The possibility of having two projects based on similar systems are almost null. I mean, even when you can have an eCommerce that sells Golf stuff and your competitor has the very same thing, both are not gonna work in the same way. All the elements of both systems will not interact in the same way so the experience will not be the same and the way the elements interact in order to reach the system’s objective will definitely not even similar.
With the above mentioned differences is easy to understand why we need that the information platforms (Website Analytics, Social Media Analytics, etc) have analytical flexibility. Every time I use an information platform I feel an Analytical Claustrophobia…I mean, I need to use the information with some freedom but instead I feel that the current flexibility it’s still not enough.
I know, the more flexible the solution the less easy to use. I also know that it is important that everyone in the company can use it and not every one should know how to run database queries, but come on, you can definitely have a very easy to use front end and ALSO a database access that allow you to run queries.
The more information, the more information freedom we need to get valuable and actionable insights. The problem is that vendor a not focused on that because the people that are supposed to analyze the information are constantly asking for easier to use platforms, and vendors instead of getting smarter and find the way of satisfying both requirements they just go for one of them.
You can also say that allowing people to querying the database increase the platform costs a lot, but…who cares? I mean investing in information is much more simple than what you can imagine, it is about “how much does it cost” and “what results can I generate with it”…you can say, how can I be sure if I’ll able to achieve those results and the answer is, you can’t, but at least you will be making decisions under less risk…actually you will be able to know the level of risk that you will be assuming. Since some platforms are free it seems like all of them should be free but the price must be related to a benefit, it doesn’t seems very smart using standard or structured information that doesn’t answer your questions just because you don’t wanted to pay for that…
The more I know information platforms the more I love Excel and Databases…