For our clients, IBM Digital Analytics serves as our primary digital analytics solution. We use the CMS platform to construct the solution, and we've created an environment that enables us to act on any data gathered by IBM Digital Analytics (via Exact Target for example). After the deployment is complete, we audit the tagging permanently and offer advice to our clients. For our clients that are in the finance industry, we often provide dashboards and in-depth analyses using IBM Digital Analytics.
Pros
Overall support
Good ecosystem
Data reliability
Cons
Very pricey
No new features
Old technologies
Likelihood to Recommend
Recently, we introduced IBM Digital Analytics for our company's B2B operations. It is largely used by our marketing department to analyse incoming traffic, evaluate the ROI of conversion rates, and set engagement objectives. In order to get a larger budget, it is essential to demonstrate a better return on our SEM investment, which IBM Digital Analytics helped us do.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Finance and Accounting (10,001+ employees)
We are currently testing a couple projects using ML Algorithms in Watson to improve the customer experience. Watson Customer Experience Analytics excels at journey analytics, automatically identifying the pain points of customer experience. We collaborate with business and technology teams and come up with predictive algorithms to get better business results from our existing analytics program. It provides us actionable omnichannel customer behavioral insights and also guides decision making.
Pros
Simple implementation
Better results
Easy connectivity
Cons
More knowledge sharing sessions
UI/UX Improvements
More tooltips on icons
Likelihood to Recommend
It's well suited in building chatbots. We have tried and tested building a chatbot using Watson and it was easy to build and deploy. Watson accepts questions posed by the user in natural language and provides the user with a response (or a set of responses) by generating and evaluating various hypotheses around different interpretations of the question and possible answers to it. Unlike keyword-based search engines, which simply retrieve relevant documents, Watson gleans context from the question to provide the user with precise and relevant answers, along with confidence ratings and supporting evidence.
VU
Verified User
Employee in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We've recently implemented IBM analytics for the B2B portion of our business. Our marketing dept primarily uses it to track incoming traffic and measure ROI of conversion rates and engagement goals. IBM analytics allowed us to build our marketing strategy to get a better return on our SEM budget which is crucial in order to get an increased budget.
Pros
Simplified exporting of reports and specific ranges of data
Automated reports are easy enough to set up
UI is simple and easy to use
Cons
The speed of the UIX can be improved upon greatly, at times it is laggy.
The more tabs that are open, the slower the tool becomes.
Hard tagging is not full of features when compared to other solutions.
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
We use IBM Digital Analytics to track website activity through element tags, conversion events, marketing programs, etc. We analyze the metrics and provide strategy accordingly such as areas for improvement for the site and opportunities for increased engagement. It is used by our strategy and development departments and finding are presented internally to the rest of the company and to the client.
Pros
Ability to nicely organize and determine the hierarchy of data
Ability to hardcode tags throughout your site for specific tracking
Dashboard provides opportunity to display metrics in various types of charts and graphs
Cons
The new UI is slow, buggy, incomplete, is not intuitive, and has limited support or explanation.
The demo videos for the new UI showcase features that are not even available in the new UI and support said those features may never be available so they are not sure either why they are shown in the demo videos.
Tag management is extremely manual leaving a lot of room for human error.
Support across the board for the legacy UI and new UI are not very helpful. They typically do not take the time to understand the root of your problem and commonly default to the response "that feature is not available". For example, you cannot currently delete reports in the new UI even though there is a delete button available. Support says the feature is not available, so if you want anything deleted you have to submit a list to support and they will delete it for you. This is extremely frustrating when you are creating "test" reports in the new UI and then you have no option to delete them when done.
Likelihood to Recommend
I'd rather use Google Analytics. If my team had the choice, we would use Google Analytics instead. Can't think of anything beneficial to keep us on IBM. The legacy UI is old and no longer supported by the support team, and the new UI is too buggy to depend on.
It is currently used by the marketing strategy department. We have been using Digital Analytics along with other reporting tools to drive business decisions.
Pros
It's relatively easy to export and schedule reports.
The new UI has a simple and clean design.
Cons
Currently, the new UI is extremely buggy for a beta release with simple features like deleting reports or renaming workspaces being absent.
The transition from old to new has been rough especially with an absence of support at times.
Date sorting is also frustrating when creating custom reports.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's tough to recommend IBM Digital Analytics in its current state over another tool like Google Analytics due to its incomplete and buggy nature.
We leverage IBM CXA predominantly in support of clients. We do, however, use it against our own web assets to understand customer journeys. Predominantly, we help clients first create a simulation to identify customer experience issues or opportunities and create a hypothesis. In collaboration with the company, we then establish a proof of concept using real customer transactions to validate our initial findings and confirm areas of opportunity.
