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Omniture Summit 2008… Frankly, it’s something you have to experience – the lights, the music, the scratch of pocket protectors on pinstriped poplin shirts. Yes, it’s a spectacle. But despite that noise, there’s good information. This year I was most impressed with the continuity of theme throughout the sessions – actionable analytics. I did however pick up on some differing definitions of actionable analytics across the sessions. More commonly, I heard actionable analytics substituted with “strategy” and therein is the impetus of this post.

An Omniture client made the comment that “the numbers tell the story.” Wrong. The numbers tell you the sum, the average, the delta, and the probability of future occurrences – no context, no conditions, and are generally agnostic. It’s up to you to evaluate the numbers against the business objectives, determine in what way the initiative is meeting those objectives, and then compile additional evidence to support a course of action. You will tell the story, not the numbers.

Those that subscribe to “numbers telling the story” will create their reports, insert their pretty charts, and then ship the [outcomes] over to the managers who will undoubtedly sit perplexed in front of said charts and continue making gut decisions because they don’t understand what their reading or how it applies to what they are trying to accomplish. You must follow-through with what to do next and the possible outcomes of those actions. Those options, the things that you will do to affect change, are the actionable strategies.

After the data is pulled, the totals are summed, the dependecies identified, what I’m suggesting that happen is simply a quadrant analysis (executive level version of a Bayesian analysis). I’ll get into specifics of a quadrant analysis in a later post but here are the basics:

1. What happens if the market remains the same and I do nothing?
2. What happens if the market remains the same and I do something?
3. What happens if the market changes and I do nothing?
4. What happens if the market changes and I do something?

After applying this analysis to a set of conditions (the initiatives and their benchmarks), you get net loss or net gain in differing market conditions. Put four options in front of an executive with the cost of doing business and potential gain, and then they may stop using their gut. It’s that simple, if not actually easy to accomplish.

Is it really the analyst’s job to do all this? You bet – because we’re the actionable strategists providing options, not just report-builders pulling data points for colorful charts. Yes, I know – we’re all very busy. But the work load will never change. We can, however, evolve our approach and make things better. Define value and apply actionable strategies to affect positive change. Then you can at least be busy doing the important things.

~ Wayne Snyder, Without Margin