Web Analytics and BI?

Picking the right tools? I am sure there are tons of posts on this. Here are my thoughts:

I am a strong believer of 10/90 rule(See Avinash’s blog). i.e spend 90$ on great people and 10$ on tools. Once you have great people you will figure out ways to solve problems in unthinkable ways. We have for the longest time been complacent with tools and its shortcomings. However, some of these are due to the reasons of not knowing the best methodology in using these tools. In the world of analytics here are the key things that you should master and be prepared

1. Capability to slice and dice of data
2. Unified vision across your businesses so that you can really see what is happening across in a measurable way
3. Ability to understand the overall business and the impact of a change to the business.
4. Single source of location for the entire business to look at data (I cannot stress enough on this since this is a deal maker or breaker among lots of companies)
5. Time to market. This is another critical thing. Traditionally anything that is done in BI takes forever due to the complexities and to cut the right balance between centralization and decentralization this should be solved.

With my experience in this world and my exposure to the industry I have learnt few things which I strongly believe would change the way you do analytics at any place.

1. DO NOT confuse DataWarehouse to be your business intelligence team. BI is a very powerful thing if implemented the right way. This is the great source of success to the organization
2. BI should focus on analysis and insights.
3. Analytics and Finance should be the 2 arms for any CEO. One tells you the fact(Finance) and the other(Analytics) helps you with the in depth history of performance and future strategy
4. I also strongly believe that a good balance between Technology and Business is what is needed for the analytics team. Swinging either side will produce sub optimal results.

Web Analytics became popular due to the fact the it takes forever to get things done int he traditional BI world. Adding Javascript and creating a report was a days worth of work and boom you have your insight. However, as the organization matures you will realize that you need a place to consolidate all your data to provide a over arching view of your business.

Thoughts?