Building Interal Support for Truly Useful Web Anaytics

I found this article to very interesting for a business student who does see web analytics as critical to the success of any online campaign, whether it be through a company's own website (or partner websites) or by spending dollars on marketing campaigns on external websites. Like many of our case and business school readings, the article posted on Mediapost.com, http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=99930, mentions on some critical steps to take in any organization to make sure that useful analytics are deemed imperative to business success on online media. In a strong point, the writer mentions how it is key to make sure that IT is not seen as just developers or a service, but instead as part of the whole campaign and that IT should be brought in and given a stake in the overall marketing plan. Otherwise, any online campaign will just be seen as an expenditure of IT, which may or may not have the budget, time or resources to devote to a successful campaign,. Thus, bringing IT in on the development process, making them a part of the whole process and getting key managers of budgeting process understand that the IT and marketing need to be brought together, rather than seen as internally allocating costs.

As in some of my other posts, I am seeing more and more of a desire to rationalize online marketing campaigns with some form of ROI. Thus, in order to really achieve a useful ROi measurement, IT and marketing need to be given a budget that strings togtehr both teams and thus proper analytics can b developed from the very inception of the campaign rather than at the end. The article highlights five ways to help began this process:
1,Factor Web analytics resource needs into the capital budgeting and yearly planning process.;
2.Document your Web analytics projects and business requirements and share the documentation with IT;
3.Identify and document why you need IT resources;
4. Leverage a project manager; and
5. Share your analytics success with IT and let stakeholders know how IT has helped you.