In part one of this interview, we heard an industry expert’s view on the role of digital analytics in business, and how to pick the right analytics tool. Now, Fai-Keung Ng shares additional insights on the Southeast Asian market in particular, and where he sees digital analytics tools headed in the future. You can also listen to or download the podcast here.
What kinds of businesses rely most heavily on web analytics?
Businesses like e-commerce groups, online media sites and financial services see many of their transactions take place online. They therefore need digital analytics for real-time insights to ensure they are capturing their target audiences.
For example, we work with online media companies that use real-time web analytics to understand an article’s performance. This is very important, especially when you have some time-sensitive event like an election, where every minute counts, and people go to different sources to find the information they want. You need to know how your articles perform, and use the insights to understand whether you are reaching your audience, and if you are providing the information that your audience is looking for.
In general, the businesses with the most online activity are the ones that need the most out of web analytics.
How are Southeast Asian businesses using analytics today, compared to global companies in the Western market?
The key differentiator between the Western market and Southeast Asian market is the level of maturity. We see the Southeast Asian market picking up speed and trying to use more data to drive day-to-day decisions, but in terms of usage, the manner in which businesses are using web analytics is basically about the same.
Southeast Asia is seeing a dramatic rise in Internet penetration, and an increasing number of consumers are online – thus the incredible rise of digital services in the region. As the Southeast Asian region becomes more connected, we’ll see the level of maturity rise as well.
In Malaysia in particular, what are some of the trends we’re seeing in digital analytics?
We see very healthy growth in terms of technology spending. According to Gartner, spending on technology products and services will increase by 8.4% in Malaysia to RM69.5 billion in 2015. On the web analytics side, the majority of the market today is still using free analytics tools. Gradually, as the market begins to see the limitations of these free analytics tools, they will switch to enterprise-level tools enabling them to get the insights required for business decisions. The reason is very intuitive: There’s just so much more traffic that needs to be analysed, and free tools do not necessarily offer the flexibility, breadth and depth of insight that enterprise-level solutions can offer. With free tools, businesses are limited in terms of data sampling, longer latency of data availability, and lack of ad-hoc analysis capabilities. As a result, one trend we’re seeing is the increased adoption of more sophisticated, enterprise tools.
The second trend we’ve seen is that more and more companies are establishing a specific and full-time role focused on digital analytics. Analytics used to be a part-time job of the IT team: Whoever set up the website might as well check how the traffic is growing or moving. However, as the amount of traffic grows, and as more activities and transactions are conducted online, digital analytics has become more complicated and sophisticated, and therefore requires a more dedicated role.
How do you see digital analytics getting more sophisticated in the future? What kind of tools will become available?
There are a few areas in which we see digital analytics becoming more sophisticated: data visualisation and omni-channel analysis.
I think a very big area that’s thriving these days is data visualisation, or making data very presentable and easy for people to understand. Not all people are trained to work with Excel or do analysis. It’s the job of the analyst and the analytics vendors to make sure that the data is easy to consume. We need to make this data easy for people to understand, so that they can extract insights, draw conclusions and make decisions.
The second area is omni-channel analysis. In the past, companies reached their audiences through TV, newspapers and magazines. Now you can also reach audiences via the web, their mobile phones and wearables. With these diverse channels, it is very important to establish a link between activities across these channels, in order to get a holistic view of user behaviour and activity on different channels, or even see which types of activities link online and offline channels.
For example, we have worked with financial services companies to determine the link between online activities and final contract conclusion on the agency side. Another exercise that we’re working on with some customers is to measure the effectiveness of a TV commercial in driving traffic to their online website or mobile applications. Understanding your outreach ecosystem and the nuances that influence your customers through omni-channel analysis could provide a wealth of information to enhance decision-making on a number of levels.
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