Avoid the pitfalls of analytics shelfware.

No matter the size of your team or your budget, it’s crucial to make smart technology investments. Digital analytics tools are essential for understanding and improving customer experiences, but they only work if people actually use them. We’ve all seen or heard about shelfware—software that goes unused—and know that it’s a needless waste of time and money.

At Quantum Metric, we have learned from the best—our customers—about how to ensure that data and analytics isn’t just a box to be checked but that fast insights become integral to your digital strategy, ensuring they’re fully utilized, and effectively optimized.

The common pitfalls of shelfware.

Shelfware can drain an enterprise’s resources and contribute to inefficiencies. When digital analytics tools become shelfware, they not only waste financial resources but also squander potential insights that could drive business growth.

This can lead to:

• Stagnated decision-making: Without active upkeep and usage of analytics tools, teams may rely on outdated or anecdotal data, leading to decisions that do not reflect current market conditions or customer behaviors.
• Misaligned, siloed teams: When only a single team (or team member) is using the data, that’s another data silo in an organization full of siloed analytics tools – this only yields more misaligned decision making.
• Missed insights and revenue opportunities: Teams miss out on valuable insights that could improve their products or services. Ultimately, this can lead to forgone revenue, as businesses fail to capitalize on the data they’ve collected. 

To avoid these pitfalls, companies should consider a few key strategies to ensure that their analytics tech stack is fully leveraged.

3 strategies to prevent your analytics tools from collecting dust.

Let’s dive into key strategies to make sure analytics tools aren’t just tools, but integral to business success.

Empower adoption across teams.

Promoting cross-team adoption of digital analytics is not always straightforward but far easier when the analytics tool is loved by every team. When different teams can easily access, use and interpret insights, it fosters a culture where data flows freely across the organization, driving proactive and data-driven decision making.

Mackenzie Page, Manager of Customer Experience at CVS Health, highlighted this during Quantum Metric’s Quantum LEAP 2023 conference: “Initially, insights were mostly provided by my team, but we’ve shifted to a model where our partners from engineering, product design, and other functions engage directly, finding insights themselves and implementing improvements.” Troy Waters-Everett, Technology Lead, Customer Experience at CVS Health, added, “Scaling this across our large and complex organization was not a small feat, but through increasing our use case maturity model and adopting a data-centric approach, we managed this transition effectively.”

And this goes beyond simple tool usage to influencing a data-centric culture. During her 2024 Quantum LEAP session, Erin Largey, Sr. Manager, Digital Analytics & Optimization at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Inc noted, “With Quantum Metric’s integration, we democratized the ownership of the customer experience across the company, ensuring that it wasn’t just one team responsible for monitoring. Now, everyone has a pulse on our customers’ experiences at all times, which has significantly improved how we address customer needs and adapt our strategies.”

This approach not only democratizes data access but also empowers each department to act on insights independently, speeding up the implementation of improvements and fostering a culture of accountability and innovation.

Enhance training and support.

Many tools on the market are overly complex, requiring expensive training and ongoing maintenance. Choose an analytics platform that combines ease of use with self-service and offers ongoing training and support as needed. Ensure internal training and advocacy to encourage widespread use and tool stickiness.

Sharon Corless, Analyst, Digital Health at American Airlines, emphasizes the critical nature of this approach in her 2023 Quantum LEAP session: “Our strategy for adopting analytics revolves around ensuring we have robust training for our teams. It’s imperative that product analysts, owners, and managers are well-equipped to monitor performance effectively. This training ensures that everyone can identify issues promptly, enhancing decision-making across the board.”

By ensuring teams can easily self-serve with minimal training, while receiving necessary support during times of need, you can avoid the pitfalls of underutilized analytics tools.

Get leadership buy-in.

Executive support can greatly accelerate the adoption and effective use of analytics tools. When leaders champion the use of analytics tools, they foster an environment where data-driven insights become integral to operational and strategic frameworks. This top-down approach ensures that analytics initiatives align with business objectives and receive the necessary resources and visibility to succeed.

“Leadership buy-in was crucial. Without it, our advanced training programs wouldn’t succeed, nor would our transition to a more mature use-case model.” – Troy Waters-Everett, Technology Lead, Customer Experience at CVS Health

Ready to go a bit further? For a step-by-step approach to refine these strategies, read our blog on Streamlining your analytics tech stack in 5 steps, which provides additional methods to optimize your analytics technology.

Conclusion

The opportunity costs of purchasing shelfware are both significant and far-reaching. By empowering cross-team adoption, ease-to-use analytics paired with robust support, and securing executive endorsement, organizations can ensure their analytics tools not only get used more, but drive meaningful business outcomes. When teams can efficiently self-serve and access insights, backed by strong leadership, these tools become engines of growth and efficiency, transforming data into actionable insights that fuel success.

Taking on an analytics audit? Our ‘Analytics audit assessment’ quiz will help you identify where you are in your consolidation journey and guides you through assessing your current tools and devising strategies to enhance their use effectively.

If you need further assistance or wish to explore more about how Quantum Metric can help streamline your operations, do not hesitate to contact our team for a personalized consultation or to browse our product tours.