We’ve all experienced this kind of scenario.  A new company arrives on the market with a product that is highly functional and meets our needs phenomenally.  The product is well designed and is of high quality.  The care and focus of the manufacturer is obvious.  The company gains a good foothold in the market, then decides to start adding more to it’s product line, and the focus starts to get lost.  The company moves beyond it’s core business and quality drops.   What can digital analytics learn from this?  Why does is it always perceived as a negative for a ..read more

We talk regularly, both internally and externally, about the concept of Sustainable Analytics.  This is the practice of running your digital analytics program so that it focuses on providing value and support the key areas of the business while ensuring it is maintainable and accurate.   When looking at Sustainable Analytics, how can it help a digital analytics program be indispensable to a business?  Wouldn’t doing less, not tracking everything for example, make a digital analytics program less valuable to a business?   On this week’s episode of the 33 Tangents podcast, Ji ..read more

On last week’s episode we talked about the concept of businesses that can be seen as boring, but are very profitable.  One of the key things with those businesses is that they are indispensable to their customers.   Over the years we’ve talked about the struggles with digital analytics, and while there has been progress, it’s still not seen as indispensable to a business.  Why is that?  What does it mean for something to be indispensable?  What does a digital analytics team need to do to be indispensable to a business?   On this week’s episode of the 33 Tangents p ..read more

What comes to mind when the term “boring yet profitable business” is used?  Often times these are businesses that have developed & refined offerings that are integral and indispensable to their customers.  They can often be derided for not being flashy or trendy, but that treatment fair?   What goes into reaching that kind of status?  Are businesses actively thinking about reaching that point?  What can prevent a business from reaching that?   On this week’s episode of the 33 Tangents podcast, Jim and Jason discuss why the term “boring yet profitable business ..read more

In recent episodes we’ve looked at the concept of getting back to basics and simplicity.  We’ve discussed the benefits of refocusing attention on the key concepts and practices that can get overlooked or forgotten as analytics and testing programs age.   When a large amount of data is collected, it is easy to get lost in all of the possible analysis that can be done.  While it can be fun to search out insights, are there certain analyses that are core to a successful analytics program?  Are there ones that should not be overlooked even though they may not be as appealing ..read more

We’ve started a series of episodes about getting back to basics and the value of simplicity.  We’re looking at the benefits of refocusing attention on the key concepts and practices that can get overlooked or forgotten as analytics and testing programs age.     What are the best practices when it comes to designing a tag management architecture?  What needs to be considered when deciding on a TMS approach?  Is there a TMS methodology that provides the best approach?    On this week’s episode of the 33 Tangents podcast Jason and Jim are once again joined by Je ..read more

A new implementation can be exciting!  It’s a fresh canvas to work with.  A new client can present opportunities to try out ideas you’ve only thought of.  These are just two of the scenarios that analytics implementation engineers are presented with that create the pull to collect all of the data.     While this can be fun, exciting, and provide unique sets of data, there are problems that can result from an over-engineered analytics data collection solution.  Problems such as: Many times the solution designer has ideas for novel data that the analytics team does ..read more

Architecting data collection for multiple tools within a single vendor solution can be appear to be beneficial from the stand-point of reduced logic and streamlined integrations.  It can seem simplified and streamlined resulting in a solution that can be managed with greater ease.   Are there pitfalls when it comes to single-vendor solutions?  What problems with the data collection can present themselves?   On this week’s episode of the 33 Tangents podcast, Jim and Jason are joined by Jenn Kunz to discuss what organizations need to consider when working with a single vendor ..read more

Vendor lock-in occurs when a customer is made dependent on a vendor for products & services, unable to utilize other vendors without substantial cost.    How can organizations fall into a vendor lock-in situation?  What are the costs that are associated with vendor lock-in?  How can point analytics solutions lead to vendor-lock in?   On this week’s episode of the 33 Tangents Podcast, Jim and Jason discuss what can lead organizations to get stuck in a vendor lock-in situation.  While vendor lock-in is most often considered undesirable scenario, they also discus ..read more

Risks of point analytics solutions include myopic vision and teams working in isolation.  Teams implement solutions that fit a small amount of needs that do not take the needs of the organization, or the impacts to the organization, into account.  The downstream result is siloed data creating incomplete insights and even a poor customer experience.    If you have a customer experience this is supported by multiple data/platform touch points, and analytics is siloed, everyone may be able to claim success while in actuality it could be a terrible by the customer’s perspective ..read more