#030: 2016 Predictions for Digital Analytics

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[00:01:04] Hello everyone. Welcome to the digital analytics power hour.

[00:01:09] This is Episode 30 you know how you’ve been hearing about how awesome and powerful predictive analytics are. Well we have to we finally decided to do something about it. And yeah it’s February and the end of February. But we’re going to do some 2016 predictions. That’s right. Our powers of predictive analytics on a special episode of The Digital llf power hour and we couldn’t make this episode happen without. I don’t think that’s what predictive analytics means. We’ll find out later maybe it maybe because I predict they’re going to change the definition of predictive analytics. One of my predictions Yeah I know it’s not what I predicted. It’s I know you know that’s one of my predictions that we’ll finally find out what predictive analytics. Oh you’re so optimistic. OK so obviously we’re hearing from one of my fellow cohosts it’s Tim Wilson senior partner analytics demystified.

[00:02:09] I predict that I will never let you get through your intro unmolested in this year and surprisingly much more polite cohost Jim Kane CEO of napkin products.

[00:02:21] This is the only sentence I have today where I don’t get cut off. Oh sorry I was taking a drink.

[00:02:28] And of course I’m Michael hobbling the analytics practice lead in search discovery. So gentlemen here we are together. Two months into the year to predict what’s going to happen in the last 10.

[00:02:42] So where should we start. Who wants to kick it off. Because I predict we’re going to have a fun time. If I start off it’s going to be a rant about predictions so I think we should go. While we all defer to Jim came in a in a digital analytics power our first let’s keep talking about keep talking about deferring to him and a lot of actually I get the Panic’s.

[00:03:10] Now I never get to go first. So I’m going to actually start by I think this time last year we had the heat and Shaw episode we were talking about kind of alternate analytics tools. And I remember the one thing that he said that at the time I thought was kind of yeah sure buddy whatever but he was talking about how large organizations that are really data driven are actually moving away from analytics tools entirely and just focusing on creating a big data infrastructure and then kind of a self-service mechanism on top of it for being able to do ad hoc reporting and build dashboards and stuff. I remember the time thinking sure whatever buddy and for the last quarter in particular 2015 and have to be here at the beginning of the year I’m hearing more and more large companies say I don’t want to move into Adobe or into Google Analytics. I want to move away from all of those tools and actually just focus on data art and visual discovery tools. I don’t actually support that as a particularly good idea so don’t take that from me as a cool best practice but I think you’re going to be hearing lots and lots of that as the year progresses. Because people are starting to retool and it’s going to I think it’s going to be a very visible option. So

[00:04:22] while that was intelligent I’m sorry we needed to hear that in the form of a prediction I’m sure.

[00:04:31] I think you’ll actually hear more talk about it. I think a lot of the challenges with predictions is a lot of challenges that analysts have and that vendors and technology. It’s a lot easier for them to look at a technical capability and then kind of rapidly under estimate the people and process required to actually make it happen. And therefore you know frame is there a prediction but I think looking at what a lot of the tag management systems that have started talking about how with a tag they can shove data wherever you want. You know they don’t have to just fire web analytics tool they can you know connect name your insight and. Name name who you want to name are all kind of talking about you know tracking visitors tracking people across sessions across channels across devices. And I think inherent in that is well you’re kind of tracking them and shoving the data somewhere and it’s kind of lessening their view of how much you need to rely on a technology. But I think the problem is really a lot of complicated data with a lot of little pieces and parts that have to talk together and be joined. So actually kind of agree I think that’s a hearing more companies talk about it both vendors who say you should be just feeding it all into one master data store. Grab more data. Shove it there. I think you’ll hear from both from companies and I think you’ll also hear various types of technology vendors saying kind of the same thing.

