I don't think there is a reason to find a name for this discipline. This field exists already and it's honestly just called "Data Analytics". You speak about moving more towards understanding outcomes and user value, which is what I definitely support, but simply understanding things and not acting on them (i.e. taking decisions) is worthless to a business. Therefore I truly believe and see the impact of the field of Decision Science/Intelligence as the "end-all" discussion to the semantics of naming our scope of work :)
Ok click bait post title! (Too your defense those are the best titles). But of course you're mainly referring to the name of the category. It makes sense that you wouldn't wake up one day and all of a sudden disagree with what we've always agreed on. Event based data will run the world for a long time now.
Anyway, three things on this post:
1. Also interesting to see Adobe move into the customer journey analytics space. Same move as Google finally made with GA4. They called it product analytics for a minute as well. Datadog also released one.
2. Product analytics as a category name was always too limiting, but what I liked about it was how clearly it distinguished itself from old school page based analytics (marketing analytics).
3. Customer analytics as a term: I always preferred product because it analyzes the success of the product instead of analyzing "customers", which I always had trouble with because it insinuated that people are being watched. But it's not that; it's abstracted. But if I get over that, then I think that's probably better.
I really like your positive feelings towards product analytics. And I agree with the historical context. Event-based analytics (aka later called product analytics) was a significant shift in how to use data.
For me, the same shift is happening now with event data in the data warehouse. We finally can move away from SDKs, which we never really fell in love with. This is why I am looking for a new way to name it. Which the market will solve in the next 1-2 years.
I don't think there is a reason to find a name for this discipline. This field exists already and it's honestly just called "Data Analytics". You speak about moving more towards understanding outcomes and user value, which is what I definitely support, but simply understanding things and not acting on them (i.e. taking decisions) is worthless to a business. Therefore I truly believe and see the impact of the field of Decision Science/Intelligence as the "end-all" discussion to the semantics of naming our scope of work :)
Honestly, I never really cared about the name. But it is called like that by most other people. Therefore, the sun setting.
Decisions deserve a separate post. I have some doubts about it, but I need to think more and talk to you about it.
Ok click bait post title! (Too your defense those are the best titles). But of course you're mainly referring to the name of the category. It makes sense that you wouldn't wake up one day and all of a sudden disagree with what we've always agreed on. Event based data will run the world for a long time now.
Anyway, three things on this post:
1. Also interesting to see Adobe move into the customer journey analytics space. Same move as Google finally made with GA4. They called it product analytics for a minute as well. Datadog also released one.
2. Product analytics as a category name was always too limiting, but what I liked about it was how clearly it distinguished itself from old school page based analytics (marketing analytics).
3. Customer analytics as a term: I always preferred product because it analyzes the success of the product instead of analyzing "customers", which I always had trouble with because it insinuated that people are being watched. But it's not that; it's abstracted. But if I get over that, then I think that's probably better.
I really like your positive feelings towards product analytics. And I agree with the historical context. Event-based analytics (aka later called product analytics) was a significant shift in how to use data.
For me, the same shift is happening now with event data in the data warehouse. We finally can move away from SDKs, which we never really fell in love with. This is why I am looking for a new way to name it. Which the market will solve in the next 1-2 years.