Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Lead Forensics

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

Lead Forensics was especially effective in identifying returning visitors from existing customer accounts. This allowed me to proactively reach out, understand their interests based on web activity, and successfully expand the scope of services they were already purchasing. It's less appropriate for brand-new lead generation, as it doesn’t capture anonymous traffic without prior engagement or recognizable IP data.

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

• Lead Forensics helps us see which companies are visiting our site, even if they don’t fill out a form. This gives us a chance to reach out to businesses that are already showing interest but might not have contacted us yet.
• Instead of cold-calling random prospects, we can see which pages a company has viewed and how often they return. This helps us tailor our conversations based on what they’re actually interested in.
• The Lead Forensics support team has been great whenever we’ve had questions. They’re quick to respond and always ready to help, whether it’s troubleshooting an issue or offering advice on how to get the most out of the platform.

• 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.

• Better updates on companies' current names. Often if a company was a different company years ago it still says the old company name which is confusing.
• Better identifying the correct location. Sometimes it seems like that the location coming up is the wrong location.
• Giving a better understanding of how they got to the website would help too. Often is says "direct" but I would like to know if it was via a link from an email or what

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.

Lead Forensics dashboard is fantastic. Lets me see what companies are hitting what parts of the website so I know what to offer them. Often times I’ll offer one thing, only to get told no. Then the client goes to the website and pokes around at other things we offer. Then they reach out to me asking about different services, or next time I reach out I can offer what they were looking at.

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.

[Their] support is great, [whether] you call or send in an email. They are always friendly and willing to help. Anytime I can’t figure something out and need to reach out, I always get a response back quick[ly] - and they will always offer to go in and make the change, but I like when they show me so I can do it next time.

Incentivized

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.

We used to use Visual Visitor. This would give us an email every time someone visited our website. This would give all the information like Lead Forensics does but in a smaller quantity. It used to not integrate with WIX but now it does. We selected Lead Forensics because we saw our site activity was high & wanted to see who was on the site and because of WIX

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

• We are still in the very early stages of using Lead Forensics for our agency, but I can see that it could already be very useful to us as we haven't had insights like this previously.
• Our very first use case with Lead Forensics was with a brand-new client and I would say it went exceptionally well. We were running a large media campaign for them, and it was very insightful to see how those specific businesses were getting to the site and what page they were going to. Like mentioned previously, this helped their very small sales team to go after businesses they know were interested in them.