[00:06:07] Yeah. So I have a few things to say about this prediction. One is with all due respect to heat and Shaw are very very first guest on The Digital Analytics power hour where you see this happen the most in organizations that are technically focused and fairly lean. As a matter of course. So fast growth startups and technology companies there was a really interesting article and for the life of me I can’t remember I read a while back and it’s a company we all know but basically detail their transition from an analytics tool I believe they using makes panel into kind of a build their own kind of cloud based solution on redshift. Amazon’s web service and so walking through all that and I think that is a common scenario. I’ve seen that happen and it will continue to happen quite a bit as companies kind of embrace sort of that build your model. However that’s one kind of company you don’t see massive enterprises taking that on as much because there’s all kinds of challenges around not just sort of like where the data lives and how we’re going to analyze it but like things as dumb as like user management. And how do I get everyone access to the same thing even if they don’t really know what they’re doing. So there’s a lot of moving parts to go into that. So I agree with your prediction Jim and I’d say that this is something that’s been going on for a while and it’s growing and because it’s cheaper and cheaper to leverage tools like Amazon’s redshift and looker and things like that to build these things out.

[00:07:50] So I think what you’re saying is that some of the pure play tech startup type companies that may be growing in are at scale may successfully do this. That doesn’t mean there won’t be plenty of legacy large enterprises that start initiatives. We just don’t seem to think those initiatives are going to get off the ground. You know somebody will read what Twitter has done and say we should do that too as a large insurance company and they may even throw a few million dollars at it. But it’s certainly not something that will happen inside of a year and may quickly realize that that’s a really really tall order.

[00:08:25] Well it is it’s a very difficult thing to do and if you think about how the tech companies are staffed they’re full of people who are comfortable with programming and data and you know putting these kinds of things together. And that’s not necessarily core to someone who’s a marketing manager on the eastern region of X Y Z company. So I mean but at the same time. Right. In essence companies like Adobe and sales force and those kinds are building marketing clouds to try to handle and do the same things these other companies are attempting to do right.

[00:09:06] They’re saying put a layer of. You’re not building from scratch. We’re giving you the basic structure and you’re loading it into it. Adobe’s case they’ve got you know get Adobe premium you’ve got insight you’ve got the ability to access that tool not necessarily the democratized self-service way that seems to be a popular trend. But yeah I agree there’s there’s there’s an idea that that will work that that is the way to go.

[00:09:31] So for my first prediction lots of companies of all different kinds will try and move into big data practices instead of traditional kind of clickstream intellects practices to any degree of success.

[00:09:45] That’s not nuts.

[00:09:48] Yeah I think that’s I buy that. Well here I think we’ll see articles about it at least.

[00:09:54] Yeah well that will be no shortage of big data articles. All right. Who wants to go next.

[00:09:59] Well some other kind of a quazi it’s not really a counter but more of kind of build on that and it’s a little generic but it’s just because it’s a given that Adobe and Google will both roll out new features that we are pretty excited about and are actually useful.

[00:10:17] I feel like is that really a prediction or more just a function of you getting you know beta and roadmap information.

[00:10:27] No I mean it’s not. I mean that’s the nature of the fact that we’ve got this. We’ve talked about this in the past. We’ve got a really really healthy competition going between those two. They both have early cycles. They both have conferences where they know previous stuff they’re going to do you know this is specifically Adobe I think analysis workspace is going to continue to kind of incrementally get better Google you know their stuff they showed I wasn’t there and they showed it there whatever partner summit or whatever that’s called you know what I think that stuff’s going to actually come come to life this year and there’s going to be stuff there. Some of those will be things that roll out and sound freaking awesome and that nobody ever actually uses but they’re going to roll stuff out. Some of it will hit some of it will sell well but not be all that practically useful. I mean Google has kind of been surreptitiously outside of the analytics making Google Sheets like fixing little things that just keep incrementally adding more power to google sheets which man talk about take a free plug in to pulling your Google Analytics data. You start to visualize stuff better.

[00:11:33] So I think Google Google has that thing that wow they’re putting the data into something that is getting a Richards quietly getting a richer and richer Visualization Environment through another one of their platforms.

[00:11:47] I agree with that. And actually there’s some really cool stuff you can do in combination with Google Analytics data and Google Apps scripts. There you go. Be a topic for another episode. What have you got for us. Mr. Hellboy. Well you know I think 2016 is really going to be the year of mobile now and I think that’s still a couple more years out.

[00:12:12] You know I know I think mobile is done so I’ll pick something else. Here’s what I predict.

