What an analytics specialist should do for your business

Thanking Avinash Kaushik (at right) after his 2012 SES presentation. He advocated in his book Web Analytics 2.0 the 90/10 rule on analytics budget - spend more on the analyst/training and less on the tool.

The business world is adopting website data and metrics as the guidance to understanding customers and developing new ideas. But what should a small company look for when considering an analyst for its needs.

The temptation is to focus on the skill set with a given tool. This is natural but can be an overemphasis on one aspect. Avinash Kaushik, co-Founder of Market Motive Inc and Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google, once stated that 10% of every analysis budget should go towards the tool; 90% towards the analysts. He understood technology and how a spend on a particular tool has a limited period of value before something else comes along.

Businesses should focus on people who understand some of the technical but also the strategic purposes within the business. Thomas Davenport in Competing on Analytics believed that understanding those purposes is at the heart of analytic value. His quote:

"Without a distinctive capability (what you do to set your business apart), it becomes impossible to compete and distinguish what data is important."

A good analyst should be able to understand what your distinctive capability is. He or she can then related that capability to the dimensions and metrics that conduct the reporting.

Here is how that understanding gets applied in your business.

• An analyst understands KPIs - the metrics that monitor a business' performance - or at least how the business objectives are represented online
• An analyst can help set up the best tag structure according to the KPIs and objectives. Thus a business receives guidance to link data to your business resources. For web analytics, the guidance is valuable when developing marketing plans or social media strategy.
• An analyst has an ability to see trends and correlate data to business objectives. An analyst is not afraid of raw thinking with the data – There are many ways analysts can convey "raw thinking". I keep paper and pad available to think through what is being presented.
• Ultimately an analyst has the following characteristics: Curiosity with reviewing details, even when the marketing data is a mystery and being Proactive once the objectives for an analytics review are understood (Keep in mind: you and an analyst should be in communication with each other to stay in sync)

One note: in some instances, a business may not have KPIs identified. But every business will have objectives, and select metrics to reflect those objectives yields the same process as that for businesses with KPIs.

But no matter the semantics about the starting point, ask yourself "What type of analysis do I need of my business?" The answer will lead to the best description for hiring analytic support.

Reviewing analytics data - whether by team or with a dedicated analyst - requires an understanding of the business objectives and reviewing how to best match those objectives.