Step right up! Step right up! We’ve got your org charts here! If an analyst falls in the woods, and she reports into a hub-and-spoke model, is the result best illustrated with a 3D pie chart? Join Michael and Tim as they conclude that, at the end of the day, effective communication is imperative regardless of where the analysts sit organizationally. And, because, “Why not?” ride along on a digression about the product management of analytics platforms within the organization!
The following is a straight-up machine translation. It has not been human-reviewed or human-corrected. However, we did replace the original transcription, produced in 2017, with an updated one produced using OpenAI’s WhisperX in 2025, which, trust us, is much, much better than the original. Still, we apologize on behalf of the machines for any text that winds up being incorrect, nonsensical, or offensive. We have asked the machine to do better, but it simply responds with, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
00:00:04.00 [Announcer]: Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. Tim, Michael, and the occasional guests discussing digital analytics issues of the day. Find them on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash analytics hour. And no, the Digital Analytics Power Hour.
00:00:24.76 [Michael Helbling]: Hi everyone, welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is episode 50. If you’ve been listening for a long time, you probably have your own personal analytics skills locked down and you’re doing great and you’re welcome. I’m just kidding. But now it’s time to take it to the next level. We’ve got to sort out how analytics should be structured in your organization. Back in the day, we used to have these big conversations about where analytics should live. Marketing, or IT, or marketing operations, and that’s cute. We’ve become, oh, so much more sophisticated, haven’t we? So that’s what this episode is about, the structure of the analytics organization. So sit back and relax as we exhaustively solve this little problem for you. Of course, who better to join me on this Odyssey into the structure of teams within the analytics space than my co-host and organizational expert, Tim Wilson.
00:01:32.27 [Tim Wilson]: I’m very disorganized. I’m not an organizational expert. This will be a fun one.
00:01:36.85 [Michael Helbling]: This will be fun. And I am Michael Hovling. So we’re, this is a good topic for us, Tim. I think we’ve, both of us have worked on both sides, consulting organizations, working within organizations. We’ve certainly got strong opinions about this. So the rest of this show will basically be us airing those opinions, I think is probably the best way to describe what people are about to experience.
00:02:00.36 [Tim Wilson]: Well, we made it to episode 50 without having an opinion about something, I guess.
00:02:04.05 [Michael Helbling]: There you go.
00:02:04.79 [Tim Wilson]: At some point.
00:02:07.41 [Michael Helbling]: Right, you are.
00:02:08.42 [Tim Wilson]: Actually, I feel like this may be one that I don’t have a strong opinion.
00:02:12.24 [Michael Helbling]: Seriously? We’ll see. All right, well, why don’t you ask me some questions, because I certainly do.
00:02:16.98 [Tim Wilson]: What’s the right, are we gonna focus primarily on in-house, not agencies?
00:02:20.77 [Michael Helbling]: Yes, yes, in-house team structure because it’s sort of, and we probably need to start creating some initial out-and-front boundaries or categories of types of companies, because one structure works for a large enterprise potentially, whereas it is a silly nonsense in a smaller or medium-sized business. And a lot of that has to do with, you know, well, how much is going on in this company and how important, um, analytics is to kind of the operation of the company and where it sits in the value chain and all those kinds of things. So what have you seen work well? And let’s use that as a starting point.
00:03:00.58 [Tim Wilson]: Well, so what works well is open communication, regardless of what the lines are. I’ve definitely been.
00:03:07.47 [Michael Helbling]: No. Sorry. I’m sorry. Keep going. Keep going.
00:03:14.63 [Tim Wilson]: I tend to see when there is some sort of organizational structure that has the analysts somehow relatively closely linked and not out on islands. So if you look at kind of the one extreme is every department that has a need of use of data kind of staffs, fines, hires, promotes, gets their analysts and they staff them and then they may say you should know who the other analysts are in the organization. to me that that tends to be less successful because you just don’t get, you don’t have the community of best practices and sharing and cross departmental benefits that can happen. So I tend to go towards a more centralized organization and that’s where I feel like in my Both clients exposed to as well as being in house when there has been the, this is the analytics group, whatever it’s called, the analytics department, the customer insights and analytics department, the analytics center of excellence to call it what you want. Having said that, I think making sure the structure and the way that that gets run to have some alignment with specific business areas. And again, we’re talking larger organizations here. I don’t think saying, oh, it’s the pool of analysts and they just kind of sit there and it’s a first in, first out queue. You know, when you’re done with report X, go and take the next request in the queue, no matter what area it’s from. That doesn’t work either. So I know that’s kind of I tend to skew towards some level of centralization of the talent, but with some alignment to specific domain areas to the extent that the size and the mass makes sense. I don’t know. What do you think?
