I ran analytics for Fortune 500 teams before I started doing it for growth companies. Here's the story, and why I think you're better off hiring someone like me than building it all in-house.
Kevin Wilson
Connect on LinkedInI spent 17 years in Adobe Analytics - starting as an independent SiteCatalyst consultant, leading enterprise implementations at comScore and Adobe, and eventually running Adobe's own internal Adobe Analytics and Customer Journey Analytics rollout as a Senior Technical Product Manager. Along the way I picked up my Adobe Certified Expert (Business Practitioner) credential.
Here's the part nobody likes to admit: most of the analytics I built went unused. Marketing and Product teams would nod along in the meeting, then go right back to deciding things by gut feel.
I was pretty good at building dashboards nobody opened. I wasn't the only one - I saw the same pattern at every company I worked with.
Led Adobe's internal Adobe Analytics/CJA implementation across 10+ product teams, serving 500K+ users.
Clients included American Express, Condé Nast, and Thrivent Financial.
Led the Microsoft Xbox platform migration on time and under budget; also worked with Kellogg's and Activision, and received an innovation award.
Early-career analytics implementation consulting as the platform shifted from independent tool to enterprise standard.
Adobe Analytics Experience
Users on the Adobe AA/CJA Rollout I Led
Adobe Certified Expert, Business Practitioner
I was on the road running training sessions on our analytics platform - same deck every time, walking through features and functionality. I'd done it a dozen times already.
In one session, an account manager asked something different: "Can I use this data to see which features my client is actually using in our software?" I said sure, and we built that report together on the spot.
When the report finished loading, the room lit up. I don't speak Japanese, but I didn't need to - I could see it on every face.
They saw immediately what it meant for their client conversations - now they could point to exactly which features a client used and how often. Nobody was asking about best practices anymore. This was about answering a question they actually had.
That office in Japan became the most consistent users of the platform on the team, no arm-twisting required. Turns out people adopt tools that answer their actual questions, not the ones we think they should be asking.
Fit the analytics into how people actually spend their day, not how a slide deck says they should
I'd rather ship something plain that gets checked every morning than something impressive that gathers dust
If a number on a dashboard never changes what someone does, it probably shouldn't be there
I grade myself on whether your team opens it. A clever model nobody looks at is a failure, however well it's built.
Fortune 500 companies can afford a dedicated analytics team to babysit a complex system. Most growth companies can't, so I don't build like they can.
A project that ships on time but never gets used isn't a win. I'd rather take an extra week and hand off something your team keeps using six months later.
I'm not interested in being a permanent dependency. My job is to hand your team something they can run and understand without me.
At a Fortune 500 company, a chunk of wasted analytics spend is a rounding error - nobody gets fired over it, it just disappears into the budget. At a growth company, that same waste can be the difference between scaling and stalling.
I kept seeing the same pattern outside of Adobe: companies that knew data mattered but couldn't justify a dedicated analytics team or the complex systems that Fortune 500 companies run.
Growth companies don't need the same systems Fortune 500 companies run. They need the same rigor, delivered in a way their team will actually use.
That's what I do now - bring that rigor to companies that couldn't otherwise afford it, without the enterprise price tag or the enterprise timeline.
If your analytics are more decoration than tool, I can probably help - and I'll tell you plainly if I can't.
Book a 30-minute strategy session. We'll talk through your specific analytics challenges and I'll walk you through the ADOPTION framework I use to get teams actually using what they've paid for.
If it's not a fit, I'll say so and point you somewhere useful.