The eMetrics Summit is always a chance to learn directly from the best web analysts and emarketers in the world.

But at this week's Toronto eMetrics I really felt Travelocity took it to another level. Shankar Mishra, Travelocity's Director of Enterprise Business Intelligence presented on developing an enterprise web analytics strategy.  Not reporting.  Not doing cool stuff because it is interesting.  But building a framework that relates all web metrics to business outcomes.

A framework prompted, he reckons, by a question from Travelocity's Chief Financial Officer John Mills, of: "Where is all the money you claim to be generating?"

Travelocity and the brands they own - such as Lastminute.com and World Choice Holidays - are naturally sitting on vast quantities of data.  The web is their business, so there is a critical imperative that they are continually optimizing not just websites, but web businesses.

Shankar expressed a refreshingly strategic view of the importance of true analysis, not simply data and measurement.  Too often organizations struggle to simply measure what they have, reporting on what their tool has to offer them, not on the business essentials.  He explains:

"You need to come up with independent metrics based on the business objectives and outcomes, not the tool's data….and a framework which relates all web metrics to business outcomes"

"Socialization" of business critical insightTravelocity's focus is not on what can be done with the data they have, but what they want out of that data.  The framing of the right questions, focus and clarity of goals, strategic optimization of the business - not simply the website.

I have always felt that web analytics is a subset of a wider intelligence strategy - which is perhaps why I found Shankar's session so valuable.  My own presentation in Toronto was about moving from clues in web analytics data, through to surveying and conducting user testing with real customers, in order to understand motive and real context.

But context, insight and causality are not sitting within your analytics tool - they're with the people inside the organisation and the cutomers you engage with.  Why Shankar blew my mind so thoroughly is he presented an enterpise level analytics strategy that factors in human nature and politics, as well as actionable measurement.

They go through a circular analytics process whereby they:

• monitor
• analyze
• prescribe
• act

It is the prescribe stage that leaps out for me.  It includes the usual testing and prototyping - but it is the "socialization" aspect that in my mind is the critical one.  It is the step almost invariably missing - the people bit.

Through "socialization" - or "the people bit" if socialization sounds a little too George Orwell for you -  they know what is and isn't compelling to the internal folks that are affected.  They create checkpoints of who needs to be convinced and what people will really find useful.

"don't even think about data - just figure out the question. Then start talking to people who are stakeholders, the people down the line who'll be impacted"

Before they think about data, they examine needs, usefulness and what compromises may be required to achieve traction.  This isn't proclaimed from above (or as is even more common, unsuccessfully attempted from the bottom up) - socialization appears to be an essential consensus building process for the success of their strategic analytics.

This is a lesson that I believe businesses of all sizes can take on board.  People typically take actions based on what other people tell them about data - not because you have the best tool set on the planet.  People take actions because other analysts and marketers tell them stories about data - in language they understand.  And because those stories have a meaning that resonates to their specific role, they will be invested in making decisions that ultimately improve the business.

Too often we look at what is interesting, or we report about web data in vocabulary that means something to us - not to finance or operations.  Shankar makes the point at the heart of their socialization process, which is that "it has to be compelling to someone else as well - and it will be more compelling if the person impacted has been involved."

I thank Jim Sterne and the eMetrics team for an excellent conference - and I also thank Shankar at Travelocity.  It's a great return on your time and energy to have your brain so thoroughly stimulated!  Roll on eMetrics San Jose when we get to wrestle with "how to analyse" - because, you know what, I just happen to have a few theories on that.

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