Some con-Fusion about web analytics implementations
Despite being a newly minted Omniture customer I constantly find myself somewhat out of sync with the announcements the company makes about being the “first ever” and “industry’s only”. Usually I chalk this confusion up to their being excellent marketers and sales people and my being, well, not an Omniture employee. But last week I read a press release from the company that had me wondering if I’ve been working in the same industry as the nice folk from Orme.
According to this very well written press release, “Omniture Fusion(TM) accelerates time to action for their customers” and is “a new industry implementation methodology that provides customers with an explicit roadmap for taking action on their analytics data, allowing them to improve their business in weeks if not days.” The press release goes on to say that “Omniture Consulting’s Fusion methodology takes a proactive, customer-centric approach by conducting a thorough business assessment that helps to determine vertical key performance indicators and business objectives” and that “Omniture Consulting formed the Fusion methodology in 2007.”
Now, I’m not in Utah this week and so I can’t just find Matt Belkin or one of his guys and ask, but there absolutely has to be something I’m missing about Omniture Fusion(TM). I mean, doesn’t every vendor use this exact same methodology when they implement a for-fee analytics solution? The exact same implementation strategy I wrote about in my now classic book Web Analytics Demystified back in 2004?
I have to be missing something … so the conversation I’d like to have here in the Future of blog is about the future of how the technology is implemented into the business, not just he nuts and bolts of the web site.
Setting aside for a moment Ian’s bold prediction, let’s assume that vendors like Omniture, WebTrends, Coremetrics, etc. continue to provide for-fee analytics solutions that need to be integrated into the existing business infrastructure. And let’s also assume, despite Ian’s recent announcement that Gatineau has an automagic integration solution, that Omniture Fusion(TM) Certified Consultants, Omniture’s competitors, and their ilk in the private sector are still required to manage the integration process …
If this is true, what does that process look like in the Future?
Rene, in his typically prescient fashion, has already outlined OX2/LBi’s vision for how integration consulting will happen as our industry matures, citing various specializations. But what if Ian is more right than wrong, and what if the stuff we’re doing today with so-called “Enterprise” software evolves requiring integrations to be held to a much higher standard? What if instead of proprietary data-warehouses and unfortunately thin (or non-existent) APIs we used SAS, Terradata, Oracle and SPSS to understand visitor behavior? What if the finance organization starts looking for real forecasting information from web analytics, not just crappy estimates based on recently collected data?
I’ll put a stake in the ground and say that nothing changes about the process (either the one Omniture formed in 2007 or the one I first described in 2004 after having implemented for WebSideStory since 2002, whichever you want) but that the work we do becomes increasingly and perhaps insanely complex. Think about the work you do today — whether you’re a vendor like Ian, a consultant like Rene, an industry analyst like John, or those of you who are practitioners — and how it will change if web analytics is not so much integrated into your CMS, but part of the true Enterprise infrastructure?
If this vision plays out, the business objectives become bigger, the KPIs cross channels, and the business assessment needs to be conducted by an entirely different class (or a differently trained class) of individuals. Instead of well-meaning folks just out of college, the true Enterprise might start looking to global business consultants like Accenture, EDS, and IBM for their web analytics implementations. Perhaps this is what Accenture was thinking when they bought Maxamine and Memetrics recently, who knows?
Anyway, I suspect Kristi Knight will call me tomorrow and explain what Omniture Fusion(TM) is really all about which will be nice. But I will still be very interested in what you, the Future Collective, think about where integrations are heading as web analytics continues to grow up.
Eric T. Peterson
CEO, Web Analytics Demystified, Inc.
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com
Charlie Ballard added the following ...
Steve, I couldn’t agree more. The manager of measurement & analytics at an interactive marketing agency, we’re currently in the process of building out the IT infrastructure to warehouse and integrate all the disparate data from Paid Search, SEO, Rich Media, static banner ads, email, widgets, and so on… and it’s frankly a pain in the ass.
Totally doable, but why doesn’t an Omniture or someone who already has relationships with many of these data vendors already realize the market need for this and make it far simpler.
I just realized today that I can’t use Omniture Data Warehouse to pull SearchCenter campaign spend data along with site metrics like Application Rate and Average Sale. Because Data Warehouse doesn’t integrate SearchCenter engine spend data in with SiteCatalyst site activity data.
Are you kidding me? This too I have to do myself?
Eric Peterson added the following ...
@Steve and Charlie: Since you’re both in the target audience for the post, what about the idea that someday companies are going to be looking towards big integrators like Accenture to do the work we do today? Do you see that as a possible/likely outcome, or do you believe that this work will remain niche enough for long enough that more will change before that future has a chance to manifest?
Also, Steve I wonder a little bit about your thoughts on the “ASP-ification” of the world. I know it sounds compelling but I wonder if that will just make the integration even more heinous than it can be today? I mean, there is the potential to remove the little bit of flexibility companies have today when they own their own datamarts and have (mostly) full control over the flow.
Charlie basically highlights this noting that his ASP service doesn’t let him integrate with their own products. So what happens when your ASP is trying to talk to another ASP? I know, I know, this is what APIs are for, but I think we’re just now barely starting to see APIs in the field and based on what I’m hearing they’re really not providing the value advertised.
Anyway, thanks for pushing the conversation along. I think everyone else is in Utah and not paying attention this week but I’d love to hear your thoughts about who ultimately will be doing web analytics integrations in 5 years.
Steve Jackson added the following ...
@Eric: I agree that right now the ASP functionality is poor. Integration is dire at the moment, it’s why we all feel the pain, and why I said I’d like to see the free and paid platforms upgrade this functionality.
