Digital Analytics & Governance Report

Results from ObservePoint's 2020 Annual Study

86% Report Data Governance as Important to Hitting Business Goals

With the spike in online activity and data privacy concerns, digital analytics and governance professionals weigh in on what a truly data-driven business might look like, what pain points could be preventing companies from getting there, and what concerns organizations have about data privacy.

Participant Demographic Overview

  • 70% analytics and marketing professionals

  • 47% enterprise-level companies (2500+ employees and over $1 billion revenue)

  • 44 countries represented, 56% from the United States

  • Top 5 industries represented: business services, software, retail, banking/financial, and manufacturing

While the marketing department is still the most represented team managing data governance at 42%, the analytics department is a definitive second with 23%, indicating they are becoming a more integral and distinct part of organizations.

Data Governance

For those that believe improved decision-making is a key element of growth, investing in data management governance is—or should be—a high priority.

  • 86% said data governance was either important or very important to meeting their financial and growth goals

  • Of those, 43% said data governance was key because it helped improve decision-making

  • 85% of respondents said data privacy is a priority for their organization

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Challenges

Some of the greatest challenges for data governance are:

  • Spending too much time cleaning their data (22%)

  • Lack of human or technology resources (36%)

  • Inaccurate data (10%)

That’s 68% of data governance challenges that can be solved with an automated data governance solution. Only 14% of respondents had matured to such a solution like ObservePoint, which would significantly reduce the hours and manpower necessary to improve data quality.

[See how Exture reduced their QA time by more than 75% with ObservePoint.]

Marketing Technology Governance

Do you know how much data collection is really happening on your site? Respondents tend to underreport the number of technologies they use by half. ObservePoint conducted an Audit of companies that reported less than 10 technologies in their MarTech stack and found that, on their homepage alone:

  • 36% actually had 11 or more technologies

  • 15% had 20 or more technologies

Discover how Technology Governance from ObservePoint can help you understand what technologies are on your site so you can ensure your data collection tools and processes are executing as planned.

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Data Privacy & Compliance

Despite data privacy being a priority among these professionals dealing most closely with customer data, there is no real consistency yet with how privacy teams are set up, where they report to, or what tools they use.

  • 54% of respondents didn’t know what tools their organization use to ensure data privacy

  • 25% didn’t know what processes were in place

  • Only 41% said they had any designated data privacy personnel

Forrester predicts that the sense of urgency surrounding data privacy regulations will only increase for organizations across the globe in 2021.

Privacy Compliance by ObservePoint performs automated Audits to identify all data collection on your site and helps monitor your compliance technologies.

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Campaign Performance

What tools are teams using to manage tracking codes? (2019 vs 2020)

2019:

  • 60% used spreadsheets

  • 23% used a third-party solution

2020:

  • 57% use spreadsheets

  • 35% use a third-party solution

The trend is shifting glacially away from manual methods. More widespread adoption of third-party solutions, like Campaign Performance from ObservePoint, will help reduce broken links, missing data, human errors, and hours spent managing tracking codes.

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Ready to see the difference ObservePoint can make for you?

Discover how ObservePoint can help you audit your analytics technologies, protect your customer data, and ensure trusted insights.