[00:12:18] I predict that you’ll hear more and more about leveraging optimization and testing in meaningful ways. And what I mean by that and I’ve got a couple of reasons why I think that’s true. One is I think everyone is sold on the use case of AB testing and using it for personalization and targeting and those kinds of things. Very few organizations manage to do that well and there’s a lot of challenges to doing it. One of the things that’s unique about this year is that we are in an election year. There’s an uncertainty with the sort of global economy if you will. And I think people will want to try to make more out of what they have and that will naturally guide companies to thinking about how do we leverage the tools I’ve got in place for optimization as opposed to spending large amounts of money on new tools or new websites or whatever. So that’s my prediction for 2016.

[00:13:17] Right we’ll see you predict testing or did you just predict a recession. You just predicted a recession.

[00:13:23] I hope I did not predict a recession. I hope everything goes smoothly. But there’s multiple factors. If you look by industry. Not every industry is doing really well. In fact you know a month ago Macy’s announced the layoff of a bunch of people. So I obviously hope the economy does great because that’s going to be good for everyone. But I also think people might hold back a little bit especially because there’s an uncertainty in the U.S. anyways about who will win the presidential election this fall. So you know I think the impact part of the year. I don’t think we’re going to like or certainly not have jobs.

[00:13:58] I think they will be fine but it is going to be it’s kind of like Jim’s initial prediction of proofreading a blog post of one of my partners who made a comment about AB testing and saying hey you know it’s so easy to start a b testing. And I kind of pointed out I’m like No it’s really easy to get the technical capability to do AB testing but man watching the number of companies because even if you say I’m going to do AB testing I don’t want to invest in new technology I don’t want to redesign the site. All the sudden you’re like oh shit I need designers. I need project managers. I need a test. Test strategist’s that it’s the same sort of. I could see it getting people saying Aha I’ve discovered something I am going to just incrementally optimize what I already have.

[00:14:47] I think most of them it’s not magic. I’m not saying it’s going to just be a light switch and some people can test more. It’s that there be a will to pursue that more than there has been in the past so it will in other words it’s less of a path of resistance now than what it would have seen when they had maybe more budget to say Go just redesign the website and distract all the corporate big wigs that way. You see what I’m saying or just spend more on Google. You know hey let’s just up our adverts budget by 5 million dollars and you know go from there.

[00:15:25] Yeah I mean I still watch how hard it is to get even simple optimize your spending on paid media of some sort to drive to a landing page. Is a registration form and you can’t figure out how to run AB testing on a simple landing page with a one click conversion. Because organizationally you know you’re you’re struggling so maybe that’s kind of a I think there’s a lot of the predictions that are kind of out in this space have that gap between. This is a sure thing. Yeah yeah I know but I just you know that every so often I can’t be my sunny rosy optimistic glass half full kind of guy. One episode I’m trying hard to truly the E or of.

[00:16:10] Like you truly are dropping out of analytics.

[00:16:14] Yeah well played. So how. How was your chat with Jim Stern.

[00:16:18] Tim I just want to slam the door on my hand.

[00:16:23] I’ve lost my tail.

[00:16:26] I I like to think that I’m so excited and enthusiastic about the field that I just perpetually frustrated that it’s not moving as fast as I would like it to go to Michael’s point though.

[00:16:40] I remember when and I think you predicted a recession but you are saying that people are going to be thinking about using what they’ve got and not maybe necessarily buying the shiny new hotness as much in 2016 which I don’t think is a nice thing to say. And when the well was it probably eight nine years ago when the recession started.

[00:16:57] Yeah that’s right.

[00:16:58] How many of them really didn’t we have to do the math. How much in advance we were recording this in 2013. But it’s not going to go live until 2016.

[00:17:06] We don’t record that I’m not sure there’s going to be a movie that comes out right before this podcast called The Big Short that everybody can see.

[00:17:16] I predict that psycho from the Apprentice is going to try and run your country. No

[00:17:20] I’m serious. That would never happen.

