Building a Digital Analytics Organization Create Value by Integrating Analytical Processes, Technology, and People into Business Operations

The disciplines for managing information and information technology have grown up over
more than half a century. Computing and programming had been largely academic activities in
the early days, but these disciplines transformed the field into a true profession. When
corporations first applied “data processing” approaches to financial and other forms of
internal information, they introduced formal processes and structures to a previously
unstructured field. Operators in computer centers often wore white coats to signify their
professional and scientific focus. The high level of formality may have been misplaced, but it
allowed information management for structured, internal information to eventually be mastered
and to flourish as a field.
Over the past decade, an entirely new era in information management has emerged. It’s the
product of the Internet—digital data coming from the Web, email, online content, mobile
devices, millions of apps, and increasingly the “Internet of things.” Like the earliest computing
efforts, the management of digital data began as a casual, “hobbyist” activity. Companies often
had a part-time “Web guy” to design, install, and maintain a website. There was very little
measurement of digital activity, and loose management in other respects as well. Some large
and respected companies had frequent website outages and sometimes even allowed their
domain name registrations to lapse.
This book, however, is clear evidence that the management of digital data is growing up. A
key function of the management of any resource is analytics—establishing metrics, reporting on
them, and prediction and optimization of key variables. There has been talk of Web or digital
analytics for a number of years, but until recently it was not a serious effort for most firms.
Web analytics consisted largely of counting unique visitors or page views, and was again often
undertaken by part-time staff.
A rigorous, professional approach to digital analytics requires the types of management
approaches that are laid out in this book. You need more than part-time people. You need
careful thinking about what your metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are. You need
to move beyond reporting into prediction, optimization, and rigorous testing. Judah Phillips has
been an advocate of these serious disciplines for a long time, but now the world is ready to
adopt them—and the book comes along just in time.
There are plenty of books on Web analytics, but I think this one is distinctive in a number of
ways. One is that it is broader than Web analytics, treating the areas of social media, mobile,
behavioral targeting, and other sources of digital data. Most companies would be well advised
to take a more expansive view of digital analytics than just clickstreams on the Web.
Second, this book brings into the digital analytics space a sophistication in both data
management and data analysis that is not often found in Web analytics sources. On the
management side, it addresses topics like how to staff a digital analytics function, how to think
about data governance in this environment, and the relationship between the digital analytics
group and others in the organization who are working on other types of analytics. Something
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like data governance may not appeal to hobbyists, but it’s essential for a mature corporate
information environment.
On the data analysis front, I am very happy to see that Phillips brings in some of the best
classical thinking on data analysis. I have always thought that John Tukey’s ideas on
“exploratory data analysis” (EDA) were a great way to get close to your data and understand
its basic parameters, but you seldom see the idea in recent writing on analytics of any type. So
I was very happy to see a section on EDA in this book; it’s a great technique for exploration of
digital data.
Someday, I suspect, we will have analytics organizations that can address all types of data
—the digital types covered in this book, and other data about customers, finances, and
operations that are normally addressed in business analytics functions. This book is a great
step toward that integration, because—unlike many Web analytics books—it doesn’t assume
that digital analytics are the only type, and it encourages many of the same principles and
approaches used by the business analytics movement. Encouraging readers to go beyond
reporting into predictive analytics and testing is exactly what I have done in my own writing,
for example. So it is nice to read that a similar convergence is taking place from the digital
analytics side of the house.
So read this excellent book from a man who knows whereof he speaks. He has done this sort
of work as a consultant and as a head of digital analytics in mostly online firms (Monster.com
and Karmaloop), and mostly offline firms (Nokia and Reed Elsevier). If you put the ideas in
the book into action within your organization, you will be well ahead of most others, and your
leading-edge work will undoubtedly propel your career to stratospheric heights. Someday you
may even wear a white coat as a “Doctor of Digital Analytics”!