Rah, Rah, Sis Boom Analytics. No, Wait. Boo, Boo, Hiss, Hiss Analytics

October 16, 2020

One of the DarkCyber researchers alerted me to “Most CMOs Disappointed with Analytics Results.” We are wrapping up an interview with one of the senior technologists at Datawalk, and the topic of complexity in easy-to-use analytics systems was a topic of discussion. Watch for this revealing interview in an upcoming issue of DarkCyber.

The article about disappointed CMOs is not surprising. What is surprising is that individuals with expectations that smart software will generate just the answer one needs to generate bigly sales are so widespread.

The write up reports citing a study by the mid-tier consulting firm Gartner Group:

“Though CMOs understand the importance of applying analytics throughout the marketing organization, many struggle to quantify the relationship between insights gathered and their company’s bottom line. In fact, nearly half of respondents in this year’s survey say they’re unable to measure marketing ROI,” says Lizzy Foo Kune, senior director analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice. “This inability to measure ROI tarnishes the perceived value of the analytics team.”

Other findings from the study of 415 marketing “leaders” are:

Training staff is not a priority
Data science and campaigns are behind other analytic use cases
Most organizations will spend more for analytics.

These types of surveys deliver results that gild the available lilies.

For those without numerical skills and training, many of today’s analytic tools are like to disappoint. The digital oracle of Delphi is not working particularly well for many users. Even individuals with a couple of statistics courses on their record have to spend time familiarizing themselves with the analytic tools and their options. Plus if bad data go in, not even a super smart system can produce silk purses from chubby data pigs. Nevertheless, MBAs believe in analytics and, of course, magic.

Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2020

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Analytics, Marketing, News

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.