BRINGING ANALYTICS TO CONSUMER PRODUCTS
Analytics has become more essential than a mere preference in almost all sectors of business. The levels might vary but at some point the mighty analytics has to be introduced to any modern business eco-system for it to flourish or at least sustain.
Primarily, product analytics is the process you employ for understanding how customers engage with your product or service. The idea is to put customers at the core of the business by analyzing behavioral data, identifying valuable opportunities, and creating impactful experiences. Product analytics allows tracking, visualizing, and analyzing real-time engagement and behavioral data so the business can fully optimize its complete customer journey. If the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 taught us anything about product management, it’s that: there’s no room for products that don’t bring value to the customer. The current pandemic has put every single product and service to a value test. How quickly can a business adapt and pivot when the definition of normal changes dramatically, is the ultimate test.
The three life-saving questions that need answering before you are ready to apply analytics to your business are; Why, What & How.
Why
Once your product is ready for the bringing in the analytics, the answer to ‘Why’ will help provide direction to the team and processes. It relates to a simple finding of why the original decision to introduce analytics to the product was taken.
- Is it to enable end users of your product?
- Will it serve for your internal product intelligence?
- Is it because every other product has some flavor of analytics?
- Investors asking for it?
- Is it the next big strategy for the product roadmap?
- You have hired a data science team; you do not know what to do with?
- Would it provide a better selling proposition for the sales team?
- If your clients are asking for their usage statistics?
What
Answer to ‘What’ will lay the foundation to the whole process of tailoring, deploying and sustaining the analysis to your product.
- Do you want to enable reporting of various metrics for admins of your B2B platform?
- Would you leverage AI/ML for a product feature for end users?
- Are you looking for more in-depth product intelligence?
- Is it a good to have feature, without much usability? OR it is going to be the prime feature offering?
The answers to these questions will determine the kind of software that is best suited for your particular product type and the kind of solutions you are looking for. Utility, database interface softwares like CRM or ERPs can prove as a viable solution most of the times for product analytics.
How
After answering the Whys and Whats you have your aim and the groundwork ready, the answer to how will design the roadmap of implementation. Implementation of product analytics will always work around the one key element, data. The whole ecosystem will be designed around data and will include the following aspects.
Maintaining your CRM database is easier said than done when your sales and marketing teams are large and complex, and when you have numerous customers, clients, and stakeholders to satisfy. A well-maintained customer relationship management system will provide accurate and valuable information for your sales and marketing teams. Your sales team will allocate their time and efforts into better interactions with more qualified leads. Your marketing department will have better insight into where they need to dedicate their time and energy to engage and attract qualified leads.
Qualitative data gathered from customer feedback is usually sufficient for guidance in products that are relatively new to the market and still finding their customer base. But when a product reaches to a certain level of growth with enough users to warrant statistically significant data, then it will be time to implement product analytics. This quantitative, real-world usage data can provide the most useful type of business intelligence available to a product team.
If you think your business is ready to be prepped for the next stage get in touch with one of Makeen’s analytics expert today to find the right solution tailored for your needs.