[00:17:24] He tried that four years ago and got laughed off the stage immediately that’ll be the winner in 1 2007 or 8 or whatever was the thing that I really noticed in the e-commerce side of digital was that all of the scrappy upstart companies moved to a pay for performance model. So instead of a more traditional software as a service like monthly fee licensing agreement all the companies that were really taking off were going in and doing paper performance which created a gigantic mess from a measurement perspective. And I think it’s partially why attribution started to become such a requirement. But if something similar happened this year it’s always interesting to see how people who still need to sell their software and services have to pay that to stay relevant and get into budgets you know.

[00:18:11] Yeah that’s a good observation.

[00:18:13] It’s funny. So we’re talking about testing we’re talking about the elections we’re talking about when the recession started. So it does seem it is I think probably more coincidental the fact that optimized. Right. That has definitely been the literally came out of nowhere. And I think all the other major testing platforms are preceded it. But that was right. That was the genesis out of dance record of working on the Obama campaign in 2008 trying to you know do testing I think was it using Adobe target or testin target. It was called at the time. I don’t know whether it was manually coded or whatever. But I wonder now if that actually helped them when they came out and said we have a low cost easy to deploy product and they were launching you know within you know a couple of years into the Great Recession if that really kind of aided them because it was an alluring call. Hey don’t go in fully redesign your site just just tweak it you know drop this drop this snippet of code on your site. I predict that Johnny Manziel will make an ass of himself in multiple ways and I predict that he won’t do it as a member of the Cleveland Browns anymore. I believe the Browns do not have a history making wise personnel decisions and therefore there is a chance that he’ll be there the whole lot because I have a Browns prediction for you.

[00:19:34] Oh yeah. It as you as you know a month ago. The Browns hired Paul DePodesta who is the original Moneyball guy from baseball the Oakland Athletics so if you read the book Moneyball or watch the movie Willie Brown talking about not hockey you guys are killing me.

[00:19:54] Now hockey proximate to the Browns that’s where Boeing’s heart is. I realize that was a tool that once again leaving the Canadian out.

[00:20:02] So so yeah. So the Browns organization have hired this guy whose whole thing is baseball analytics for the last 20 years to build an organization that’s analytical within the Cleveland Browns football organization.

[00:20:15] It’s going to start hiring offensive linemen based on their on base percentage.

[00:20:19] Exactly. And a slugging percentage of the quarterback is through the roof.

[00:20:24] So it’s interesting because that’s what everyone is speculating is is this insane or is this sort of concept of analytics transferable across sports and what think we. My prediction. Get ready. My prediction is that it will be successful. Not that the Browns will be a good team that no one can predict. But that Paul DePodesta will actually have a pretty good impact on how the organization operates and be impactful on how they approach personnel and data generally. And we’ll see that in better results probably over the next three to five years.

[00:21:02] So although Yanes has been a guest on this podcast I don’t know whether he listens to it but I’m pretty sure right now if he’s listening either head’s about to explode or he’s pumping his fist or he’s like why I need to tell you guys something for sure.

[00:21:14] Ben Gaines supports what I have to say based on no data whatsoever.

[00:21:21] You’re from Cleveland. Just call him and get them to be on the show next week and he can talk about his approach.

[00:21:25] Paul DePodesta or else make renovates.

[00:21:30] It’s true. It’s been shrinking because there’s no law going on there and you know it’s just very interesting because you know we try to draw analogies back to our world. Maybe something like trying to go from a nonprofit to like a you know multichannel retailer or something you know are those skills transfer all across verticals interesting with the football teams though you do have kind of the classic hippo of all hippos right.

[00:22:03] I would say football owners are. Oh yeah. Generally at the age of all these sports owners they are the ones who are the most people like by reputation and coaches too.

[00:22:14] I mean that’s the thing is all the media is talking and again this is all a month later. But you know the media is saying that now the Browns are going to really struggle to find a GM because that GM is not going to have the power to control the roster the way you would in another organization because that’s the other thing is sort of the NFL has been slower to kind of take on analytics as a part of their process. And I think that’s the other misconception that I think a lot of people have in sports and in business. We had that episode about you know culture analytics and things like that and it’s sort of like if analytics comes in all other thoughts will just be destroyed and only data will rule. And I don’t think it’s ever the case.