00:04:57.84 [Michael Helbling]: No, I actually, I’m in. I think I’m in agreement for a couple of reasons and I’ll add on a couple more. I think the centralized structure does a couple of things that I like. There are other models that I think could work. There’s embedded models where there’s an embedded team inside of a group that dotted lines to a central organization. I’ve heard that called a hub and spoke model or whatever, but I don’t know if I’m ever getting that right. Hub and spoke might be something different. It’s okay. We’re not making pictures. I’ve drawn it up as a little analytics fort where you build like a little structure around all the different incoming things that you have to… It’s probably not good to call it a fort because that makes it sound like you’re defending against the rest of the organization, which is probably not the right thing to help build that communication thing you talk about, which I agree is very important. But the other thing that a centralized structure helps with is around cultivating talent and potentially helping keep talent longer because there’s inconsistencies in terms of how people work within an organization. If you have your analysts out in various different places, the consistency that with which they’re all learning and getting educated and becoming standardized on a common set of ways of looking at and solving the business problems is less likely to happen. If you find the right leader for that group, you have an opportunity to create stability across that set of analysts, which then gives you a chance to keep them longer than the industry average, which could pay off in big ways in terms of their value increasing over time because they’re more knowledgeable about the business as their business acumen grows. And that certainly, if you’re staffing with fairly junior analysts, I think a really important consideration is Who are they going to be working with day to day is it going to be a bunch of people who don’t really understand what they do or is it going to be a bunch of their peers who get them and can help keep them can help them weather some of the normal business storms if you will.
00:07:07.10 [Tim Wilson]: Does that, I mean, to your little fort being not a good term, but that kind of spark in me that’s the downside of the centralized that you can wind up with the where the group off in the corner that either people don’t want to work with or it does wind up creating separation where it’s hard to get integrated with the organization and it’s easy to actually criticize the groups that you’re supposed to be supporting by saying, oh, they don’t get it. They’re asking stupid questions.
00:07:32.09 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, and that that is one of the drawbacks. And that’s where you have to balance that. Right. I think with having a point of view of this organization exists to help support and serve and drive value to these organizations. So it has to be in the charter of that group of the way we’re measured is the value we create out here.
00:07:54.08 [Tim Wilson]: And if they tell you that they’re not getting value, then they’re right kind of definitionally.
00:07:59.27 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, absolutely. Or you sit down and say, hey, how can we help drive value for you when, you know, hey, we’ve provided X number of analyses. We’ve, we’ve thrown, we’ve positioned a number of recommendations that could help this team or this brand or whatever it is that you’re working within. We haven’t been able to get traction or progress together. What can we do? You know, and you start that again, that communication piece. It’s hard to get away from, I know, because communication basically solves like 90% of every problem. And then it’s sort of like, but what we have to do a podcast about is like, after that, like, if everyone would communicate together, most of these things would just sort of fall away as issues. Luckily, a lot of people are really poor communicators. So I mean, unlucky. Wait, no. But that’s that going into it is why you have to think about your structure is how do you help support your organization you’re in? You build the most coherent team, the team that’s going to be the most effective at creating additional intelligence and cross pollinating that intelligence across the entire company. So again, I think when we’re talking about this, we’re both talking about larger scale enterprise, you know, where there’s many, many different departments or brands who might be users or consumers of digital analytics. So that could be in multi brand companies that could be in multi department companies where different departments own out different aspects or different applications that go to the web. So, you know, lots of different ways that could work out.
00:09:34.55 [Tim Wilson]: So we are we we’re kind of referring to the analytics organization is kind of this monolithic thing. When it does you know we had a few episodes back we were talking about different roles when we’re looking at job description to start looking at different roles and it seems like that’s another level. down, even in more mid-sized organizations where you have the analyst who is crunching data, is making reports, doing analysis, but then usually in the scope of analytics, there is the technical side of implementation. There may be, there hopefully, if you’re lucky, if there’s also kind of the advanced analytics moving in that data sciencey direction. And I don’t know that the organization necessarily needs to be I don’t know, do you feel like all of those pieces need to be in the same, same group? Like, especially when it comes to the implementation aspect of tag maintenance, tag implementation, tag management ownership, data governance, you know, which of those aspects is that sort of fall? Does that need to fall in the same group as the analysts or is there a case for it to be made where it’s elsewhere?
