4.5

4.5 out of 10.

That's how firms rate their use of analytics, according to Michael Hopkins, editor-in-chief of MIT Sloan Management Review as described here. Moreover, Brad Peterson, Schwab CIO says get marketing to pay rather than IT. He used mobile app in his example thinking, I think, about capturing mobile data for analysis but why not use marketing budgets to better drive marketing analytics more broadly. Better yet, align costs to revenue and profits. And enable ROI calculations then maximize ROI.

Here are a few places to start:

• Move beyond web and email analytics. While hits, visitor counts, email opens and the like are critical, they are not enough. Marry this data with target company organizational structures, social graphs, CRM data and other internal and external data to get a full picture of the market or slice into territories.
• Let people drive the analytics based on their roles and needs. Sales reps can mine the data to look for past deal patterns and possible triggering events in search of next deal. Marketing can analyze previous campaigns and plot the next one. Managers, directors and C-Level can watch for longitudinal trends.
• View marketing data through different lenses. For example, sales interested in this quarter, marketing next and biz dev 2-3 quarters away in adjacent markets.

In short, capture whatever data you can from the market and from the field and let your servers and analytics algorithms do the work to crunch the data for you. And use the analytics in a feedback loop: Learn from how the system is used to determine results and let the measurable actions of those responsible for quota or P&L drive ROI calculations.

And turn 4.5 into 9's and 10's.