[00:22:58] I just think it’s kind of funny that’s how people sometimes perceive it. And that’s how they think it will work. I mean it is literally got an e-mail today saying going to redesign the site can you just pull like you know like some trends like where the traffic came from and how much traffic they got. And you know opportunities and gaps. I’m like oh yeah that’s the way you go to that report. Let me assure you that for are traffic sources opportunities and gaps. So it’s on my way once again for two years I’ve been trying to explain until you’ve defined what the Web site is supposed to do.

[00:23:32] If Adobe Google are listening there’s a really good report you could fill.

[00:23:40] I was about to say I wouldn’t be surprised and I haven’t seen Google’s road map either for ages but Google started to put some interesting things in the product as far as kind of like little updates that are starting to take advantage of the network effect of all that Google data. So like the intelligence alerts and some of the things in GA about pointing out errors in your implementation like proactively giving you stuff I wouldn’t be surprised if directionally they started giving conversion optimization recommendations are starting to give marketing campaign optimization or attribution optimization recommendations. Yeah I wonder actually from a feature perspective if in two or three years Adobe and Google Analytics don’t compete against each other because they just they’re really starting to deviate in terms of functionality at least to me.

[00:24:25] So there’s the feature I want them to go with is to actually start using the media an absolute deviation to sift through all of your metrics or events and pop up that hey you might have a tagging issue with this specific event you are Propp or custom metric but that’s a topic for another I don’t know why you need to build that.

[00:24:49] You could just run you know the scan from a vendor that scans for those things you know what.

[00:24:56] Let me just open up the category of predictions we can lightning round some stuff. What about acquisitions. Is this going to be a year where people are buying other people.

[00:25:04] Ooh.

[00:25:04] Or that we see in optimizing the IPO possibly throughout the Brian Clifton prediction back in 2011 that Facebook would buy web trends which sounded hilarious. But he had some rationale for it. And I still think it would be a good move because Facebook I think still doesn’t have internal analytics chops when it comes to providing data out to marketers and web trends still has internal talent. I don’t think it will happen Brian Clifton may at some point say why do you keep talking to bring it up every year. Mike I think his prediction in 2011 was genius but it probably won’t happen.

[00:25:43] I could see some acquisitions in the tech management space this year.

[00:25:46] Well it’s interesting because who’s actually attending management vendor anymore you know. I mean yes TPM and inciting signal. But both TGM and seitan are much more than just tag management now right. So they they are they present themselves that way. Yeah. Right.

[00:26:07] We’ll have to have on the show now. Never mind. Don’t even call.

[00:26:11] It’s not going to happen. I don’t know.

[00:26:17] I’ve heard really good things about audience stream rate which is a Tulee in product and I know a bunch of folks over in seitan who are smart.

[00:26:26] So I’m assuming they’re not full of crap and I’m not I’m not bashing them I just think that’s one of those where that’s the gap between the technology able to do something and then actually managing to get it implemented. OK all right.

[00:26:41] It’s certainly challenging but the thing that hinders an acquisition of either of those players and maybe signal might be that the one best primed for an acquisition in that case is that they’ve had venture rounds that value those companies at some pretty big numbers. So you know I think optimized we just took another round of funding and then insight and look around. Not too long after and they were those numbers were not that far apart. So you know without knowing kind of things on what the valuation was and what the percentage of ownership blah blah blah it’s not it’s not totally visible but they’re raising the amount of money and you can’t do that on a crappy valuation.

[00:27:26] So the multiplier ain’t one. Exactly. So anyway so no then.

[00:27:33] No big acquisitions this year.

[00:27:34] I’m sure there will have room for going back to business school it’s like one of the things that has stuck with me is how much acquisitions just almost never panned out and yet it’s kind of it always looks good on the white board and therefore they haven’t. Somebody says we’re going to I’ve got the authority we can do it. It tells a good story and my compensation is such that I’m going to I’m going to come out on top.

[00:27:57] I think we will see more acquisitions in the space of who can deliver these things. So the small pure play agencies that do services and work around the tools I do think that will continue because that was a trend in 2015 we saw some acquisitions happen in that space.