00:10:44.84 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, no, I think that’s where we get into kind of how to kind of slice and dice this because that’s the functional pieces of the analytics org, I think is where it starts to kind of break down a little bit in terms of how you structure and where you put all those things. And what’s surprised me over the years is how few companies even have conceptual frameworks around what I call product ownership of You know things like adobe analytics you know it’s like well who’s the product owner well you know we sort of own it over here in our analyst group and it’s like well that’s probably not the best place because you can’t really do the things that other products in your organization do or you know. Well, who owns tag management? Well, I mean, I’m an administrator over here, but I have to, and it’s no clarity. And that’s something that just has to be worked out. Selfishly, I like, you know, if I was running an analytics team, I’d like a more control than less. But I also think it’s because I’m really selfish and want to do things my way. And And so I, but at the same time, I have a point of view about, okay, what would it look like for there? What would data governance look like? That’s not the same, that’s not the same set of activities as analyzing a website or a mobile app. That’s a different set of activities. What does it look like to own the products that we use to do this? So that’s a different set of activities. And so, you know, I’ve actually sort of been chatting with a number of companies over the last couple of months, just in terms of our clients and things like that. We’ve gotten a chance to kind of talk about some of those things and it’s really interesting because. The companies who are making progress are doing a good job of having clarity of ownership for the products that they’re leveraging for analytics so that they know okay this team is responsible for. Taking the tool and setting it up, you know, obviously taking inputs from this group or this other people to know what to put into the tool, right? So that could be your implementation itself, right, is owned by whatever that organization is. And I think for the technical aspects of implementation, it makes a lot of sense in a lot of places for that to live in an IT organization. doesn’t necessarily make sense for it to live there every time. There’s plenty of reasons why that would be a terrible thing in some places, but sometimes it works that way. And then you’ve got the analysis piece, who’s using it, how do you administer it, all those kinds of things. So, okay, well, how does somebody from outside of not an analyst come ask us for help? What does that look like? Who’s taking those requests? How do we prioritize those? Who’s going to you know, how do we make sure we’re kind of translating that into a valuable business question as much as possible?
00:13:37.30 [Tim Wilson]: I agree. I mean, I think that’s the handoff from What data the analyst needs like somewhere between there’s this is the data that we would care about and a level of how it could be organized or structured right the the classic of I’ve definitely seen cases where pure IT, pure developers have said, we’ll just do the tagging. We’ll just put an insane level of detail because you can always roll it up later, which in theory sounds great, but that could make the data insanely messy or you could run into cardinality issues.
00:14:10.44 [Michael Helbling]: So somewhere between the- I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced an IT organization saying, yeah, let’s just collect all the data.
00:14:16.87 [Tim Wilson]: No, not so much collect all the data but saying we’re gonna go ahead and tack on this identifier on the end of this string so that now to get the number of how many times somebody clicked on a button you actually have one row for every time somebody click because you also appended on their. You know, some other session identifier and they’re like, hey, you have all that. So that I’ve absolutely run into where we’re like, yeah, we thought, you know, you wanted to just capture the first three characters of this because that’s what really mattered. You could roll it up. We captured the whole thing. And so you wind up with a big, long list. So, but from the, hey, let’s sort of think through how we might want to use this data. which is kind of the analyst realm to we need to come up with an efficient, maintainable, scalable, extensible implementation of how we’re doing that, which falls kind of on the IT end. And I think it doesn’t really matter whether ownership of that translation lives in the analyst world or if it lives in IT, as long as it’s owned by somebody who is able to communicate and think through the other perspective. I’ve got I’ve got a couple of clients well I’ve got actually I’ve got one one client that that role kind of sits in the analyst world and he is. Phenomenal when it comes to he’s sitting there with the analyst but he is getting stuff articulated and documented exactly what it needs to do. for them in their language. I’ve got another client that’s the flip side is somebody in IT and he’s totally thinking through like how would this data be useful? How are you going to use it? Let me understand that so that what I come up with actually makes sense. But I also see places where that gap is missing. I had a client years ago where in IT it literally was just a ticket system saying whatever developer is available like they’re going to get assigned a task by the project manager and if it’s implement the tags they implement the tags and the analyst organization was pretty damn weak on coming up with a good tagging schema and approach and oh by the way it turned out when that’s with how the developers were set up that’s about the most boring crap they could do is get shitty requirements And they’re just implementing JavaScript stuff. And this was a pre-tag management, which means they avoid it like the plague and they roll off and it’s not particularly fulfilling work. And it was a mess. Like nothing ever went well the first time.
00:16:43.67 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, well, and those kinds of structures are just set up to not work well, right? Because there’s no interest or investment in the success of it. I do agree with you, and I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it’s like maybe a system analysis type of role is kind of really missing sometimes. And that is sort of why are we doing what we do? How does this map into our overall success or what we’re trying to accomplish?
00:17:12.20 [Tim Wilson]: So as what you’re, as you’ve been talking to different organizations and thinking through, so those different roles. So probably the thing that to me seems like it matters the least is who actually owns the tool, the licensing, re-upping contract.
00:17:28.65 [Michael Helbling]: Well, only to the extent that whoever owns the tool also owns what’s going to come be in the tool at the end of the day.
00:17:34.85 [Tim Wilson]: Well, I guess I’m saying that aspect of it is the mechanical administrative, but that next level of what, where, and how it’s being used.
