Gartner released last month the results of its EXP (Gartner Executive Program) survey, covering responses from 1,586 CIOs representing more than $126 billion in corporate and public-sector IT spending across 41 countries and 27 industries.

Two ‘Top Ten‘ lists emerged from that survey, outlining Technology and Business Priorities for 2010, and the #3 Business Priority is Increasing the use of (web) analytics. Web analytics are an important tool for any organization, and can help identify and maintain a competitive advantage and optimize the customer’s online experience. From Gartner:

CIOs see 2010 as an opportunity to accelerate IT’s transition from a support function to strategic contributor focused on innovation and competitive advantage’.

Also,

Gartner EXP’s CIO survey findings show that, in the near term, business expectations and CIO strategies appear stable, with a continued focus on business process improvement, cost reduction and analytics.

The Top 10 Business Priorities for 2010, according to Gartner:

1. Improving business processes
2. Cutting costs
3. Increasing the use of analytics
4. Improving enterprise effectiveness
5. Attracting new customers
6. Managing change initiatives
7. Innovation in products and services creation
8. More effective targeting
9. Consolidating business operations
10. Growing customer relationships

Shortly after the release of the research, CMSwire.com opened a poll (closed now) asking ‘How useful is your web analytics data‘. They wanted to know, before anything else, what companies who use analytics are doing with the data they have: Only 31% indicated that the data drives a lot of their decisions, while 27% indicated that they don’t feel the data is being used well at all. Having an analytics solution is only the beginning.

Key challenges in web analytics

In July 2009 Bill Gassman from Gartner released a report entitled Key Challenges in Web Analytics. In the report, Bill outlines key findings and recommendations every company should adopt, when facing a strategic web analytics initiative. According to Bill, web analytics is more than selecting the right solution (free/commercial, on-premise/SaaS) but also hiring and empowering a web analyst that can use the tool (and the authority given by the initiative) and make informed decisions, based on the analytics data.

The key findings:

• The potential for measurable improvement varies with the purpose of the site. Investments in analytics should match the potential for gain.
• Free product offerings are tempting, and a good learning tool, but strategic initiatives with an opportunity for large gains in site yield should choose commercial products.
• Web analysts are hard to find and retain, yet are a critical element in a successful initiative and must be supported by business management.

Recommendations:

• When calculating the return on investment (ROI) for a Web analytics initiative, treat it as an attributing factor within a customer-centric Web strategy. Without Web analytics, yield gain will be suboptimal, but other parts of the process, such as content management, campaigns and site design, also contribute to the gain.
• Narrow a shortlist of Web analytics vendor choices to those that answer the big question, which is software as a service (SaaS) or on premises, then concentrate on price, support and “ecosystem” partners.
• Give the role of Web analyst authority and responsibility, then find someone that can use it.

The report is available for download [PDF] at Gartner.com (no registration required).

Links:
Gartner EXP Worldwide survey – Business and Technology Priorities for 2010
CMSwire poll – how useful is your web analytics data
Gartner – key challenges in web analytics 2009

Updated Feb. 11th.

A month into 2010 and we’re working hard on making CardioLog better. Following a successful 2009, with numerous new customers, we sat down – product and marketing teams, trying to prioritize the requests we received from our customers, our partners, our own vision regarding the product, analysts perspective on analytics and Microsoft’s direction with SharePoint 2010. Not an easy task.

From all of that input we compiled our roadmap for 2010, which is available here. We welcome your feedback, and will take any request under consideration, but we cannot promise it will find its way to production. Some highlights that will become available, soon:

• CardioLog 2010 Enterprise
• Integration with SSP Profiles
• Retrieval of the Portal Tree structure with the SharePoint API
• Import usage data from SharePoint 2010
• Report segmentation by user profiles
• Report segmentation by SharePoint groups and audiences
• CardioLog Lite for SharePoint 2010
• Funnel reports
• Site overlay
• And more

Again, the full list is available on our website.

We also launched ‘CardioLog 2010 for SharePoint 2010 Beta Program’, which will allow our customers to evaluate the integration with SharePoint 2010. We have big plans for the next release of SharePoint, here’s what we’re working on:

• As with MOSS, CardioLog will provide an independent JavaScript tracking agent for collecting browser activity for SharePoint 2010
• Usage reports will be available for data collected by either CardioLog or SharePoint 2010 (Logging DB)
• CardioLog will continue to provide enhanced reporting segments through integration with SharePoint 2010 SSP Profiles, SharePoint 2010 groups and security info, SharePoint 2010 document metadata, Active Directory user attributes, and more
• We plan to track usage within the SharePoint 2010 Workspace (offline experience)
• CardioLog reports will be available as SharePoint 2010 web parts

As you can tell – we have our hands full.

We also made some adjustments to our Support Policy, and continue to update the Forum and FAQs with feedback we receive from customers, analytics tips and best practices. Now is also the time for you to start following CardioLog on twitter – to receive product updates, tips & tricks, announcements and more.

CardioLog Standard

We also introduced a new addition to our portfolio – CardioLog Standard. The new edition is ideal for small and mid-sized companies, starting to explore the possibilities of analytics, looking for an affordable yet accurate solution – designed for Microsoft SharePoint portals. CardioLog Standard boosts roughly the same features as our Professional Edition, with some limitations (see table). If you’re looking for a small-sized, on-premise web analytics solution, our Standard Edition is your choice. You can download a free trial version now.

The deck below is an overview presentation, 8 slides, providing you the info you need about Intlock and CardioLOG. It outlines what is CardioLOG, why CardioLOG is different, who are our customers and who are we.

During 2009 we were pleased to welcome VHA, Molson Coors Brewery, IMF, REN, SunCorp and many more to our customer base, and our plan for 2010 is already underway. We’ve joined forces with several Microsoft integrators, like NEOVAS is Turkey, and are working constantly at improving CardioLOG with new reports and features, based on feedback we receive from our customers.

As we near the end of 2009, I would like to thank you for choosing CardioLOG as your SharePoint analytics solution, and looking forward to working with you in 2010.

Since joining Intlock 3 months ago I was amazed at how many requests we receive, daily, to use and evaluate our solution, CardioLog, to monitor traffic and generate usage reports for SharePoint based portals. We have customers at every continent, from Australia, to Europe and North America, not to mention Israel of course.

I’m pleased to share with you another customer that recently joined our vast network of global customers – VHA. The VHA is a for-profit cooperative that serves more than 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals and 24,000+ non-acute care facilities in 47 states and the District of Columbia. Founded in 1977, VHA provides supply chain management services and promotes and supports the formation of regional member networks that allow health care organizations to collaborate.

CardioLog 2007 Professional edition will allow VHA to monitor their SharePoint based websites, serving some 1,500 employees and 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals.

It’s been a while since I’ve written here, and not due to lack of material, believe me.
I’ve been extremely busy at work (it’s year-end, you know), trying to juggle several things at the same time, prioritizing, learning SP, not to mention the army reserve tour that ‘landed’ on me this month.

Intlock is doing very well, thank you for asking. I’m amazed at the number of requests we receive daily, to either download and install our free edition or demo and trial one of our licensed based editions. We closed couple of major opportunities this month and I’ll write about those soon.