[00:28:16] I could see some of the smaller non big players that are the smallest players in a market for testing tag management web analytics you name it getting getting acquired not necessarily directly in the space but acquired. I’m thinking of like when sailing got acquired by a they didn’t get directly acquired but ebay they got fired GSI by GSI who then got acquired by eBay so I could potentially come back out again. Well then who did Microsoft picked up one of the Twitter. I mean there have been cases where a company is big enough and says we’re just going to buy that we’re just going to bring that capability in-house and it’ll be ours not because we want to sell the service we just want to use it and kind of own it. I could potentially see that happening. You know an oracle saying we want to have a tag management system.

[00:29:08] Now that you’re saying it would be interesting if you remember the epic one. Yeah well analytics per se you know they were bought by their biggest customer I think right. I think that’s what happened. Oh yeah the car dealer dealer dotcom I think yes something like the dealer ICOM was gigantic and they were like it would actually be cheaper to buy this company and make it our analytics department than pay them for five years. I mean like yeah cause definitely for me the watershed one liner for 2015 is that it was the rising tide like everybody whether they were a vendor or a practitioner or an analytics had a very good year in 2015.

[00:29:47] I mean that’s probably because of our podcast really. Send you’re right maybe should only be lagging maybe 2016 is the year where large enterprises.

[00:30:00] And this leads to one of my predictions but large enterprises start to go. We can’t find these people because H.R. is hard let’s just buy a whole department at once similar to the dealer comp thing. But my one of my predictions for this year and it could be a combination of acquisition or just building it but I think that rather than being something we sell to you’re going to see analytics become a first class. We do this on purpose.

[00:30:27] We’re actively selling this service from the big big consulting shops in a little bit of a trend that’s been if you look at the way I buy some Deloitte kind of stood up the digital and they were kind of pushing. I don’t disagree expenditure about a QAD having it available and putting it front and center are very different.

[00:30:47] And I don’t I don’t think even if those practices it’s we have a world class team. Do you want fries with that.

[00:30:53] I think in terms of public messaging around analytics the really large companies just use the word analytics. So it’s the world of SAS and SPSS not Adobe Analytics and Google.

[00:31:08] It’s that B.I analytics not digital analytics and I’m I make a mark distinction between those two. All right so I’ll make a prediction. Is it my turn. Or is it your turn.

[00:31:19] Chen apparently just that just passed me now when I go I know if you like. You know this is going to be grumpy and I’m going to I’m going to get talked over like this is just a weird experience.

[00:31:33] Michael I think you should go ahead and make sure all of that felt good. I predict that analytics demystified and search discovery merged together to form analytics Discovery now and.

[00:31:50] I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen anyway.

[00:31:53] So here’s my prediction for real. All right. So a lot of buzz last year about Domo I predict in 2016 we will continue to hear more buzz but it will actually lift our perspective about data exploration data presentation and data communication. From an operational standpoint and really helping out organizations like Tablo our friend Sergio Maldonado and sweet spot intelligence and of course Dearmer themselves as companies start to realize hey yeah this is a way that we can really improve our business management capabilities across more than just digital but across everything. So to communicate better about data together that is going to start to emerge and I think 2016 will start to see the first steps into that.

[00:32:45] Whereas I’m a buyer I don’t know what to tell you you’re a buyer who’s I guess I just and I because I went to their website I did Domos going to keep throwing a lot of money. I mean Domo lives in my Facebook feed and it just makes my skin crawl with what they promised and Jim it found the Tablo Tupelo’s. Ten Predictions for 2016. And like half of them said either self-service or democratization data exploration and kind of throw out we talked about this with Jim Stern on the last episode that this idea again I look at the reality of who I work with and what they want. And there is there is not a remotely how half the analysts that I know don’t actually do anything around statistics and when there are companies saying oh the tool is just going to put it in. People aren’t even thinking they don’t even know that that is something they could care about whether or not this movement upward was relevant or not. So I agree there’s going to continue to be a buzz. I am very nervous that that is going to have a lot of companies throwing a lot of money at something that they just are not equipped to actually put to use. But again I’m not a I’m not a Domo user right now.

[00:34:07] So yeah I mean certainly I am not a magic bullet believer right. So you know what’s your quote. Jim hype lies and sales guys like that. And you know the the message makes a lot of dreams come true. The work is real. So there’s real hard work to be done in making these things happen. But I think companies will start to see that. And what’s interesting about these platforms it’s not data democratization it’s data curation in place for better communication and understanding which.