00:17:44.48 [Michael Helbling]: But even there, I get what you’re trying to do, but I also don’t want to give too short a shrift to the product ownership side of it or product management side, because done well means the data is available, the data quality has been thought about. all those kinds of things are being addressed.
00:18:01.61 [Tim Wilson]: I wasn’t disagreeing with anything you said. I was just saying there is a level of that which is sign the fucking contract. Beat up on Adobe when they come and tell you’ve got a fucking overage that they surprised you with because they’re squeezing more money out of it. That is a pain in the ass and that I don’t think matters. Actual product ownership, I think you can have product management, so let’s not call it ownership.
00:18:25.30 [Michael Helbling]: Product management, like it.
00:18:27.11 [Tim Wilson]: So that was the real question, is where are you seeing that make more sense?
00:18:35.42 [Michael Helbling]: Well, I think I am. Like, I always deviate back to my own selfish way of wanting to do that, which would mean I’d want it in my org. But different role, product management would be a different role or part of someone’s role as distinct from an analysis role or a technical role. But I could see it living, you know, so in my head, if I’m making a picture.
00:19:01.83 [Tim Wilson]: For our listening audience out there, Michael’s eyes are closed right now. There’s a picture in his head. He’s not drawing one for me. You’re in the same boat, dear listener.
00:19:10.83 [Michael Helbling]: I’m running smack dab in the limitations of the media. Not good with birds.
00:19:22.34 [Tim Wilson]: Face for podcasts.
00:19:23.83 [Michael Helbling]: No, so, you know, because I would see myself sitting in a marketing or research group. Like that’s where the analytics work would live. And in that org, I could have product ownership sit there, but product ownership, product management, sorry, we’re now calling it product management. could also, I would be okay with the right partnership of the product management sitting in IT, or something like that, or an ops type thing.
00:19:51.87 [Tim Wilson]: But really, we’re talking about where does a position, where does a role set that rarely exists in organizations, right?
00:19:58.22 [Michael Helbling]: Well, I feel like it’s getting less rare. I think it was really rare 10 years ago. And I think, honestly, I think tag management woke up a lot of companies. They’re like, you’re doing what on our website? And that made people, you know, be like, oh, yeah, all these marketing tags that marketing’s been. And that’s actually what caused the problem in the first place was marketing said, hey, I’ve got this new technology. I want to launch it. Help me launch it, right? Prior to tag management. That’s kind of what was going on. And marketing doesn’t think like about product management, really, not a lot of marketers anyways. Man if you’re a marketer and you think only about product management, you know feel free of course to comment about that I Mean I see a lot of marketers who say they saw sales pitch and they say we should get that product and there is absolutely no ability to think through how the Nobody’s thinking about the actual path and the plan is and there you go and the process piece That’s the piece that you know is really needing to be managed is sort of Okay, well then, who’s gonna do what when? How do we take a new idea and put it into this? And it doesn’t have to be like, for every tool, there’s one person whose job it is to manage that product. I mean, a product manager could manage 25 different, you know, marketing and measurement technologies, right? You don’t need a different guy for a click tail and GA. You just need one person to kind of make sure they’re thinking through what’s gonna happen with all of those. and certainly tag management gives you a way to structure product management centrally, so you manage the TMS, which then makes you the manager of all the other technologies within it. which is good.
00:21:42.06 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, but that’s actually making me think through some other situations I’ve seen where it’s been, I guess, would be considered executive sponsor or maybe let’s just call it the person with budget authority, sees the shiny bobble and purchases it and with zero interest or awareness about process or laying out a roadmap or timing or what pieces need to fit the management aspect of it. They throw a product, a project manager on it and say, get this implemented. They kind of just say, well, my, my goal here is to get this thing implemented. Not, I’m not owning it. You know, they’re a project manager. And then all of a sudden they’ve got this technology out on the site and oh, and tech management helped them get that implemented quickly. And then they’re sitting six months in and the vendors starting to shit bricks because they’re like, we’re coming up to, to re up. our contract in six months and you haven’t done anything with it because there is no ownership. Yeah, I might be thinking through a very specific example right now.
00:22:42.92 [Michael Helbling]: It’s probably the world’s best segue into the structure of optimization teams, but I don’t want to get to that yet. But no, you’re absolutely right. And those in those kinds of scenarios usually have all the people involved kind of looking at each other across the table and being like, Yeah, everybody, this is, you know what, it’s shiny bubble syndrome and it’s on us to try to figure out the pieces, you know, to make, you know, keep this person happy who has the money that we also all live on. So yeah.
00:23:13.01 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, that’s a I like that I the idea of stepping back and thinking through and I want to do that in the middle checklist of the best the best organizations have the executive who’s like.
