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03.05.07
Finding A Web Measurement Home
 By
Gary Angel
Several of our engagements and serious consulting proposals recently have been very much focused on helping our clients build out a measurement department.
Obviously, this type of work is bittersweet (or perhaps I should coin an oxymoron and say "richpoor") for us. On the one hand, the work is interesting and useful. It's even remunerative enough while it lasts. But the while it lasts is the obvious sticking point. It's like being a veteran quarterback brought into a team that just used a #1 draft pick on a new young quarterback. They pay you well enough - but it's only a matter of time before you hit the bench!
As part of that work, of course, we're sometimes blessed with the opportunity to advise a client on how a measurement department should be organized, what kind of people it should hire and where in the organization it should fit. I thought I'd take up a few of these topics in the blog and I'm going to start with some thoughts on where a measurement department should fit within an organization.
Of course there isn't one right answer to this question. And I really mean that - I'm not just saying it to provide the obligatory wishy-washy qualifier. I'm going to talk about where, in general, I think it might make sense to put a web measurement department and I'm necessarily going to make some very broad generalizations about IT Departments, Marketing Departments, Senior Executives, etc. But since all these organizations are made up of people - and people are always different - my broad generalizations won't hold in lots and lots of cases.
As an example, we work for one company (and a public company at that) where one very Senior Executive is so smart, powerful and hands-on that the entire web measurement effort is pretty much focused (rightly, I think) on providing answers to his questions. That isn't a model I'd necessarily recommend. But it's the right model for that company with that person and it insures that the web measurement is valuable and directive for the company as a whole.
Where to put web measurement isn't really the first question you should ask. Before you even start thinking about where you're going to place a web measurement department, you need to think carefully about whether you should have one. And I don't mean whether you should outsource to someone like us (that's an entirely different question) - I mean should web measurement expertise be spread out through an organization - with Business Units or Managers hiring it where and when they feel a need.
I'll call this a de-centralized model. In a de-centralized model, you don't have a measurement department, you have pockets of expertise - presumably where they are most needed. There are some real advantages to de-centralization. I've never been a big believer in Matrix solutions - and the de-centralized model insures that the web analyst will be directly responsible to the information consumer. That's a very good thing. It means the analyst is closer to the ground and much more likely to understand the business issues because they're his boss' issues. It also means that each BU will only keep web analytics resources if they seem to be adding value. And no one should have a better idea if that's true than person whose supposed to be using the information. Because web analytics is all about knowing the business, keeping practitioners responsible to the business owners is bound to be advantageous.
There are a few things you lose if you go to the de-centralized model. First, it makes it much harder to build expertise. You may have one good analyst - but if that analyst is siloed in a BU, no other BU can take advantage of that expertise to train new hires. In addition, having web analytics expertise at the BU level can make it hard to standardize approaches and metrics across the organization. I was talking to someone at the SEM Pharma conference (I was speaking on the Seven Deadly Sins of SEM Measurement - drop me a line if you'd like a copy of the Powerpoint) whose organization has upwards of five hundred web sites! In that kind of environment, how could senior management possibly insure the integrity of the numbers without some kind of central analytics organization? Finally, a de-centralized model may make it hard for smaller BU's to meet any web analytic needs. Large BU's may have enough demand for an FTE - but if they simply fill their slots then smaller units will be left out in the cold.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Gary Angel is the author of the "SEMAngel blog - Web Analytics and Search Engine Marketing practices and perspectives from a 10-year experienced guru.
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