[BizTrends 2016] Age of analytics

Abey Mokgwatsane

There is a saying at SAB that “anything that can be measured, moves”. The hyper-data world that exists - our ability and capacity to analyse data, to get out of it useful insights to enable us to make the right decisions and investments - will be that much more pronounced.

There are three key areas in the age of analytics that are important this year:

1. Customer data analytics. We live in a world right now that has the internet of things, all gadgets, platforms, to engage the internet on, from fridges to mobile tech. On the other side, we have people who are becoming more digitised. And there sits customer analytics, analysing in great detail, influence on social media, interaction with businesses, mobile apps… There is much more data to analyse to help us with insights or decisions based on data. Everyone is speaking about the Internet of Things (IoT) and consumers are digitising, but for the first time, as a trend, there will be much more focus on analytical ability. It doesn’t just sit in the digital department, but looks at every single sphere of the marketing world.

It is the joint responsibility of agencies and marketers. We need our own capacity. Sales analytics will sit in the client environment. We just need the data. As soon as agencies lose the ability to look at the market and analyse the market to give them insights to sell back to their client, all will be lost.

There will be huge investments in customer data from agencies this year. We are in this ‘hyper-internet of things’ world. And we need the ability to read that data and act on it.

All the trends we have spoken about before, such as how our consumers are engaging with our brands, are reliant on data. You can’t measure engagement if you don’t have the data. If you don’t know your consumer touch points, you are lost. We have a mobile agency – mobile being an access point to customers – so it is also a customer access point for analytics.

2. Business analytics - agencies: Business systems analytics will become more of a trend. Client budgets are being cut. Agencies are looking at their own systems to make sure they are geared to support this integrated world we live in. That can’t happen on a whim. That requires us to sit down and say OK, how would a brief stay in a system? Does it get stuck with the client? We are critically analysing our own value chain. You will see a lot more work process automations happening, analytics in own work flow processes, ‘possibility analytics’. Some clients are not worth keeping because they are losing you money. Not many agencies know this. There needs to be an investment in business analytics. We have to work more efficiently and demand fair remuneration and manage fair profitability. The new traffic people of the future will be business automation people, not just people handing out job bags. They are going to be running business analytics systems.

3. Talent analytics: This is a broader trend in human resources – up to 70% of agency costs are people. We as a business are going to see the rise of talent analytics - we will be able to tell you how often people need performance reviews, the most productive engagement with our staff, and our ability to create employees that are ‘future fit’, will be highly determined on our own talent analytics and looking at people as individuals to analyse performance.

It’s a new lease on life to HR and talent management, similar to what social media did to the PR industry, and it will create new ways in how we procure talent in the industry.

*Abey Mokgwatsane was interviewed by Louise Marsland, Bizcommunity.com contributing editor & BizTrends 2016 Trend curator & editor.