely match your primary goal(s). Focus on one or the other and you risk losing consumer attention, loyalty and branding - all of which can hurt the business in the long term.