Web analytics has evolved to become a serious business now. Gone are the days when web analytics was something you just added on to your application as an afterthought but today, it is considered a major feature that gets discussed up front in business circles when planning for a Web application and building a business case. What exactly is driving this tremendous change for Web analytics? To answer that we need to review the myriad business benefits you can get out of Web analytics provided you have planned and designed for it.

Web analytic tools can collect, analyze, measure and report on Internet data which will help in understanding user behavior and application usage. The data captured using other sources, like CRM tools, can only help inform reactive action and not proactive measures. For example, it is possible to identify how many users cancelled their subscriptions using tools like sales force, but not how many users will cancel. With Web analytics, customer usage patterns and associated pain points can be identified up front and that can help companies be proactive about those pain points and, hopefully, in the end game, retain those “at risk” subscriptions.  But, that is just one example out of many more “business benefits” you can expect to get out of using web analytics. (more…)

Lately there seems to be many organizations engaged in some type of data management or data warehousing initiative. These data warehousing initiatives include the major components such as the data warehouse, operational data store, data marts, ETL and business intelligence frameworks. However, while there is a common understanding as to what an operational data store is, there seems to be varying ideas as to its purpose; specifically, when would a solution that includes an operational data store be appropriate? (more…)