Life is full of risks. So are technology projects. If you ever saw the Ben Stiller movie Along Came Polly (maybe binge-watching movies during the pandemic), you got to meet Rueben Feffer, a man who assesses risk for a living using a risk management software program.
In some ways, I can relate to the movie’s risk management character. As some of you know, when I worked at Omniture, one of my roles was helping customers fix broken analytics implementations. As I performed this role, I observed many key risk points associated with digital analytics implementations. As I have mentioned in past blog posts, many digital analytics implementations fail or underperform for various reasons, including consequential decisions made or approaches taken at these key risk points. Whether you work for an organization managing your digital analytics implementation or at an agency that helps clients with analytics implementations, understanding the key places that lead analytics programs astray is important.
In this post, I will share some of the key risk points that I have encountered over the years. As I describe these risk points, I will rate each on a scale of one to ten. If something is rated low, it means that mistakes made will not be as damaging as a higher rated item. I provide this scale to help you focus on the most impactful items when determining whether an analytics implementation will or will not be successful.
While this post’s content can apply to anyone associated with a digital analytics implementation, I’m writing it primarily for those who lead or sponsor digital analytics at organizations. Marketing leaders at organizations are ultimately responsible for ensuring that digital analytics programs and implementations generate value, and, as such, they should be keenly aware of these potential risk factors. They are also the folks most likely to be in a position to rectify any deficiencies in the cited areas.