00:23:29.07 [Michael Helbling]: Okay, let’s talk about product management and how this is going to make us better as a company. And I’ve actually been in a few conversations like that where it was kind of like, you know, first it was like, let’s gung ho, personalize segment, you know, Cartesian, Bayesian, whatever. And the executive is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:23:49.00 [Tim Wilson]: Usually Cartesian and Bayesian, just to see if Mac or Shops head explodes.
00:23:52.22 [Michael Helbling]: No, I have no idea. I have no idea. I literally have no idea. Those are just words I have heard. I don’t know. Sorry, I had to interrupt you. I’m not going to let you just go through that. No, no, that’s fine because I set them to kind of indicate sort of just a run. High pie in the sky. Run crawl walk methodology. Right and knowing but you know in that scenario the executive is like whoa, whoa, whoa, slow our roll and let’s develop something that will really be sustainable and last and really serve the organization even if it takes longer to kind of get to that point. What does that look like? And you know how enthusiastic I can be about something like that. It’s very, I’m very enthusiastic because it could take a long time to get there. But now you’re on a path to actually creating value with this stuff as opposed to just sort of like a couple flashes in the pan and then everybody quits and they start over again. So that’s kind of those kinds of situations are really exciting so that’s you know let’s go back to last episode as you’re assessing jobs out there people look for that kind of thinking at the senior levels.
00:25:01.76 [Tim Wilson]: For those out there who are realizing that Michael was actually present for the last couple of episodes.
00:25:07.10 [Michael Helbling]: He’s just talking about a few episodes ago. They all sort of merged together.
00:25:13.21 [Tim Wilson]: It’s all just one ongoing conversation. That’s the point they’ll figure out that we recorded all the episodes back to back in one marathon.
00:25:21.04 [Michael Helbling]: That’s right. This was recorded on January 3rd, 2016. Very topically relevant. Anyway, okay, so where we were headed and I think so we both are putting a check in the box of product management And I feel like that’s the truth.
00:25:36.46 [Tim Wilson]: What about let me ask one question So do you when you’re do you see organizations? This is back to the organization type organizations that are more Pure play web like pure play e-commerce site is going to have product managers who are the product is aspects of the web right those types of organizations more geared towards saying any technology we have needs a product manager as opposed to take your. hundred year old financial services company that isn’t even really doesn’t have product managers internally for anything that they’re selling. Do you see that?
00:26:11.85 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, I do because well, I mean, that’s sort of where I learned about product management and became Big believer and it was my good friend Cam Jensen was a product manager at Land’s End and you know He was like wait who’s gonna manage this this this and this and we talked to you know So it was it was through those kinds of conversations and experiences So I do think you have a better chance right for there to that to be brought up more holistically in a in an environment where product management has thought about and in those terms. But I think a lot of different organizations have that. You just have to tap into the right groups of the right people to be able to bring that forward.
00:26:51.84 [Tim Wilson]: Cool.
00:26:53.02 [Michael Helbling]: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So now let’s talk about the analyst organization a little bit because there’s new kinds of departments and teams that are forming out there inside of the market or marketing realm, like market research organization, the consumer research customer insights customer experience so where do you think where should that live inside of that if we take the analyst organization as the stink from maybe some of the technical parts of the organization we’ve been talking about so far in your mind Tim is there a best place for that for that analyst group.
00:27:32.04 [Tim Wilson]: So I think I’m understanding the question. I’ve never fully understood as common as it seems to have optimization in one group that may be very separated from the web analytics group, which is certainly very separated from the market research or consumer research group. Because relatively early in my career, I worked somewhere where those were all lumped into one organization and it seemed so obvious and natural. I struggle with teams that have that split up and I’ve asked people to kind of articulate it and whatever the articulation is hasn’t ever really stuck. Maybe I just haven’t been receptive to it.
00:28:14.99 [Michael Helbling]: You have not respected those people. You just disrespect their opinions.
00:28:19.68 [Tim Wilson]: No. Well, I mean I think so I feel like sometimes it’s like well it just kind of it actually goes back to being a product thing like the the web analytics was stuff was around. Longer the consumer research or the market research or the competitive intelligence just. grew up in a different area. It was the brand team as opposed to the group that was standing up the website. There were groups that have grown up in different places and I literally have not ever really figured out Exactly why they don’t come together. I’ve watched cases where people removed from all of those have gotten confused and thought that somebody who was in the analytics organization was actually in the customer research organization. And I’m like, those two organizations are nowhere near each other, and it’s been a battle to get them to work with each other, but good on you. You know, somebody who’s just out there thinking, well, shit, these are the people who have data and insights. I assume they’re all part of the same organization, and they’re not. And it just makes no sense to me whatsoever, because every one of them is going to get a question that they get asked. They’re going to see their little domain of tools, and they’re going to try to answer that question. And it comes in where, Somebody asked a question about what do our consumers looking for when they come to our site or what are consumers most want from our website? You’re like, damn it, I’m going to find that in web analytics. Like, well, shit, maybe you should go put that in your next consumer survey and ask them. So everybody has their little hammer and they see everything as a nail. Whereas if you, if the one time I worked, you know, it was a relatively, I mean, this was like 20 people total that covered the data warehouse, the market research, web analytics, BI. So maybe that was a half a billion dollar company. It was like, yeah, that was our little community. People came and asked us a question and we were 10 feet away from the person who might have the best answer if it wasn’t us. And we were kind of forced to be aware of this is the broad set primary research, secondary research, a test, a B test, surveys, email surveys, web analytics. That to me seemed like it was so functional and it is, I’ve yet to see how it’s rare to find other organizations that are set up that way.
