Whats the Real Cost of Good Analytics?
A while back when I started consulting with clients in the area of digital analytics, a common engagement would be to help an organization figure out which Web analytics technology would be best for its needs. The typical process would involve working with the organization to define its business needs by understanding what its goals and objectives were. The next stage would be to translate that into a set of requirements in terms of what the technology needed to be able to deliver and then using those requirements as a basis for assessing proposals and pitch presentations and choosing a particular vendor. Cost was inevitably an issue, as there were no “free tools” at the time, but the focus on costs tended to be on the cost of acquiring, implementing, and running the particular technology. Generally this would focus on the price of the technology itself and perhaps what kinds of professional services might be required to implement it. Little consideration was really given to how much i