[00:34:43] OK. So I will say like that’s where the story sweet spot is. I feel like has been a much much more responsible. On that front. That is exactly right. Ensuring Domo that’s not the story they’re telling. Like they are promising the moon everybody just gets it. You can just dry it and drill it. Now the reality is the way I mean from what I’ve seen of the product you still have to you’re still setting up what can and can’t be done you’re basically it’s not that different from building a frickin powerplay cube and Cognos 12 years ago that yes you can you can build somewhat isolated pulling disparate data and kind of make sure that you’ve kind of locked in where the the Joines are. Like what. What can be done.

[00:35:27] But can you enter beast mode because you can and really. Oh yeah. Oh my God. This is it’s actually really cool. No you guys are haters. But I’m telling you I’m a fan of the ads and I’ve always been right. I am I don’t.

[00:35:47] Let me be clear I’m I’m not I’m not a hater of what Domo does. I am a hater. That this is why I’ll never be in sales because I am all about under promising and over delivering no. Same same technology. I mean the count my counter prediction. Again try to kind of build or pivot. I sort of had a couple of choices over the holiday lol and it was either to dig into one of the kind of tag auditing services you know and try to set up like how do I really get it to crawl and check a bunch of kind of custom values. Or I could dig back into R and try to actually do something that I wanted to do with it and you suck at having a holiday just a side note.

[00:36:35] Finally had some quality time with the family and I had to learn something.

[00:36:39] No I get this because this is I think the way you and I Tim got along so well from the start.

[00:36:47] And you two to three. No not for this time. Yes. Just as people because like we literally do analytics as our hobby for fun like learning news and the same way.

[00:37:01] Jim you again make new products because you are cool and have a client in this case.

[00:37:08] And finally we asked Eric Goldsmith on that episode. Like hey do you just like come up with something that you don’t really need to do and you just kind of do it or do you actually need to have something you really have to deliver. And he was like I would recommend having something you really have to deliver. So I had a long overdue not super hyperreality to do that was going to be a royal pain in the ass with google sheets or excel. And so I kind of knuckle down and did it with our. And I’m by no means an expert but in 20 2015 the number of people who started emerging who were using python using are looking at the R statistics channel on the measure slack which was not not in the original channel like there had to be a little bit of kind of a can we add can we add can we add. And it’s now fairly active. There are web analysts who I knew as web analysts who have now been using our and or Python regularly and have kind of shifted to that as one of their dominant tools. And I got enough of a taste of it that I could see. I didn’t get the visualization part. Like the plot to just killed me and I’m like I probably should go it’s Christmas morning. I probably should go watch the kids open a present or two. Now wasn’t that bad but I’m increasingly a believer. We’ll see if you know if I can continue to find time to monkey around with it.

[00:38:36] But I think that’s a case where hey you have these packages you can kind of on the fly pull in data and build your scripts to do the the mundane together and you can you know visualize it and oh some of the reason it’s I was struggling with it it’s because it’s really made more for working with works really well with massive datasets that are very atomic level detail as opposed to how many visits came from paid search last week. No I want to know every visit that came from paid search last week. So I think the the R and Python machine will continue to kind of grow and it’s going to be really interesting to watch that how that evolves over the course of the next 12 months how the Domo story and adoption evolves how Tablo story and adoption evolves over over the course of the year. I think all of those are going to continue to kind of build their own stories based on what digital analysts are actually doing with them.

[00:39:37] Well predicted sir. All right well that’s all the time we have now. All right Jim what’s up for you next.

