If you only read the first sentences you will probably think that this post has nothing to do with Analytics (that may be good for some people, but let’s think that since this is an Analytics blog, that is something bad), so let me invite you to read the entire post.

Ten days ago I was having vacations after two years. When you don’t have vacations for such a long time you have the expectations that everything goes perfect.

The second day of vacations my kids asked me to visit a Dinosaurus thematic restaurant…. I went to a restaurant with my family. It hasn’t the best food in world nor the best prices, but the idea was having a good time with the kids.

So we arrived to the restaurant and asked for a table, the answers was “your table will be ready in 45 minutes” (first metric). My first reaction was, let’s go to another place but my kids were not agree with that idea, at all, so I had to stay there for 45 minutes. I remained inside of the restaurant since outside was cold, until someone from the restaurant told me, in a very bad manner, that I shouldn’t stay there but in the gift shop or outside. So I waited for 45 minutes in the gift shop (can you imagine how hard is staying in a gift shop with two kids for 45 minutes?) and came back to the “front desk”. After waiting like 5 minutes (second metric, and we are building our Analytics model ) count someone told me, pretty ungently, that they still don’t have a table for me. So I waited for like 10 minutes (third one) and finally a very gentle waitress came to us with a big smile and invited us to have a sit .

I told her that before ordering I wanted the complaints book. I told her, you are the first person smiling in this restaurant. I understand that everybody here is working hard because the restaurant is full but that is not excuse for being rude or not gentle. We went there just for having a good time. She apologies for the situation and offered me to call the manager. I accepted. The manager was very gentle and always smiling. She said that probably their employees were pretty stress for their work and they “forgot to smile”. She told me that that is not an excuse, so they invited us to have a great time and to forgot about the past. We accepted, and finally we had a great time there.

Before leaving the waitress brought the check with a 20% discount for the inconvenience. It was a good way to say, the service was lower than the expected, so we reduce the price. The lower the price, the lower the expectations (price= product or service expectations – product or service provided). But what I kept thinking was, at the end of the day it is possible to measure uncountable things.

My complain was simple, nobody was smiling there. Even when I wait 45 minutes, even when they haven’t my table after the 45 minuties, the problem was…nobody was smiling. They understood that the lack of smiles in the restaurant worth 20% of the service. So, just imagine that the restaurant begins using that metric as one of the mains KPI’s and explain their employees the importance of smiling…”Everytime you don’t smile we lose 20% of the ticket, and in some cases even a client”. Actually is even a great deal for the restaurant paying like a performance fee. “If you smile and the client is happy, we pay you a and additional 2% of  the ticket value to your salary”. Remember the quote “tell me how you measure me and I’ll tell you how I’ll behave. Measure me in an illogical way and don’t complaint if I behave illogically“. Well, the “Smile rate” is very clear. All the people from the restaurant can understand the relationship between both variables (Income & smile) and if that is clear it’s easier to accomplish the followed results. Wouldn’t be awesome do an Anova model Analysis with the variables Income and Smiles? Never say this is uncountable as the first answer, be creative, every flow in your system is countable. If you don’t get the answer, probably you only need to dig a little more.

Scorecards are a semi-standard structured report, supported by proven design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions (by Wikipedia), and looks like this:

What’s the problem with that kind of Scorecard? Even when the image is small the issue on it jumps from the screen…well, the problem is that there is no relation between the company strategy and the carried on activities (I mean each one of the measured metrics).

Let me show you my recommendation.

In the above Scorecard you can see that there is a relation between each metric that measures the operations performance and the company’s main Objective. In each measure level we can see how much money does each activity brings to the whole company and even find the main restriction in your System (Company), so you can point your budget to solve that particular issue (restriction) that will allow that more money flows through your system (company).

Today’s WebAnalytics industry is discussing about how relevant is today the use of the term “Web Analytics”. So the general idea is finding a term that better defines our activity so, some ideas are Online Analytics, Digital Analytics, etc.

But before trying to find a new term why don’t we define the root term, “Analytics”. If you go to Wikipedia you will find this definition “Analytics is the application of computer technology, operational research, and statistics to solve problems in business and industry“. It’s looks pretty much like what I do in my daily work so why should we add any other word?

If you pay attention I never (in some particular cases) used the word Web Analytics, but Analytics instead. This is because I never understood why we (The “Web” Analytics industry) are trying to make complex what it is simple? Don’t misinterprets me, I’m not saying that the idea is stupid, it is just that I don’t understand it. Just that.

Most of my colleges from the Web Analytics Association are not just Google Analytics, Omniture or NedStats users. They are working with information to solve business problems.

At the end of the day, we are all talking about integration but then when an channel at the operations level changes need to change the name of what we do?. I think we are living fantastic moments, technology is finally allowing us integrating all our business information generating more realistic decision making scenarios. Are we gonna return to the beginning?

Again…Websites, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, TV, Radio, etc, are not Different Strategic Marketing options, are just channels in which we can execute ourStrategy or we cal also say, in which we can operate our strategic decisions. Should we start negotiating the AA.com domain with American Airlines…mmmhhh ok, we better start soon…it’s not gonna be easy