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.
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
As mentioned earlier, transactional heavy web assets such as eStores are particularly strong candidates.
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.
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.
We use Digital Analytics to share and visualize the performance of the website. IBM Digital Analytics allows us to report on the behavior of the visitors at an individual level - what has been clicked and how it helped our customers buy what they came for. Moreover it allows us to compare different strategies and have the data to help make strategic decisions. Marketing is no longer a 'like/dislike' decision, it is an actual analysis on the performance of the different decisions. The data is shared across all departments of the company to help make predictions across a wide variety of services: in the sales department to see what items are wanted, in the finance department to see what payment methods are most favored, and also in the marketing department to see what promotions are performing best.
Pros
Digital Analtyics works best at analyzing on individual level. Each visitor can be targeted to improve its journey step by step.
The ability to include many parameters in the tags helps create reporting that totally reflects company challenges. It helps with analyzing all aspects that we come across.
Most of the reports are defaults and can be easily customizable. The fact that the interface allows the customized views to be placed in the interface next to the default views makes it easy to find them.
The export functionality helps with exporting raw data to make off line analysis across all departments. This is really helpful when some very specific analysis needs to be made.
The API is easily accessible and does not need an implementation language to create reports.
Cons
IBM Digital Analytics allows for custom values in the tags, but they can only be accessed by creating Explore reports and there is a charge for each new report created. If the values could be accessed freely that would make a huge difference.
Segments sometimes take a long time to process, and this slows the analysis quite a bit. Moreover the limit that is imposed is sometimes very restrictive (10 maximum)
The interface is not very user friendly.
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM Digital Analytics is very suited for large companies that need a lot of detailed information about the visitor journey and that need support. The price of the solution usually makes the difference compared to other solutions like Google Analytics. The fact that IBM offers support is one of the main strengths. Thus if the analytics solution is a key for the organization, I recommend IBM Digital Analytics as it is supported and if there is a problem, IBM has a SLA and a complete team to take over if there is a problem.
