Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Intouch Insight

IBM analytics has continued to improve upon the days of being the original core metrics. After using the updated version for quite some time, it has been great at providing the needed analytics to measure ROI and goal performance for our quarterly KPI's. It has resulted in a great increase in web engagements although we are a midsize company, smaller outfits may not need such an expensive option.

Incentivized

Intouch Insights is great for companies needing to a deeper look at their customer base without the need to pay for a consultant to do it. Intouch does enable you to reach people on all platforms (desktop, mobile, tablet) and lets you create a decent experience too. If you're a small marketing team, make sure you allow the appropriate time span to set up and use the software as it can eat into time.

Incentivized

• IBM CXA comprises an acquisition called Tealeaf. This tool has deep heritage and this is evident in its present-day capabilities.
• The Universal Behaviour Exchange or UBX puts the concept of personalisation at the forefront. The ability to combine physical (analog) and digital transactions to create the complete picture of a customer journey, is a stand out benefit.
• The solution does not have to involve the purchase of software. IBM CXA can be sold as a service bundled with analytics as a service. This not only lowers the cost of ownership, it gets around one of the principal issues. Strong staff with design and analytical capability to drive the solution and deliver tangible benefits.
• The seamless integration of Watson AI services to help with the heavy lifiting. Watson reinforces the analytical focus this solution has and can learn to recognise situations specific to a company.

Incentivized

• Compatible with most smartphones: Our forms can be viewed and used on almost every smartphone. Some outliers may be phones that are not up-to-date on software.
• Variety: We can make an array of form types enabling us to really update our mobile experience. We also have a good selection of question types to use to build out engaging forms rather than stale ones.
• Simple to use: The builder interface is really simple to use. You can drag your questions to shake up the order, add images if needed, and you can even provide a question description to give users more detail.

Incentivized

• The user interface is in Flash, which can be very frustrating and slow at times. Apparently, this is to be transitioned in a future release.
• Can only segment the last 93 days of data. Any historical segmentation beyond the 93 days must be run in Explore (which is credit based, and has its own limitations with the number of credits per month, based on the initial contract with IBM).
• Reports can only display 93 days of data at a given time for custom date ranges. There are pre-programmed date ranges setup with IBM during implementation (last week, last month, last quarter etc.), but are not flexible enough to answer more specific questions.
• Certain reports cannot have segments applied, making answering some simple questions a bit more tricky. For example, I can create a segment around mobile devices and apply it to the marketing channels report, but I can't create a marketing channel segment and apply it to the mobile reports.
• Built in API calls allows for nice report design and automation.

• Data can be "collected" offline: If the person uses the form offline, it's supposed to sync with our software after they come online. We've found that it doesn't always sync well and we have to use incomplete data or trash the form fill as a whole.
• Set up is a little challenging: We had to work with a customer rep along with reading the help forum to get this set up the way we wanted it to be, causing us to use up time we didn't originally allot to it.
• Issue alerts: While it does work most of the time, we have had a few hiccups with the issue alert functionality. We would actually find the issue or be informed of the issue before the software alerted us.

Incentivized

IBM Digital Analytics is a great solution for our clients and I believe they offer the best solution for the retail space. We have access to IBM support via email or live chat and they can answer many of the reporting questions that come up. IBM is receptive to our feedback of the product so I am confident they will continue making improvements

Very easy to implement and use.

Never had any issues

As reports are templated, the system is pretty quick. Sometimes you have to wait a bit for a report to render. Or you might have to re-load the page. But there is no real issue here and the system is on par with other similar systems.

Overall, the level of support is very good and I would say it is a strong asset of the solution. However, you can sometimes feel that there is a difference of level among the support team.

Online training is really great. One of the best assets that they have. Lots of great videos, pop quizzes at the end of each module. Fantastic. Other tools have similar features, but not as good.

See previous comment: reading and understanding the encyclopedic implementation guide is a must.

Much of the work we did in IBM Digital Analytics could have been answered through Google Analytics, a much simpler, agile and FREE solution set. Not mention, given the vast number of Google Analytics USERS, free and actionable support is simply a click away ... this compared to IBM Digital Analytics fractured and often absent support service.

Compared to InTouch, these three look like amateurs. They are far too simple and do not have the mobile capability and mobile display appearance as InTouch. While they are cheaper alternatives, you'd be losing out on a lot of key benefits, especially with analytics, that InTouch delivers to its users.

Incentivized

This solution can support large amount of data and transaction. The way that user management features are built, it shows it is meant for large organizations.

• We spend too much time trying to work around bugs on the new UI.
• We spend too much time trying to figure out how to make certain segments work because support and the knowledge center are lackluster.
• Our sales rep is very unresponsive and leaves us searching for a lot of answers on our own, including what other products we may benefit from that IBM offers.

Incentivized

• Positive: More reliable answers in a neater presentation.
• Positive: Creation of more forms without adding more time, leading to more insights.
• Positive: Reduction in cost on materials (paper, pens, etc) which equals the cost of the software.

Incentivized