00:30:39.24 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, and there are a bunch of different disciplines that you kind of touched on and they all kind of have their own spot. And I struggle actually with this a little bit and I honestly don’t know that I’ve got a really clear. I mean, in one sense, if you’re in an organization where each of these roles is represented by like one person, then by all means, at least put everybody together in the same place so that that kind of conversation and communication can happen. So in other words, if you’ve got one market research person and you’ve got one UX person and you’ve got one analyst, Let’s make sure they’re close to each other. Let them all talk about the problems of the business together and combine their knowledge. That will benefit the organization greatly. When it grows into disparate teams, you know, they’re kind of running their own programs and things like that, then I kind of can see them kind of go in their own way, but still they’re being some centralizing kind of structure, whether that be that they all come up into one big sort of you know central structure and I don’t know because you know in certain places you have sort of concepts of revenue management kind of driving analytics some you have experience driving analytics so it kind of depends on the organization and kind of where analytics kind of dings for that organization in terms of what they really see it doing. And yeah, I guess I wish I had a better answer on that, but I could see it happening. But I do know there’s a ton of value in seeing, in getting more communication happening across those disparate teams.
00:32:16.75 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, well, and I think there’s also, you know, earlier we’re talking about when somebody newer or junior comes in, I think it’s incredibly useful for them to actually have some exposure to what those other groups are. I feel like people who are our age who may be wound up in one area or another it just doesn’t like primary research it just does not cross I mean secondary research primary research definitely crosses my mind like hey we should be asking people this secondary research and when I was at one of the agencies I was at we had contracts we were paying good money with the secondary research organizations and the people who, the product owner, product managers of that secondary research, they’re like, we have this valuable stuff. Nobody’s coming and asking us the questions we can use to answer it. And we actually pulled them in and we said, hey, you know what, we’re gonna, are kind of monthly sort of get togethers where we’re sort of sharing what we’re doing. We want you guys to come and share with us and we’ll share with you guys because we should all be thinking this is like this full set of tools that we have. So, I guess, yeah, if organizationally they’re not one organization, if they’re not even rolling up within one centralized organization, that’s, I guess, shit. It’s another case for communication saying, well, those are people you need to know who they are and what they’re doing and you should be taking them to lunch and saying, what’s the cool data you have and what’s that good for? Because they probably already have it and it’s free and it’s easy stuff for you to piggyback on. Hey, you can add more value to your organization when you use the right data to answer the question.
00:33:50.83 [Michael Helbling]: Right. And actually, that’s the kind of conversation that gets you in pretty good with those teams. It’s like, what challenges have you been trying to get other people to pay attention to that they aren’t? And what can we do to help with our data set?
00:34:04.25 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah. And how can we route people to you? If they’re asking us a question and I copy you and I think you might, let’s get together. Yeah.
00:34:10.72 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. What’s the right way to loop you into these conversations so that you can get a spot at the table? Because invariably, everybody’s dealing with their own aspects of having buy-in or not having buy-in from various parts of the organization and trying to solve that problem. On the, you know, whatever our counterpart is in the market research world, if there is one, the market research power hour. That makes you want to go look and see if there’s actually like any market research. I’m sure there are market research podcasts. Yeah, I’m sure. Good on us really doing our homework. We knew I was going to go here. No, no, exactly. But to that point is like, I imagine they have similar challenges because not a lot of people really understand what they do or how they do it and those kinds of things. So bridging that gap and understanding the mutual challenges is something that can be really effective. Okay, so we’ve touched on it a little bit, but we haven’t gotten into it, which is the next thing, which is optimization. And that sort of optimization is sort of that middle ground between analysis and execution on insights, right, where it’s learning validation, all those kinds of things. So what have you seen work there? And is it the same as analytics different?
00:35:31.41 [Tim Wilson]: I honestly haven’t seen a whole, whole lot there. I don’t work with a lot of organizations that have really built out optimization heavily. The organization I’m working with, it’s kind of starting in the analytics organization, which I think is fine, except it’s usually under invested in. I need to get Dylan back on to explain to us on the optimization front.
