You’re a quick draw – you commented on my response to this post before I could put the link up here!

I got the vibe from your comment that you feel that I am throwing darts at your post, and that couldn’t be farther from the case; the posts you have written on the role of the analyst have been fantastic. I actually made the point of referencing the ‘analytics is easy/hard’ debate to make the point that I wanted to contribute to the great points you discuss here rather than start a traditional WA blog battle (the divisiveness in our small industry deserves some attention of it’s own)

It’s actually this whole concept of divisiveness that got me thinking about your post, and then writing about it. It seems like every few days there is a new vendor coming out saying that their product is ‘better than’ a web analytics tool, even though it is simply a new dataset for an analyst to use along with traditional clickstream. There are new concepts around how to do analysis competing for mindshare daily as well. With all these tools and tips competing against each other at the speed of twitter, it’s almost impossible for new or experienced analysts to sit back and look at the big picture of “What do I do and how should I do it?”.

As I mentioned in my post (http://bit.ly/aEq4Yy), we agree on 90% of the evolution of the role of the web analyst, but the last 10% makes for an interesting discussion. As the president of a managed web analysis firm, we embed full time analysts into online retailers to help them make better decisions by better understanding their data. With every new customer, we face the same challenges outlined in your blog, but have a process in place to earn the right to evolve report fulfillment into targeted strategy and then digital project management. Ultimately these are all components of the role of a good analyst.

When I am at the pub talking with other analysts, the discussion invariably goes towards the standard challenges we all face in getting our respective “I feel, I think, I hope” decisionmakers to buy into information based decisionmaking, with all the data we can squeeze out of the disparate toolsets we are given. The post you wrote is the best I have read yet on what those challenges are.

I think you hit the nail on the head in your comment on the Napkyn blog: My post was about talking about making things work better and evolve with the current landscape, and yours was on how things should evolve for best use of the analyst and best impact on the business.

I would love to hear more about your experiences, as ours are based on working exclusively with retailers and B2B firms in the mid-market. Based on your background, it looks like your experience is more at the enterprise end of the scale. Perhaps the interesting point that we are making together is that the experience of the SMB analyst is completely different from the Enterprise analyst. Might be worth elaborating on in a joint post sometime.

Thanks again for the great post, it’s rare to read something that gets me so excited I turn off Excel for a few minutes to talk about it.

Cheers,

Jim

I love what you said and believe the value of any data piece is the story it tells to either (1) inform (2) guide (3) inspire or (4) validate. I am from one of those companies who have called you and we are not looking for your web analytic skills. We have a lot of those. We are looking for interesting creative data thinkers to help clients solve business problems and drive innovative and informative uses of data. This includes all data sources, so maybe the emphasis on web analytics threw you off. I would love to talk more if you are interested…

Excellent post. As the channels multiply and their reach into our lives grows, so to will the opportunity to develop richer understanding of clients/stakeholders based on complex interrelationships. Drawing this data in and leveraging it against the full scope of the business (and I’m not just talking about sales, but also the “softer” aspects such as corporate image, social responsibility, shareholder outreach, etc.) will require agile, aware strategists of the type you describe. That’s where the fun jobs will be.

- Alex

You are on a hot streak with some great posts!

-Rudi

One frustrating aspect of this industry is that every business is waking up to the idea that they need web analysts, but they don’t know what one should look like or do–or get paid! They can’t decide whether to categorize the analyst with IT or marketing or something else, when, in fact, the analyst needs to stand somewhat apart from them all.

Clearly, as you brilliantly outlined, you don’t want to be a web analyst, you want to be a strategist who can leverage data, experience, business skills, and creativity to take the most optimal and realistic decisions – that’s what I want to!

Stéphane