Visual Sciences’ Promise

René is trying to get me to adopt his wonderful Mac. Actually he started by begging me to write an article about Visual Sciences as I promised Eric I would do.

Yes, I’ve been silent because I haven’t been doing my homework actually. Just digesting my US eMetrics experience and taking care of my clients as well as the integration of a new team member to my little panEuropean Web Analytics business unit. Welcome Julien, our French team member. So busy, busy, or as Siegert would say with his smiling Flemish accent druk, druk, druk ;-)
Visual Sciences - Visual Site Interface

But yes, of course, Visual Sciences.

There hasn’t been a day since our return from Washington where I haven’t thought about processes. This, of course, refers to Eric’s inspirational presentation about processes related to Web Analytics.? Today for example, we encountered an SDC issue with one of our WebTrends clients. Apparently something had changed in the configuration. It would be an interesting idea to start thinking about access rights to the SDC machine and list possible interfering activities that might hold consequences on the SDC’s main objectives, which is… as we all know: collect log files.

But yes again, of course Visual Sciences.

I wrote an very short, very vulgarized and terribly bad article today about Web Analytics and Business Intelligence. Yes, I must admit, my written French is even worse than my English, I solemnly promise. And also, I had about 23 minutes to write something sensible in 2.950 characters about business intelligence and web analytics.

So, yes Visual Sciences.

Where to start…?Amazing? Disruptive? Challenging? Different!
I know very few companies that will actually get, really get, what this product is about. I know for a fact that not all competing vendors actually really, but I mean really understand what the hell Jim, Eric and their lot are talking about.

Where to start… René suggests the visual and graphical aspect of the product. Yes, nice, indeed, gamy. As many OX2 members are both former game developers, current players and hefty comic readers and even some drawers, we can of course appreciate the dark background and cool 3D stuff.?Thanks guys, it’s fun and inspiring to our generation…
Because, I don’t know about you guys but I recently sat with a CEO (must admit it didn’t go that well, wasn’t prepared but hey, there are difficult waters out there) and he didn’t really strike as the kind of Playstation or XBox players. But hey, that’s us over here in Europe maybe. What do I know?

It’s not that. It’s the atomic bomb stuff. Or as Eric described it during his demo, he was “using an atomic bomb” to analyze behavior on his WebAnalyticsDemystified website. Jumping up and down with excitement, eyes tinkling and proud as a ponitailed peacock (sorry, couldn’t help myself).
And as an analyst, I must say that during that presentation, suddenly the limited shutters I had related to analyzing online data blasted away.
Seriously, any question I would have, any kind of segmentation I could think of was there, reachable, on the fly. And in 3D ;-) And even more seriously, it’s not only about online or web technology driven data. It’s more than “just” that. It’s about the ultimate holistic view of your company, expressed in measurable, down-drillable, comparable financial terms.

It’s about being a data driven company. It’s about taking decisions based on hard facts and embracing the will to do so, truly and honestly for the benefit of your company and your stakeholders. Naturally, your stakeholders will be your share holders, in this connected world we live in. Hopefully, being a visionary company, you would also want to include your employees shared efforts.

Clearly Visual Sciences will attract some of the best analysts in the world. Hopefully the guys from Visual Sciences, with their atomic bomb, will also come with knowledge related to the type of team you’d need to get those little Hiroshimas glowing…

It’s interesting to see also how, in the light of the public presentation that Bob Chatham Jim MacIntyre made at the eMetrics at Washington how this all fits into WebSideStory’s strategy. the presentation was insightful and makes sense. For now and for the future. For those other vendors that were there as well, I hope it steered up quite some discussions on the trip back home. I do know that Greg Drew was paying attention, I caught a glimpse of our Danish friends and I’m sure John Marshall from ClickTracks wasn’t that far either. As for Omniture, well I hope Matt was not at the bar.

So, when WebSideStory Inc. (Nasdaq:WSSI) announces on the 30th of November that Jim MacIntyre replaces Jeff Lunsford as CEO, it would be comforting to know that Wall Street would understand what the hell we are talking about.

In Jim’s terms:”We have the best team in our industry and the best products to deliver to our customers at just the right time – as leading businesses are realizing the importance of real-time customer analytics to their competitive position, customer satisfaction and bottom line.”

Visual Sciences is a promise. A promise to the Web Analytics industry, a promise to all those frustrated analysts. As Jim Novo pointed out in a previous eMetrics summit, we business analyst seek refuge in the online world because there was data but our knowledge is certainly not limited to this. It’s limited by the data access!

I’ve been looking at company strategies all my professional life. I’ve been reading books like Strategy Maps by Norton & Kaplan, Stiglitz on The roaring Nineties, Globalisation & Fair Trade, Naked Conversation by Scoble & Israel, The Long Tail, the Innovators Dilemma (I’m not sure this is the Christensen book you refer to Avinash. Could you help me on that one, please?), HBR, the Economist and many other stuff that I find.

These readings have inspired my economic vision upon the world. I’m an economist and even though I’m not quite convinced by Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand, I do believe we should do all that is in our power to make life easier to this wrongly categorized capitalist force. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for strong government control as I believe there is a third way. And this way is through more symmetric information. One could also see it as less friction in decision making. This can be rendered through the increased use of “new technologies”.
As more and more of our processes will be handled online, they will also become more measurable (I won’t use the term real time, today). These processed will therefore be potential candidates for improvement. Surely at least Japanese companies should at least grasp the interest of such an opportunity!

Data driven decision making where every member, every process, every product, every client, every call, every contact, every purchase, can be matched together in a big wide web of data. Interconnecting bits & bytes, zeros and ones.

And in this mass of data, questions will be asked in a lofty board room. Answers will have to be given rapidly enough. Options will be discussed and further action taken. ?In the best interest of your companies’ stake holders. This is what Visual Sciences is about.

Which CEO is up for the challenge?

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About this entry

You’re currently reading “Visual Sciences’ Promise,” an entry on OX2 Web Analytics blog

Published:
22.11.06 / 9am
Author:
Aurélie Pols
Category:
Business Intelligence, Business Tips and Tricks, Emetrics Summit Washington 2006, Thoughts and Ideas, Web Analytics, Web Analytics Industry News
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