Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Google Analytics vs. Quadient Inspire

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

Google Analytics is particularly well suited for tracking and analyzing customer behavior on a grocery e-commerce platform. It provides a wealth of information about customer behavior, including what products are most popular, what pages are visited the most, and where customers are coming from. This information can help the platform optimize its website for better customer engagement and conversion rates. However, Google Analytics may not be the best tool for more advanced, granular analysis of customer behavior, such as tracking individual customer journeys or understanding customer motivations. In these cases, it may be more appropriate to use additional tools or solutions that provide deeper insights into customer behavior.

Scenarios where Quadient Inspire is well suited - When we want to create some content which can be reused, as we create blocks in Quadient which has some data in it, and these blocks can be reused. When we want to create consistent content and want to deliver it through omni-channel medium in large volume, as Quadient Inspire makes delivery of large volume communications possible, and it does so in mere seconds. Scenarios where Quadient Inspire is less appropriate - sometimes it feels like editing in a Word document is easier than Quadient Inspire, e.g., when we need to add bullet points in the content.

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

• Multiple reports to see website use and behavior
• Allows you to customize reports with days, weeks, months, and years
• You can build out a dashboard to easily view stats from multiple websites in one place
• You can share analytics reports via the dashboard, automatically emailed PDFs or in other formats

Incentivized

• Highly flexible data ingestion
• Clear and powerful workflow design that makes support easy to understand as teams evolve
• Great internal debugging tool that simplifies and accelerates the development cycle
• Powerful scripting structure available at nearly every aspect of data management, composition, and finishing allowing for specialized requirements not available in the standard toolset to be met

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 sampling is somewhat inaccurate on the free tier - this is addressed in premium but is expensive.
• Some of the UI is very similar in naming when presenting different data, some in-situ information might be useful.
• Gotchas around filtering and data validation.
• Implementation can be tricky, it can take a lot of time and expertise to get a full, accurate picture of your metrics.

Incentivized

• Within CJM: Not easy to share maps with a large group of people, still needs to be done on an individual basis which is time-consuming.
• Not able to unload all file types into maps. It would be great to have video.
• There are a lot of third-party suppliers that make up the full services in Inspire. This limits the development that Quadient can do to.

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

We will continue to use Google Analytics for several reasons. It is free, which is a huge selling point. It houses all of our ecommerce stores' data, and though it can't account for refunds or fraud orders, gives us and our clients directional, real time information on individual and group store performance.

Incentivized

We are using Quadient Inspire products since last 5 years. And we are able to achieve everything with respect to the customer's needs and desired output. Quadient is adding new very important features every day that make document structure very easy for developers and end users. We would like to stick with Quadient for a long time.

Very easy to implement and use.

Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements

There are parts of the product that are extremely easy to use, but it can be hard to build it up to get to that point. I'm a power user and I know I've only barely scratched the surface, but the transactional users barely have to lift a finger to get their letters out. There's a lot more that can be done if I had the time and resources to devote to improving our letters more and there are times when the interface is in my way as to meeting those goals, but by and large, it's a swift and easy to use program.

Never had any issues

We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.

I am giving this rating because Quadient products are highly available. Most of the time all Quadient products are available. In some cases Quadient always follows the planned schedule and maintenance. They always inform all the partners and clients a day or two in advance so that the clients can work accordingly.

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.

This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics

I want you to rate the performance of the Quadient Inspire 9 out of 10. Because every time we work with Quadient products I never feel any sluggishness and any performance issue. Along with this, one thing that we all should understand is that the performance of any application also depends on the computer hardware. So along with the software application, your hardware should also meet the minimum requirements.

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.

The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.

Incentivized

Overall Quadient team is very responsive and willing to come to the table and provide valuable information and resolution for problems. What tier of support you have would defiantly impact the experience you have. Had some challenges with a few members of the support team , but when brought up with the vendor it was quickly resolved

Incentivized

I had a couple of weeks of training back in 2005 on the Quadient premises in Hradec Kralowe. The instructor was just great! Besides showing as normal functionalities, he went so far to solve our concrete challenges. He actually encouraged me to become a "real" programmer. I have written my first lines of code in Inspire (GMC PrintNetT) and never looked back.

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.

love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.

1. How to Use Google Analytics for Beginners – Mahalo’s how-to guide for beginners.
2. A beginner’s guide to Google Analytics – A free eBook walking you through Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented.
3. Getting to Know Your Google Analytics Dashboard – The title says it all! This is a brief post with one goal: to introduce you to the Google Analytics dashboard.
4. Google Analytics for Beginners: How to Make the Most of Your Traffic Reports– This guide doesn’t cover setup, but it does a great job of helping you to better understand the data being presented.
5. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 1: Setup – A video presentation that walks you through Google Analytics setup.
6. Google Analytics Video Tutorial 2: Essential Stats – A video presentation that introduces you to some of the most important data being presented in Google Analytics.

Quadient offers online training for all of its products (paid service). You can choose your pace and go through the material and then solve real challenges. At the end, you can choose to take a final assignment and get certification which is a really good thing to do. If you get stuck, the training team will answer any of your questions and give you guidance.

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

I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.

As you consider your digital transformation, think of the people who may object. They have valid criticisms, valuable insights and information critical to your success. Quadient’s advice is to build a strong internal team and confront these questions early. When everyone understands the project from their perspective, the project has a better chance of success.

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.

I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.

Incentivized

The above drop down would not allow me to pick the similar products that I have used previously. Planet Pres : Good in its time. Now very slow compared with Quadient. Compart: As quick... If not slightly quicker than Quadient. This does not counteract how difficult this software is to use. It has no GUI interface and even advanced programmers struggle to use it. Both of these products are inferior to Quadient when it comes to implementing within a normal organisation.

Not really. It's not cheap, but it's a great value for what you get. This is enterprise-level software and the cost reflects that. The pay-per-page aspect makes sense too. We get a lot of sheets included in our contract and we use them all. It's a good contract with pricing that makes sense.

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.

Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions

I am giving this rating because Quadient products are very reliable. Quadient products can be deployed across multiple departments and sites as needed. We can integrate Quadient products with other applications and tools in a very effective, efficient and flexible way. We can deploy Quadient products in Cloud as well.

The PSO team is very involved and knowledgeable. Some times there are availability issues due to the number of companies they are supporting but they do their best to deliver on time. PSO cost aren't cheap, but they deliver a big bang for the buck especially on critical projects or involving them in strategic approaches/decisions.

Incentivized

• 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

• It has helped us gain understanding of what is going on on our website.
• It has helped us determine areas that need fixing (i.e. pages with extremely high bounce rates may need to be redone).
• It has helped us understand our biggest avenues for bringing traffic to the website and business in general.
• It has helped guide our website redesign.

Incentivized

• Since purchasing Inspire we have won many business opportunities as it enables us to create documents we couldn't do before, for example: Council Tax Bills.
• It is a lot faster at processing than our previous software. We had one job we had to extract addresses from, it was 56,000 records from a 5.5million line text file. Our previous software took 26 hours to pull out the addresses, Quadient Inspire took 43 seconds!
• We are able to automate processes through Inspire via CLI batch files, where a job would normally take 30 minutes to set up and process, a bit of time spent on the workflow and automation script means we can just double click a batch file for repeat jobs and the print file is created in seconds.

Incentivized