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Fair Isaac is uniquely positioned to provide perspectives and advice on this issue because we have both marketing and analytics professionals on staff, and our success is dependent on their teamwork.

The Great Divide

We know plenty of marketers who respect and appreciate the work of their analyst peers. Most analysts have made the increasingly complex and data-intense world of customers and markets somewhat transparent. However, the majority of the data and the seemingly endless ways to assemble it into analyses have left non-analysts a little confused. The problems we see include:

• Campaign analysis tends to focus on the past,and there is often a time delay in the ability to deliver the results that marketers need for future planning.
  
  
• Analysis is still confused with reporting. While assembling the facts in an easily understood format is an important function, it is not the same as drawing out critical insights that can be applied to future marketing efforts. Ask a modeler who is measuring the fit of a model or designing a segmentation profile, and it should quickly be clear that designing the report is not his or her true value.
  
  
• Content trumps context. Many analysts are not provided with the overall context of the marketing campaigns required to make their analyses more meaningful and to translate the disparate data elements into insight. Was this initiative focused on retention? What are the key measures of success? This lack of clarity has not prevented marketers from expecting insight from their analyst counterparts.
  
  
• Action! Marketers not only expect a report on performance and future projections out of the analysis, but actionable insight. The graphics and data slices are interesting, but how do they translate into more revenue and profit?
  
  
• Separate functions own different parts of the customer interaction lifecycle. Strategy, forecasting, marketing and analysis are seldom integrated appropriately to help the entire team gain alignment. The extent/availability of analysis completed up front for strategies, programs, initiatives and efforts is often the purview of strategy. Frequently, the analysis used to drive market/segment and offer definition is not combined into how segments or efforts are analyzed. Many times analysis used to drive the annual budget is not applied to the balance of the year.
  
  
• Out of time. The manual nature of analysis and ad hoc reporting generally diminishes the amount of time analysts have for collaboration on future efforts.
  

• Yours, mine and not ours. Different parts of a marketing organization manage efforts, analysis and resources differently. An email effort requires different types of resources than might be needed for a newspaper insert, a catalogue or direct mail. Frequently, organizational metrics have not been made to cascade down appropriately to allow accurate side-by-side measures of investments.
  
  
• Analytics alchemy. Analyst tools are often “black boxes” for marketers. Most of the time, the mathematical and statistical algorithms are not conceptually understood, adding to the widening divide.

Bridging the Gap: Collaborating for Analytical Insight

Ultimately, Analytics should provide deep Insight into all aspects of Marketing (AIM). This should include, at a minimum at least markets, prospects, customers, segments, media and effort performance. It should also include historical and predictive perspectives.

To achieve this, marketers and analysts must:

1. Agree upon a joint operating manifesto. It sometimes seems at best a challenge, and at worst a waste of time, to agree to and document what a team is willing, or enabled to do, to move toward a goal. A good charter may be challenging, but it sets the stage for success. As consultants, we often restate the goals and agreements we made at the beginning of a project in our presentations. Change management experts will tell you this is a critical component of driving organizational transition. Additionally, an operating charter is a hallmark of high-performance teams. It should include expectations, agreements, roles, responsibilities, a sample planning cycle (from initiative idea to final analysis), sample reports, sample analyses and checklists.
   
   
2. Create a common, jargon-free language. We never think we speak our own vernacular until we interact significantly with other disciplines. The acronyms, tools, technologies, abbreviations and terms used by marketers not only exist, but they also vary by company, by industry and by marketing model. Conversely, the statistical concepts and tools available to analysts are not well understood by marketers. For instance, it is not often marketers say ANOVA and coefficients of variance. Therefore, developing ways to help get everyone to a common language is critically important to long-term success and adoption. A core group of depictions and examples can help make some key concepts clear for marketing clients. While the tools analysts use are complex, the ways to represent the results and how the tools help make marketing more effective are certainly available.
   
   
3. Align and tie organizational metrics and measures to all marketing. It should be clear how metrics are applied and assessed across areas of marketing. Understand the organizational baseline. Defining test and control strategies to be applied across all analyses should be done at this step.
   
   
4. Create integrated AIM teamsthat exist beyond the budgeting cycle. This should include forecasting, analytics, campaign analysts, modelers, financial resources, marketers and marketing operations (in organizations where the functions are separated). This collaboration should not be “meeting driven” – in other words, the only time the parties collaborate should not be in a meeting. The more the disciplines work side by side, the more an organization can harness the power of the team. Using the manifesto, the common language and the metrics provide a foundation for communication. Next, get a conference room with a big white board and use it. Share upcoming programs and agree to analysis requirements in advance. Marketers should explain programs in detail to allow the overall team, and in particular the analysts, the opportunity to provide valuable input.
   
   
5. Define strategic intentand its translation into programs. Marketers generally focus on the delivery of strategies for organizations. As such, defining not just what is being done, by why and how the concept/idea/initiative/effort aligns to strategy is important for analysts to understand. When this work is not done, the analyst is denied the opportunity to recommend additional viewpoints or analyses that might help define or measure success.
   
   
6. Develop a balancebetween performance and predictive analysis. Organizations need to understand how their prior marketing investments performed. However, they also should know how to invest the next dollar – which may not be in the same fashion. As such, forecasts and forward-looking analyses are critical to looking at a complex and rapidly changing market. Using last year’s numbers as a starting point for measuring current performance may no longer be an acceptable approach.
   
   
7. Remove reporting/automatable work to allow ad hoc, deep-dive work. It should go without saying that as much as possible, regular versions of analyses and reports should be automated. The true value of an analyst is to allow him or her time to “play” in the data, to develop insights based on how the programs, markets and consumers affect both current and future performance.

The Fine Print

When presented with these recommendations, it’s natural that the first question that organizations ask is ‘how much does this cost?’ The answer is simple and affordable: it’s free. However, you may wish to have paid external facilitators in creating a manifesto and common language. This generally allows everyone’s voice to be heard and can incorporate industry and functional best practices within the organization.

How long does it take? The consultant’s answer: it depends. It depends on how willing your organization is to acknowledge there is an issue, adopt a change strategy, make the appropriate transition and continue to live by it. End to end, you should estimate six months to a year for creating real alignment. However, there can be immediate tangible benefits from the manifesto’s implementation.

How hard is it? It is not easy, or everyone would be doing it. It does, however, provide a significant organizational advantage versus those who have not undertaken the effort. Expect efficiency gains in time to market and effectiveness gains driven through strategic alignment.

The risk is low and the reward is high. Given AIM’s magic quadrant position, this is a methodology with a very high success rate. Both marketers and analysts would agree that success is a good thing in any language.