The State of Digital Analytics and the Need for Sustainability

In this 3 part series, we will explore:

Part 1: The State of Digital Analytics and the Need for Sustainability

Part 2: The Importance of People-First Approach in Digital Analytics

Part 3: Simplification and Adopting a "Less is More" Mindset in Digital Analytics

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Digital analytics has become an essential part of modern business operations. It helps organizations to make data-driven decisions and optimize their digital presence. However, the state of digital analytics is in serious crisis, and sustainability is critical for the future of the industry.

The poor health of digital analytics today has led to significant challenges for businesses. Technical debt, for instance, is a common problem where analytics teams spend more time trying to keep the analytics infrastructure operating than activating the data through reporting, analysis, and A/B testing. This situation leads to significant losses in productivity and wasted resources.

Another issue related to the poor health of digital analytics is the reliance on dirty and invalid data, which can lead to inaccurate business decisions. Companies that rely on analytics to make data-informed decisions but use bad data, face many challenges, including loss of trust, inaccurate reporting, and missed opportunities. This reliance on dirty data is often a result of poor data governance and the lack of attention to maintenance and quality control.

The need for sustainability in digital analytics cannot be overstated. Sustainable digital analytics means designing and deploying analytics solutions that are easy to maintain, emphasize clean data, and do not degrade over time. This approach involves a future-proof view that considers long-term maintenance, reduces technical debt, and prioritizes quality control. A sustainable analytics ecosystem ensures that data is accurate, consistent, and reliable, leading to better decision-making and more significant business impact.

Adopting sustainable digital analytics practices has several benefits.

1. It saves resources and reduces technical debt, allowing analytics teams to focus on value-added activities like reporting, analysis, and optimization.

2. It creates a more stable and reliable analytics ecosystem, ensuring that data is trustworthy and can be relied on for decision-making.

3. It improves data quality and increases the confidence stakeholders have in analytics, leading to better business outcomes.

We believe the state of digital analytics is in serious crisis, and sustainability is critical for the future of the field. The challenges that businesses face due to poor digital analytics health can be addressed by adopting sustainable digital analytics practices. These practices involve designing and deploying analytics solutions that are easy to maintain, emphasize clean data, and do not degrade over time. By adopting a sustainable approach to digital analytics, businesses can ensure accurate, consistent, and reliable data and make better-informed decisions that drive better business outcomes.