To achieve success with data analytics you need a roadmap to help you. An analytics roadmap is basically a journey from A to B to C to D and so forward, set within a timeframe.
You should ask yourself what you want to accomplish today, as well as lookin into the future, it could be 1 year to 5 years, depending on how fast your company is moving.
Set a timeframe and set goals within that timeframe.
The 4 stages in a analytics roadmap
In each goal in your analytics roadmap you're going to enter 4 stages, or components that you need to achieve those goals. Every business is different. Remember that the goals should be unique to you and your business objectives.
1. Activities
Here you will list the activities that need to take part in order to get the data you need. It can go from easy activities like installing a Google Analytics tag on your website to more advanced activities like Set up testing environments and training predictive algorithms.
2. Capabilities
Capabilities are what you can do right now or what you will be able to do in the future. For example can this be something easy like analyzing historical data, to more advanced capabilities like personalization and machine learning.
Don't just plot down what your team is able to do right now, but what do you want to be able to do in the future as well.
3. People
Like I mentioned in the data strategy article, people are an important part of an analytics roadmap. You might see that you're missing crucial people to do the activates you've written down. This can also help in the hiring process in the future. When you're done with this, you'll be able to see what kind of experience you're missing.
You might have a team who are not as analytical right now, but in the future when you're analyzing large amount of data and optimizing for it, you need an analyst on your team as well.
4. Technology
The last thing you'll need to enter in is what kind of technology or tools do you need to fulfill your beforementioned activities.
This could be something easy as Google Analytics, Looker Studio (previously Google Data Studio), or something way more complex like a machine learning software.
It's okay if you don't know what type of tool you'll be using 3 years into the future. You can leave that area blank if you're unsure.
Choosing the right timeframe for your business
You also need to define the right timeframe for this analytics roadmap. As mentioned before, every business is different and long term and mean something else for each company. Are you in a growth period, long term might mean 1-2 years. Are you more established, long term can mean 10 years.
We always start the roadmap with what you can do today. This involves the knowledge you have and also what people have this knowledge. It could also be things you're measuring right now.
What are the benefits of using a analytics roadmap?
Clear path to success.
You will have a clear vision and a plan in place to help you achieve the goals you want to achieve. I've seen many people using a lot of advanced software, tacking all kinds of things, but they have no real goal. They also seem to not take full advantage of of that that data gives them.
In some cases the metrics they are tracking is not at all related to the business objective and then become meaningless metrics.
Do your self a favor and get a analytics roadmap to prevent messing around with things that doesn't lead to sucess for your business.