00:35:57.11 [Michael Helbling]: Seriously? Yeah. Why didn’t we ask him more questions? No, well, it’s a good point. It is hard to find organizations that are doing a good job of this. I do think it’s distinctly different enough from what an analyst does that it may or may not need to sit into it in a different group or its own group. However, I don’t, I agree with you. I don’t like taking optimization or testing. I don’t like taking those things away from the analyst. I think that’s the best and funnest part of an analyst’s job is that kind of work. And it really sucks when you’re like, yeah, yeah, you got us to the 20 yard line and now we’re going to hand it to the real stars. You’re going to run it over the, over the end of the end zone. So because that’s the value creation piece of analysis analytics that’s the part where I want to keep analysts involved. However executing analysis versus executing optimization is a much different set of tasks and parameters and so you have to incorporate or you have to account for that and so there’s.
00:37:05.50 [Tim Wilson]: You actually are affecting user experience. There is development changes. There is a much higher level of QA. It’s not I’m missing this data. It’s I’m fucking up the customer experience.
00:37:15.71 [Michael Helbling]: Right. And so there’s lots and lots of different stakeholders and groups. And that’s where I’ve seen stuff like steering committees or councils kind of become really good vehicles for driving optimization forward because they help with execution. They help with follow through and they can help with prioritization. which are three critical things, I think, for any optimization program.
00:37:39.12 [Tim Wilson]: and follow through meaning accountability saying if you found something.
00:37:42.26 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, we ran an A, B test and A and B was the winner by a mile and a half. But now IT is saying, well, we can’t make that live on the website for another 18 months. That committee sitting there and being like the loss of opportunity for not prioritizing this in terms of execution is this much? Should we then use our combined strength to go and push this through the organization more effectively? That’s what I mean by that.
00:38:12.03 [Tim Wilson]: I’ll back up a little bit and say that although not clients or organizations I’ve worked in, but I can think of one retailer here in Columbus where the optimization is totally rolls up. It is one manager that is doing analytics and optimization. But then I’m thinking of other much larger organizations where there are so many tests and they’re pretty proud of how the volume of the throughput of tests that really the testing organization is this massive group that is largely just being fed this kind of product management. Product management of the site product is what’s driving the tests. which makes sense. So being aligned with product managers, if you’ve got strong product management of site functionality, there’s some level of saying, yeah, they’re the ones who are accountable for making the product of the checkout process or the product of the catalog work effectively. So it makes sense to be well, well aligned with them. But yeah, that whole idea of analytics informing which tests to run. Uh, yeah, it gets messy.
00:39:17.28 [Michael Helbling]: Well, I think it’s not just analytics that drives that what tests to run conversation. It’s that committee because it’s all those people were like, Hey, I need optimization over here. Can you guys because the analytics organization is not an island unto itself, right? It owns driving business value forward. So it’s going to want to look at and solve the biggest and most valuable problems if it’s doing its job.
00:39:41.92 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah.
00:39:42.44 [Michael Helbling]: So the large organizations, I think we got that one solved for you. If you don’t work in a large organization, just go work in a large organization. So this will all make sense. No, but it and in reality, it’s because you can do it so many different ways. And the nimbleness of a smaller organization just then puts everything on the people themselves. And so if you get a great person or a great group of people, There’s nothing you can’t accomplish in a smaller or faster growing organization, which is a wonderful thing on its own. And, you know, there’s there’s things that can scare the crap out of you. Like, oh, yeah, I can change the website right here for my desktop versus, you know, it being kind of too locked down and how it’s got to go through these four committees and it taking forever for something to happen. Well, our committee on when to end the podcast is telling us that now, between now and the next two and a half minutes is the optimal time to start wrapping up. So we’re going to do that. But if you’ve been listening, we definitely want to hear from you too. But before we do that, let’s go around and do a last call. This is something on a show we like to do. Talk about something we found that’s interesting lately. What do you got for last call, Tim?
00:40:57.23 [Tim Wilson]: I am going to defer to you because I think yours is going to be like serious and useful and mine is going to be whimsical and I might have to check one little fact.
00:41:04.78 [Michael Helbling]: Oh, I’ve got mine is actually a joke that I heard. No, it’s not. A little while back, I saw a tweet from Jeff Jason, somebody who’s former guest on this. Yeah, actually. Yeah. And actually in line with what he was a guest on the podcast for, which is technical skills for analysts, he tweeted out this link to 10 tips for maximizing the Chrome developer console and they are outstanding these are excellent excellent tips and where would you want to you know where do you interact with the Chrome developer console typically when you’re doing quality assurance types of things you know testing tags trying to see what’s firing certainly if anyone ever uses Adobe DTM right you get debug mode turned on and you can see what DTM is doing what tags are firing and the console is a very powerful tool and knowing how to use it is a really great thing. So not everything in there is necessarily applicable, but it was a really good set of tips that I thought people could benefit from.
