11 years ago
Best of 2013

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of getting away. No matter how much you love your work, perspective comes from outside looking in, not inside looking out. Taking a week or two off to worry about cooking risotto, finding an open restaurant on New Year’s Day, watching Duke flame out gloriously in football, or shepherding kids around San Francisco is like sleeping on a thorny problem. I accomplished much less than I hoped over the last two weeks, and maybe that’s a good thing.

So with all that newfound perspective, here’s a look back at the last year of my posts. I know how hard it is to keep up with the industry. Believe me, I appreciate it that anyone finds time to read my posts, and I know that most people will have missed quite a few. That’s probably not life threatening. But here’s the one’s (in chronological order) I hope you didn’t miss along with a little color about why I think they’re worth seeking out:

Measurement that Matters: I kicked off the year with one of my favorite posts. Here’s a half-dozen New Year’s resolutions designed to help deliver meaningful analytics. Every one still holds true.

What is Big Data: This post became a huge part of what I wrote about in 2013 – and was the first in which I elaborated a better definition of big data than the four V’s. I took up the cudgel again in this post: Big Data Skeptics, Half-Right and Wholly Wrong. I think both are worth reading if you are interested in big data.

Why Measurement Doesn’t Matter: A dissection of some of the biggest mistakes organizations make when it comes to analytics. I spent more time in 2013 than I expected talking about organization and this post really set the table for that.

The Case for Building a Customer Intelligence System: I wasn’t sure which post to pick from several around this topic – but this one felt like the best single overview of why there’s an unmet opportunity around Voice of Customer and how it can be filled. This is still a huge vacuum in 2014.

Reporting, Forecasting, Simulation and Social Media: In my measurement that matters post, I talked about a fundamental re-think in reporting. This post lays out that vision in more detail and leads into some of the best work we did as a practice in 2013. Every traditional reporting effort I can kill is one good deed done.

Engineering Customer Experience: One of the tastiest fruits of our integration into EY has been the beginnings of an integration of traditional customer experience engineering with digital analytics. This post lays out why that’s a compelling win for any organization.

Nudges – Choice Architecture and Public Sector Analytics: Many of my posts are inspired by conversations, Huddles or specific engagements. This one was no exception – it was a kind of follow-up, one-sided conversation from a meeting with some very senior public sector folks. I’ve always been interested in Public Policy and with the current healthcare.gov issues, this post is particularly timely as a way to think about Public Sector digital analytics in a completely different fashion.

Establishing Website and Customer Value: Along with Model-Based Reporting, Re-Survey techniques to measure Website value were the biggest wins in our practice in 2013. This post lays out the basic of how we’ve increasingly been able to establish the value of digital touchpoints AND determine the right KPIs to measure those touchpoints using Voice of Customer and Behavioral data integrations.This is truly important stuff for any non-commerce Website.

Data Science vs. Big Data: Based on a Huddle at X Change, this post investigates the whole “data scientist” phenomenon and I think deepens the topic and points the enterprise toward useful directions in advanced analytics without all the attendant hype.

Standing up an Analytics Center of Excellence: The introduction into my current series lays out a series of principles for creating an analytics CoE in the enterprise that are more than just organization 101 and consulting speak.

Enjoy – and Happy New Year!

By: Gary Angel, co-founder, president & chief technology officer, Semphonic. Originally published at semphonic.blogs.com