Analytics is inherently rearward-looking, looking at what happened. Yet if we want to increase the value and impact of analytics, we have to look forward, to help plan. How do we do this? In this episode, learn 3 different approaches for improving the value of analytics.

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## Christopher Penn 00:17

One of the challenges that we have with analytics is its very nature analytics is inherently, a look in the rearview mirror, what happened right as the fundamental purpose of analytics to understand what happened.

And the challenge that we have to deal with is, you shouldn’t drive the car looking at the rearview mirror only right, you have got to be looking at the windshield.

And so Katie, the question I would put to you as a decision maker, as an executive is, how do you use something that’s a rearview mirror? How do you balance that with looking forward with deciding what to do with it being proactive? And how can people who are using analytics who are data driven, can provide proactive value with their analytics data?

## Katie Robbert 01:15

And so one of the things is making sure you’re not waiting too long to look at that data.

So if you only sit down and look at your data, once a year, at your yearly planning, things could have gone, you know, six ways to sideways, and you will never know.

And there’s nothing you can do about it.

So that’s, you know, sort of the first thing and so we were talking earlier, Chris, about, you know, setting up automatic notifications for anomalies, for example.

So even if you can’t be in your analytics system, every minute of every day, you can set up some notification to say, if it goes above or below this threshold, let me know, so I can do something about it.

So I think that sort of the first thing in terms of providing value, the other thing is, you can’t just rely on your data to make decisions.

And I mean that in a way of like, if you’re only ever looking at your Google Analytics, and nothing else outside of that dashboard, you’re probably making very limited decisions.

Because you’re not talking to your customers, you’re not paying attention to the conversations people are having online, you’re not looking at Google trend data, for example, you’re not even just doing basic exploration of what people might be interested in the next couple of weeks.

And so I feel like your analytics is a good starting place.

But if that’s the only thing you