Web analytics enterprise solutions require strong foundation of education, communication, governance and standards across the organization. When you get to the point where you are analyzing enterprise level data you want to have a governance plan in place to manage the system of managing the data.

Governance is the plan for the processes.

Silos are a big problem in the corporate world and this is true of data as well. The larger the enterprise the more dispersed is the data, spread out all over often with individual markets using different tools to analyze the same information. This is a big problem. When you go to the table to discuss and make decisions you definitely want to be comparing apples to apples. It isn’t that one tool is more correct than the other because for the most part enterprise organizations are looking at trends for the big picture. The problem with looking at the same data through different tools is people get caught up in the individual number differences and lose sight of the big picture. Trusting the data becomes a distraction to moving ahead with sound decisions.

A crucial step in governance is to determine the standards for how data is gathered, stored, analyzed, presented, maintained and archived. On top of that which data is the base data all markets within the enterprise are going to use to discuss whether efforts are successful or not. I recommend keeping this simple with the enterprise selecting 3-5 key measures that define success. There will be multiple levels to this starting with the umbrella and understanding that each campaign will have its own defined measures of success.

To understand what needs to be included in the governance plan you first need to understand all the basics of requirement gathering and who the stakeholders are. You’ll want to inventory the various systems, applications, platforms and data sources. Take and inventory of all the touch points for each process that is required to maintain a web presence because each involve some sort of data generated that should be monitored and when determined important, used to improve the entire system.

Presentation of the data is of primary importance to the stakeholders. How is the data made available to the stakeholders? Where is it stored and how is it updated? I think the best solution for issues around communication, presentation, education, storage and maintenance can all be housed within a SharePoint type platform. In gathering requirements across a wide variety of businesses setting up a SharePoint to manage the system boosts the level of success across the organization.

The key to successfully designing, implementing and maintaining an enterprise web analytics governance plan is executive support. Establishing a governance plan will ruffle a few feathers because systems will change for accountability sake. Use the requirements gathering phase to inspire a solution to the problem of mismanaged data. I haven’t found an enterprise yet that is successfully putting to use all their data to drive decisions. In all too many cases executives aren’t aware of what is available to them or how to use it. It’s the responsibility of the web management team to provide the executive team with a governance plan for how the data is gathered, analyzed, presented, maintained and archived. Without a governance plan how can you validate the usefulness of the data?

I am looking to work with a company that makes the implementation of a governance plan a priority. Equally important is the channel, such as a SharePoint, to communicate about the data. Give me open access to stakeholders and I will be a very happy analyst.