Why building an internal analytics team is crushing growth company budgets - and still failing to deliver results
And after all that investment, 73% of the analytics they create go completely unused.
Built for "everyone" but useful to no one. Your team ignores them within weeks.
Tracking everything except what actually drives revenue and growth.
$200K in analytics tools that your team doesn't know how to use effectively.
Your analytics team is building what they think you need, not what your marketing team will actually use. They're following "best practices" from companies 10x your size with completely different challenges.
Result: Beautiful dashboards gathering dust while your team makes million-dollar decisions based on gut feelings.
Of marketing analytics go completely unused
Average daily adoption rate after 6 months
Average wasted marketing spend due to bad data
Of marketers still rely on gut decisions
How a room full of Japanese account managers taught me what data adoption really means
I was managing analytics data usage for a major enterprise software company, flying around giving seminars on "how to utilize your data better." Tokyo was just another stop on the tour - or so I thought.
I delivered my standard presentation to a room full of Japanese account managers. Best practices, dashboard features, proper report formatting - the usual corporate analytics training. Then came the questions.
"Can this data show us which features our clients are actually using across all our different products?" Simple question. Specific business need. Not about dashboards or best practices - about solving a real client management challenge.
Even though I don't speak Japanese, I could see the excitement. Account managers started pulling up reports on their own clients, talking rapidly, getting animated about how they could use this data. The energy in the room completely changed.
This was pain-specific reporting. When a report addresses an actual business need - not just "best practices" - data analytics becomes exciting, not burdensome. It unleashes opportunity, not obligation.
"That Tokyo seminar taught me everything I needed to know about data adoption: Stop building what analysts think people need. Start building what people actually need to do their jobs better."
Stop wasting budget on analytics that don't get used. Get insights your team will actually love.