4 Pillars of Analytics

Data acquisition, processing, surfacing and actioning are key to an effective analytics initiative

There are four key pillars that rule the lifecycle of analytics projects, from data acquisition, processing to surfacing, and actioning on the data. Each of these contribute to a significant part of the value chain of analytics.

#Pillar 1: Acquisition

The data acquisition pillar consists of a wide range of tasks, systems, and technology knowledge, one needs to possess to be effective in acquiring the required data. What is required from an analytics professional is very domain-dependent.

Types of data

With respect to data acquisition, we can consider four main types of data Clickstream, Databases APIs and Logs, each have their challenges and ways to handle data collections.

Clickstream data is generally obtained through integration with a tool such as google analytics or adobe analytics. The role of clickstream data is to provide an understanding of user behavior on the site or apps that we are running. The default version is to extract raw data from such a source through Google Big Query (for Analytics 360). If this is unavailable, open-source tools such as Snowplow or Divolte can help…