A lot of people struggle to understand the value and potential return of analytics services.
Honestly, it was tough for me to conceptualize at first as well. The idea is far from intuitive – someone else is going to use my data more intelligently than me and unveil some “new” information to save me money. I thought,”Nah, I’ll take my chances and bet on myself.”But then I ran into a real world example that almost everyone is familiar with (or will be soon).
How are Tax Services Like Analytics Services?
I had an epiphany as I was doing my taxes this year; tax professionals are to me as analytics are to IT professionals.
For the first time, I used a tax professional to help me file my taxes. I am in my early thirties, and I had only one income up until this year. Even with selling some company stock, moving, and charitable donations, it was pretty easy for me to handle. I prided myself on being self-sufficient, and I was pretty happy with my returns being a couple hundred dollars or so and moving on. After all, the money was already out of my pocket, so getting anything back at all was gravy. However, this year I got married, changed jobs (with a brief time between jobs), sold a bunch of stocks, bought a house (with solar panels), and moved. At the same time, a family member started working for a tax company, so I decided I should try it out.
What a difference. Not only did I get back way more than I expected for this year, but I got back over $2000 more from the last 3 years! Talk about a heel-click moment!
Maximize ROI with Analytics
Then it hit me. This tax service was very similar to analytics service in that both services unveil information that can be used to maximize ROI. He took the same data I had, applied his special knowledge and formula, and figured out some areas where I could improve. Genius! I paid $200 for this service and saw more than a 10 to 1 return on investment. And you bet I am going back to the same guy every year! Not only did it make the actual filing of taxes very simple since I just give everything to him and answer a few questions, but it also made me some real money. In fact, a recent study confirmed that my experience was on the low end for analytics ROI, with an average ROI of 13 to 1.
The only hassle was that I had to give him a ton of information up front, assemble everything, and find a secure way to get it to him since he lives in another city. I used several secure, online, cloud-based resources for this. I can only imagine how much more painful this was 5-10 years ago.
So, now that I have first hand, visceral knowledge of the power of analytics I am even more excited about what we have today at Vyopta and what we are about to launch. Because of our unique perspective and powerful analytics engine, we enable people to get a lot more out of their video investments without spending any more money.