Analytics Moves to the Enterprise

In a strong showing of support for the enterprise market, the team at Google Analytics announced yesterday a new feature set for Google Analytics that will certainly change the perception of this fantastic product. I've worked with the team since back in the Urchin days in the early 2000's and have seen this product evolve from a log-file analysis software program to a full-scale enterprise application.

This launch could not have come at a better time. As businesses get shaken and stirred due to the global financial crisis, there is no better time for enterprise organizations to invest in analytics, and not the software, but the people.

Mark my words — if marketers don't start embracing analytics to measure their advertising and website initiatives, they will be out of a job in less than 2 years. Executives are not going to tolerate gunslinging marketers who manage advertising campaigns based on their emotions, ego and experience. It is time that these multi-million dollar campaigns be analyzed like a financial investment to gauge the true brand reach and ROI.

I advocate for marketers to start reporting their results to the CFO, controller or other financial oriented leadership positions with an organization. Ten years ago one could argue that the tools were not available to properly measure an advertising campaign — with marketers relying on post-research studies, sales results or other indirect metrics. Google has changed this paradigm and now provides marketers with a complete suite of tools to measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns and website performance, however, it is now up to marketers to invest in the people to utilize these tools.

Looping back to the Google Analytics announcement, the new Enterprise Class Feature set will provide marketers and analysts with a powerful set of tools all for free; truly amazing. The advanced segmentation will allow for more detailed analysis by slicing data up real time; motion charts is for uber-analysts that need to look at multi-dimensional data and look at how metrics interact over time; the API is a massive move for Google Analytics and will lead to new breed of applications that integrate with GA; Custom Reporting is a nice feature for those who need to prepare reports for colleagues or bosses; and the AdSense integration is a must-have for Publishers.

EpikOne is ahead of the curve again and has experience working with all these features. We've launched the first Google Analytics application, AnalyticsView, which offers custom reporting for agencies adding in features such as white-labeling, scheduling, third-party data integration and more.

Get ready enterprises, Analytics is coming whether you are ready or not!