Most Adobe Analytics rollouts stop at power users. The Lighthouse Framework is what comes after
I spoke at the Adobe Summit Experience League Theater AMA series a few weeks ago. For anyone who missed it - or who's been wrestling with the same adoption challenges I keep seeing - here's what I covered.
The Adoption Ceiling
Most Adobe Analytics and CJA implementations eventually hit the same wall. Power users are thriving. Everyone else is frustrated. They don't understand what the dimensions mean, or why some of them have no data. They've stopped trusting the numbers. And whenever they need something, they file a ticket with IT - where it joins a queue.
CJA makes this worse before it makes it better. More data sources means more dimensions spanning multiple departments, and most people have no map for any of it.
The Lighthouse Framework
At Accrease, we've built an approach around this called the Lighthouse Framework. The idea is simple: instead of routing everything to IT, every business unit gets one trusted point of guidance - a 'lighthouse' - who sits in their team, understands their data, and can answer questions or escalate when needed.
Lighthouses are trained across three layers:
- Basic users learn how data views or report suites are structured for their department specifically.
- Intermediate users understand how data connects and flows across departments.
- Lighthouses (super users) learn everything - including how to translate a business requirement into a technical one, and when to handle something in the data view themselves versus when to involve IT.
A few things that have stuck with me across hundreds of implementations:
- Seats don't measure adoption. Whether people are actually using insights correctly does. Access without onboarding is just noise.
- Ownership boundaries matter. IT owns the data layer and the CJA connection. Business users own data view structure and naming. When those lines are clear, the whole system runs more smoothly.
- Formal selection beats volunteers. Domain experts appointed by leadership consistently outperform self-selected ones. The formal selection builds ownership and ensures they have real depth in the data their department produces.
- Generic training won't carry you. Experience League is great as a supplement. But it won't explain your specific dimensions. Custom onboarding that walks people through your actual setup is what builds real confidence.
Where to start
If you don't know where to begin: identify one person in each department who genuinely understands what data that department generates. Create a shared space for them - Teams, Slack, whatever you use - and start a conversation. That's the seed of a lighthouse program.
Have you built something like this in your org, or are you still working through the adoption challenge? Would love to hear what's worked - and what hasn't.