00:42:13.07 [Tim Wilson]: That’s awesome. So since you went with such a fantastic and useful and practical, I’m going to go completely off the deep end on random. And it really was the, uh, inspired by our discussion before we started recording. I am going to recommend from 2005, the comedians of comedy available on Netflix, Patton Oswalt, Zach Galfinakis, Brian Posane, yeah, that he pronounced. And Maria Bamford, fantastic comments. And they basically just do a, A tour and they they record it and it’s kind of awesome. So that’s a little bit that was inspired because helping you were talking about Maria Banford’s new newer series. So, you know, go have have a laugh when your organizational frustrations have really gotten to you. Go watch the comedians of comedy tour.
00:43:03.88 [Michael Helbling]: Isn’t that wasn’t that Ricky Gervais’s catchphrase from the show extras? You have a laugh. Wow.
00:43:11.03 [Tim Wilson]: Yeah.
00:43:11.17 [Michael Helbling]: Might have been.
00:43:12.50 [Tim Wilson]: I saw like three episodes of extras. Actually, those are Ricky Gervais and I know the premise of extras and I’ve actually seen a couple of episodes.
00:43:20.35 [Michael Helbling]: That’s about as close as you’ve come to getting a pop culture reference ever. So I’ll take it.
00:43:25.90 [Tim Wilson]: That’s a win. That was it.
00:43:27.53 [Michael Helbling]: That was it. That’s a win.
00:43:28.73 [Tim Wilson]: Squeaked it in right before the end of the year. I got it knocked out. There you go.
00:43:32.18 [Michael Helbling]: Personal KPI for that stuff 2016 all right if you’ve been listening and you’ve got something to say We’d love to hear from you. We’re on the measure slack all the time our Facebook page You can even reach out to us on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you if you agree or disagree and Well, you know Also, it’s getting close to the end of the year. If you’ve been a listener for a while and you enjoy even an episode or two, we’d love for you to rate us on iTunes. Let iTunes know what you think of the show, but we’re very appreciated.
00:44:07.27 [Tim Wilson]: It’s like your holiday gift from your time.
00:44:09.37 [Michael Helbling]: That’s right. In the holiday season. In lieu of whiskey, we would take an iTunes rating now. Oh, wait a minute. Easy there. I’ll take the whiskey. I’ll take the whiskey, all right. But, yeah, as always, Tim, a great conversation. You know, always thought-provoking. Appreciate it. And if you’re out there listening, keep analyzing.
00:44:35.34 [Announcer]: Thanks for listening. And don’t forget to join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, or measure Slack group. We welcome your comments and questions. Facebook.com forward slash analytics hour or at analytics hour on Twitter.
00:44:50.85 [Charles Barkley]: So smart guys wanted to fit in, so they made up a term called analytics. Analytics don’t work.
00:44:59.97 [Tim Wilson]: Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you talking to me?
00:45:06.96 [Michael Helbling]: Me, me, me, me, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma.
00:45:12.70 [Tim Wilson]: We’d just stop there and go talk about SIC codes instead.
00:45:15.40 [Michael Helbling]: Well, I mean, that was sort of me playing for time, which you then shut down.
00:45:20.27 [Tim Wilson]: I’m now going to be in therapy, the fact that I just yanked that out of my ass.
00:45:29.74 [Michael Helbling]: I remember when we used to have those big conversations about whether analytics should live in marketing or IT. I don’t know what I’m doing. Listen, I’m not very handy. I’m just going to get that out there.
00:45:50.95 [Tim Wilson]: Operating an airsoft can. Little much.
00:45:55.56 [Michael Helbling]: No, it’s just… So, what’s your favorite, Tim?
00:46:02.08 [Tim Wilson]: My favorite SIC code? Yeah. I think it’s 67.80?
00:46:07.49 [Michael Helbling]: Oh, yeah.
00:46:08.45 [Tim Wilson]: Not even offensive valid SIC code.
00:46:10.91 [Michael Helbling]: Well, it falls into finance, insurance, and real estate, so. Oh, good lord. That range.
00:46:18.51 [Tim Wilson]: We are officially completely off the road.
00:46:20.85 [Michael Helbling]: No, we are. This is right where we want to be. I actually had somebody today go, you have a podcast? And I worked with them. I was like, I need to do a better job talking about the podcast.
00:46:37.68 [Tim Wilson]: I still don’t have the PO box to sit up for.
00:46:40.79 [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, that’s right. Clover City, California. Wow.
00:46:53.46 [Tim Wilson]: Let’s cut that one. Ock flag and org charts!
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