Whilst there are many low-cost tools that provide insight into user activity and indeed offer session replay, this is an invalid basis for analysis; the focus is on raw data and not drawing conclusions from user activity. IBM CXA is particularly strong for transactional assets such as an eStore. It can, however, be applied to any situation involving user activity.
A particularly strong aspect of IBM CXA is the core foundation it sits upon - UBX or Universal Behaviour Exchange. Not only is the capture of user behaviour through activity automatically recorded, but other, physical activity can also be channeled into the solution e.g. physical store purchases, call centre interactions, etc.
IBM CXA is, therefore, in a strong position to represent entire customer journeys and not simply digital ones.
Pros
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.
Cons
IBM CXA leverages script tagging to inspect specific behaviour patterns. A tagging engine against your web assets is a must-have to simplify script insertion and avoid having to leverage internal IT resources to modify web code.
Tag management is perhaps the most challenging aspect of IBM CXA. In our view, this could be abstracted further and therefore simplified.
We would like to see connectors with UBX to common platforms such as CRM, marketing automation. The more this is readily available, the quicker the time to value for clients.
Likelihood to Recommend
<ul><li>As mentioned earlier, transactional heavy web assets such as eStores are particularly strong candidates.</li><li>IBM CXA along with other, similar tools, is not set-and-forget. The solution must be well managed in order to deliver value. Purchase of the solution is one thing; driving analytic results is another. If a company's staff are not strong analytical thinkers, CXA will not help. IBM CXA is not just a technology platform - it is a basis to design strong customer touchpoints and interactions. You need to be customer journey design literate to get the best from this.</li></ul>
As a consultancy, we use a wide variety of web analytics products. We started working with IBM Digital Analytics when we developed a customer education portal for a large consumer electronics manufacturer, when the product was still Coremetrics. The client had just acquired a license and we conducted a full implementation. After that introduction, Coremetrics became one of our regular offerings.
Pros
Great separation and aggregation for multinational sites
Helpful dashboard composition
Strong implementation documentation
Cons
As of the last time I implemented it, the only implementation testing tools were for a single browser, making client-side scripted analytics hard to test cross-browser
The dashboards were a little over the top, UI wise.
Likelihood to Recommend
What's your budget? Will you have someone on staff to monitor the dashboard to make use of the business intelligence this product will give you? Will you have someone on staff that can update your metrics implementation and reporting as your site evolves? This is an excellent product for a company ready to nurture their online key performance indicators as they evolve.
We use IBM Digital Analytics as a 3rd party analytics tool for many of our clients. The tool is able to provide a holistic view of performance across a variety of marketing channels.
Pros
Simple interface
Easy implementation
Easy for Media teams to tag URL's
Cons
The tagging is quite limited
Difficult to get to deep areas of analysis within interface
Difficult to export raw data for import to a database
Likelihood to Recommend
What is the planned use for the tool - high level information and direction or granular reporting to C-level? The tool struggles at times to provide granular reporting to meet the needs of C-level executives.
VU
Verified User
Vice-President in Research & Development (501-1000 employees)
Our clients have traditionally selected IBM Digital Analytics over competitive platforms when they need a robust, enterprise system which can be 1) readily integrated with and provide cost benefits due to chosen CMS (typically IBM WebShere), 2) require reliable, robust data security and data ownership due to heavy regulatory concerns or 3) provide a uniform deployment allowing for the ability to opt into industry/vertical benchmarks.
Pros
Uniform deployments provide for the ability to opt-in to relatively robust benchmarks.
Technical support teams allow both clients and agencies access to technical subject matter experts to ensure best-in-class implementations.
Cost structure is often quite favorable, if a company has chosen other products within the IBM family.
Current and long term integrations with IBM products (including Unica, Tealeaf, etc.) show promise and will continually increase the value of IBM Digital Analytics
Cons
Uniformity of deployment comes at a price, namely flexibility.
IBM Digital Analytics is a better choice who are focused exclusively on e-commerce, heavily regulated industries, or simply interested in precision marketing and CRM. For those companies which prioritize style, form, and flexibility over precision (aka Art over Science), other solutions may be more effective.
Competitors are integrating their systems more rapidly than IBM, which is still very siloed.
It can be difficult to find professionals with technical expertise to implement and support IBM Digital Analytics. The user base from which to draw is significantly smaller.
IBM technical training can be quite elusive to secure, unless you are already committed to the product and have a service contract in place, unlike competitors where technical training is readily available with registration open to all.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is best suited for clients/companies which are in 1) highly regulated industries, 2) industries with a high user base of IBM Digital Analytics allowing for opt-in to benchmarks, or 3) where other IBM products have been selected which can be used to secure pricing advantages for selecting IBM Digital Analytics.
