Coremetrics / IBM Digital Analytics (discontinued) vs. Improvado

• As mentioned earlier, transactional heavy web assets such as eStores are particularly strong candidates.
• IBM CXA along with other, similar tools, is not set-and-forget. The solution must be well managed in order to deliver value. Purchase of the solution is one thing; driving analytic results is another. If a company's staff are not strong analytical thinkers, CXA will not help. IBM CXA is not just a technology platform - it is a basis to design strong customer touchpoints and interactions. You need to be customer journey design literate to get the best from this.

Incentivized

This solution helped us when we were stuck trying to explore data deeper and didn’t have enough resources to prepare data for further analysis. The software solves data integrity problems bringing more granularity to all insights. Integration with data visualization tools and well-arranged insights shows how each of the company’s marketing channels performs in real-time. Improvado is also useful for risk mitigation when launching or adjusting marketing strategies. It may also become a valuable tool for businesses, who are aiming at automation and the elimination of routine processes. ETL processes automation unleashes marketing analysts’ potential granting them more time for research of marketing reports.

• Marketing attribution models - capable to deliver an holistic view of the marketing channels performance
• Multisite capabilities : allows to have a Cie view as well as individual site's view
• Unique customer view and Live Profile: we are able to go to the visitor level and therefore use the behavioural data for marketing actions
• Reliability of the data: we have full confidence in the data collected and the rules are clear for us
• Support: available support 24h/7.

• ETL processes. Once adjusted, Improvado never fails to streamline data from our advertisement platforms to the data warehouse.
• Variety of data sources. Improvado extracts data from over 200 sources, including both well-established platforms and the ones that are rapidly gaining momentum.
• Full-cycle support. Improvado provided us with a dedicated manager available 24/7. Any issues that arose during the product integration were settled in a matter of minutes.
• Flexibility and client-focused approach. After the integration, we adjusted our marketing campaign and needed new ad platforms to be integrated. The vendor allocated the development team ASAP to add new connectors to our existing network.
• Professional services package. The company doesn't provide dashboard views by default. However, we had no time to figure out how to do it ourselves, so we hired a team of Improvado's analysts that set everything up for us.

• The new UI is slow, buggy, incomplete, is not intuitive, and has limited support or explanation.
• The demo videos for the new UI showcase features that are not even available in the new UI and support said those features may never be available so they are not sure either why they are shown in the demo videos.
• Tag management is extremely manual leaving a lot of room for human error.
• Support across the board for the legacy UI and new UI are not very helpful. They typically do not take the time to understand the root of your problem and commonly default to the response "that feature is not available". For example, you cannot currently delete reports in the new UI even though there is a delete button available. Support says the feature is not available, so if you want anything deleted you have to submit a list to support and they will delete it for you. This is extremely frustrating when you are creating "test" reports in the new UI and then you have no option to delete them when done.

Incentivized

• Improvado didn’t have all the integrations that we needed. However, they offered full coverage and quickly found ways to extract data from the sources we required.
• The user interface for BI tools may be confusing to inexperienced users. Personally, I didn't have any problems. However, some of the junior marketing specialists from my department needed more time to adapt to the UI. Otherwise, the interface is great.

It is still a best in class analytics platform, but working with IBM contracting has proven to be quite a hassle at times... There are proven pros and cons to each of the major systems and vendors (most I already listed). I always recommend to establish the business questions you are trying to answer, determine which platform answers them best and decide whether it is worth the dollar investment

Very easy to implement and use.

Never had any issues

As reports are templated, the system is pretty quick. Sometimes you have to wait a bit for a report to render. Or you might have to re-load the page. But there is no real issue here and the system is on par with other similar systems.

Overall, the level of support is very good and I would say it is a strong asset of the solution. However, you can sometimes feel that there is a difference of level among the support team.

Online training is really great. One of the best assets that they have. Lots of great videos, pop quizzes at the end of each module. Fantastic. Other tools have similar features, but not as good.

See previous comment: reading and understanding the encyclopedic implementation guide is a must.

IBM Analytics is a great tool for measuring and analyzing web traffic along with consumer behavior to a degree. When compared to other solutions and tools available in the market today, I'd suggest checking out Kissmetrics or even Google Analytics over this tool. Ultimately, it will come down to the end user and if they are comfortable in the environment of the backend and workflows of IBM Digital Analytics.

Incentivized

We chose Improvado for the following reasons:

• Their data transformation framework cleans, normalizes and prepares data for loading into our data visualization tool;
• We connected our CRM to our analytics tool and as ad account;
• Extensive social media reports - the marketing team can view our ads, posts, comments right from the dashboard.
• Scheduled reports and immediate data sync options help us to get the reports with the most accurate data at the time we need them;
• Google Ads auto-connect new ad accounts.

Our marketing team evaluated Funnel.io and has opted for Improvado because of the following drawbacks:

• With Funnel we’d have to set up an extraction process for each campaign and account manually;
• The more accounts you need to connect or integrations to use, the more you’ll pay;
• Limited data storage options;
• Complicated account export. We had to filter accounts to export through the custom filter rules.

This solution can support large amount of data and transaction. The way that user management features are built, it shows it is meant for large organizations.

• Using IBM Digital Analytics has allowed us to optimize marketing spend for our clients and provide us the insight to reduce the spend on vendors that are not performing well or not bringing in qualified traffic.
• Using IBM Digital Analytics data to power on-site product recommendations has increased the percentage of total sales from recommendation zones to around 10% compared to around 1% with manually merchandised zones.
• Using IBM's TruePath Funnels to analyze the checkout process for various clients has allowed us to see where visitors are dropping out of the checkout process and make improvements to increase conversion rate.

• Increased ROI
• Improved cost of acquisition analysis
• Improved CPA, CPI, CPL report drawing process