[00:39:47] I feel like I really peaked with that whole acquisition right. So I guess the other thing and this is more like something that I wasn’t seeing at the beginning of 2015. It started to get more and more momentum as the year went on. You know beginning in 2016 I wouldn’t be surprised if we start getting a lot more requirements to make analysis an important business objective from the C suite and not just from so we normally get hired by and I normally hear people at shows saying we need to take analytics seriously at a level no higher than Vice President which isn’t bad and it’s still super powerful that it doesn’t make it a corporate initiative it makes it a departmental initiative. We’re starting to get phone calls from are starting to have conversations with the person who runs the whole company and instead of them saying I want reporting from the people who work underneath me they’re saying I want reporting for myself. And here’s what I know like it’s definitely becoming more of a top down thing which is an extension to that conversation that we have with Gary a few episodes ago. But it was always that I wish someone would give a shit and it seems like people are and I wouldn’t be surprised if again over the course of this year you’re seeing more and more business requirements being dictated from the executive floor and not two floors beneath that.

[00:41:06] That’s it. I think that goes to Gary’s comment that is are we for the boutique shops which in one flavor or another we all are around. What are we prepared to answer that call. Or is that part of the reason that the big boys the McKenzies the Deltoids that they might be the ones who are the default is it is them getting the call right you’re going to call the ones who have taught strategy before and that’s potentially a little bit of a call to action for us as in the trenches. Analysts say wow the CEO calls. Am I going to find myself five minutes in talking about Pownce rate. I mean I don’t think I would but I think that’s that’s something we’ve all kind of recognized as being a challenge for the analyst. We grab it while we’re talking about what’s in our tool as opposed to what’s the problem the deceased with trying us all.

[00:41:57] All right. And I’ve got one another prediction. This just in.

[00:42:02] Looks like we’re predicting Ohio for the no decision desk. All right guys.

[00:42:11] Hey this has been very fun and a lot irreverent but it sounds like we’ve got some ideas about what we think is going to happen this year. And now everyone else can hold us to it. Oh one last prediction I predict if you’re listening right now and you thought this was a pretty good conversation I predict you’ll probably go ahead and jump on the measure slack and tell us about it or rate us on iTunes. And if you just can’t get enough of the digital analytics power hour you can come see us live at the metrics San Francisco. So more details to come on that. Or you can just go to the metrics website. Right.

[00:42:54] Jim Kane ninety percent totally.

[00:42:58] I love it. All right gentlemen. Any last thoughts any closing.

[00:43:04] I predict it’s going to be a fun year because we’re in digital analytics. It’s a fun damn field and it’s going to be fun. And if you don’t have a fun year in 2016 you’re in digital analytics. Just get the fuck out. I predict a riot. I predict a riot.

[00:43:35] A quiet riot.

[00:43:39] I’ll do this one too. I predict you know because it’s digital analytics and things will just be changing all the time. Oh yeah totally. Somebody always does come up with that one of these for digs and things like oh it will just keep changing. You’re like really will they anyway.

[00:43:58] All right well hey listen if you’ve got predictions we’d love to hear you come check us out on our Facebook channel and order the measure slack. We’d love to hear from you. Here are your predictions for this year and or the ones you think we got really wrong.

[00:44:15] Tim Wilson especially because he’s carrying way too much positivity coming into this year.

[00:44:22] And of course for my fellow cohosts we’re always so happy to hang out and do the show together for Jim Kane and Tim Wilson. Keep analyzing.

[00:44:36] Thanks for listening. And don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook Twitter. We welcome your comments and questions Facebook dot com slash and on now or on Twitter. They made up a. Word.

[00:44:58] Order for that. And it sent it to my old office and sent it back to Amazon.

[00:45:08] Winning. All right. Jim like I don’t want any customers that are geographically close to me and also cold weather. Right. Forget about. Trying to sock puppet you like Tim Wilson. The dashboard is only one page I hate truck.

[00:45:30] You don’t want my ass bro. Full joke there. Now I’ll say something.

[00:45:38] As ever to hear him or heard of band Europe. They’re amazing. They’re pretty.

[00:45:47] Like whenever our car gets over about 120 kilometers an hour it really starts to shutter. How would I resolve that with Adobe. I. Will. Also analytics doesn’t pay very well and come back. And you get paid and smokes but you can trade or other things. Like a prison call and get.

[00:46:09] By my shop where I will kill the Poppy. You can’t see it but is rural a kid.

[00:46:21] I don’t have I’m like this is all going to get cut out. Yeah I got nothing. There’s nothing wrong with having a shored up because nobody can say you fuckers. That was too short. Brock Quag and optimism.

 

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