However the very fact that Google Analytics is free proves the technology available is now starting to become robust enough to handle integration on a larger scale. GA handles 10 times (conservative estimate) as many customers as Omniture with far less problems on integration, think how well adwords works with GA. Ok we know GA isn’t perfect, it isn’t the answer, but it’s a step in the right direction.
At the moment the Omnitures of the world have yet to capitalize on the processing power of the world wide computer as Nick Carr calls it but I would say it’s simply a technical issue that needs to be fixed. That’s easy to do with a bit of investment so in the future I think that’s what we’ll see because the reward is too great to ignore. Omniture have only scratched the surface of their potential in my opinion.
Right now you’re right - integration can’t be outsourced well so it generally isn’t and businesses do it in house or hire companies like Satama to do it with Excel! I do believe this is part of the reason Accenture have made a move into this field as well because they see the integration problem as an opportunity.
However I think it’s being short sighted if they don’t think about fixing the problem at the ASP level as a service. If they fix the integration problem once they shouldn’t ever have to do it again. Just supply us with the framework to do what we need to do and support us in setting it all up and we’ll do the rest. Give us all the control, allow us the freedom to upload any dataset, allow us the ability to create our own dashboards, delivery mechanisms, predictions. Build an ASP that does all that and the worlds companies would use it. It’s a brave new world, with just a handful of mean we can start all over again! (No wait that was war of the worlds!:)
I would ping the question back do you believe that it’s better to pay consultancies thousands of euros a day to crunch data into a digestible form using excel (or something like it) when this could and should be automated by logging in somewhere? I know most businesses HATE that kind of expense but we have no option but to charge them for it.
Currently in the non-Visual site/load world that’s what we have to do. An opportunity I think.
Charlie Ballard added the following ...
“what about the idea that someday companies are going to be looking towards big integrators like Accenture to do the work we do today? Do you see that as a possible/likely outcome, or do you believe that this work will remain niche enough for long enough that more will change before that future has a chance to manifest?”
The problem, here, Eric, is that we’re not all large companies with massive budgets for consulting. My agency has fewer than 100 employees, and there’s yet still a huge need for integration — as I’m sure there is within thousands of other agencies and marketing departments across the globe.
What’s necessary is a universal ASP solution which is easily scalable in terms of cost and bandwidth, and maintains an independent objectivity enough such that the DARTs, Googles, Optimosts, etc. of the world will all be willing to share their data with it. The technology itself is actually pretty simple, somebody just needs to figure out the revenue sharing and bring it to market.
What’s even more interesting about the idea of this kind of “one tech connects all” play is that it alone might have the chance to finally analyze the effect that multiple tactics have on individual consumers. If set up properly it might be able to examine the most effective marketing mix model and suggesting where the levers need to be scaled back or pulled harder in order to maximize cross-campaign efficiency from general brand/product awareness through to engagement, conversion, and retention.
Omniture had (still has) the chance to do this with Genesis, but they’re going to screw it up with a combination of terrible customer service and a focus on the short-term revenues. The cost of Genesis integration is just too high for most potential partners to be willing to swallow right now. One of our firm’s divisions (OTOLabs) is presently one of the most well-known producers of widgets and distributed media, yet they passed on Genesis without a second’s thought when they heard how much Omniture wanted to charge for the initial setup.
Had Omniture instead made Genesis integration open source but instead leaned on revenues generated from how clients apply this cross-tech data they might have had something built to last. Instead now I’m looking to see who else might be able to pull it off. Maybe Accenture comes out with a smaller do-it-yourself model.
Judah Phillips at Web Analytics Demystified » Blog Archive » Questions Asked When Assessing Web Analytics and some Random Thoughts… added the following ...
[…] Fusion, and improved capabilities for tracking video. All sounds very exciting. But, like Eric, I’m wondering what revolutionary new methodology Fusion really is? Or is just what […]
Steve Jackson added the following ...
Hi Eric,
You’ve touched on a pain point of mine. At a recent Web Analytics Wednesday in Helsinki I was asked “What is the hardest thing about web analytics?”
I replied data integration. I constantly find myself using Excel do bring together various sources of data because other tools (like Visual Site) are not readily available.
However Omniture & Visual Site does offer a solution to this problem with Visual Load. What I would like to see the free & paid platforms develop is an easy way to integrate data (any data) into the mix. Then allow us as analysts make up our minds how we want to use that data.
I do see the ASP solution as a growth industry. As I menetioned in my response to Ian’s post as utility companies grow in size thus allowing more robust ASP solutions to come along I can see a time when all the big companies supplying BI systems, IBM, SAS, Oracle, SPSS etc will be run via ASP. This in my view is the biggest threat facing these companies today as more and more of the IT requirements are outsourced.
Nick Carr wrote a good book about this called The Big Switch, where he compares the outsourcing of electricity to the outsourcing of computing power. In the early days of Electricity everyone had their own power generators, till a subsidiary of GE invented the global network that supplied it all reliably and at a fraction of the cost.
This is what Google (and others like Amazon, eBay) are doing now, and how they can offer you an mail account with 6GB of free email space.
If I were Omniture I would be looking to compete with the BI guys by building BI systems as an ASP, add predictave tools to an ASP run version of Visual Site/Load and you’re halfway there already. More likely they will end up being bought by one of these big BI players when they start getting too competitive and force the BI company to shift to their model.
If we could buy on an outsourced basis all the tools we needed without having to invest in any IT people, hardware or software then you can bet it will happen, simple economics forces the situation. The companies that capitalize on that are the new GE’s of the world.
As for predictions on time for these kind of developments, I hate making these because things move as fast as the market requires and because the mainstream market hasn’t yet really caught up with web analytics it’s very hard. Think how many paying customers IBM and Microsoft have, that’s how many customers need to have web analytics installations before time becomes predictable. 5-10 years at least.
Cheers
Steve