Case Study On MetricStream’s Implementation Of Google Analytics At Enterprise Level

About MetricStream

Metricstream is a World leader in development and implementation of Governance , Risk and Compliance ( GRC ) software . It has got a large number of clients across all geographies and across diverse industry verticals . Its client list includes big names like Cummins , DELL, Goodyear , Kellogg’s , Pepsico , Pfizer , Philips , Sandisk , Trimble etc .  Metricstream has consistently received several awards and recognitions and has been rated highly by Gartner and Forrester .

Zaplet provides the Platform as a Service ( PaaS ) for Metricstream GRC . Metricstream GRC apps can be developed on the Zaplet platform . This platform provides  Metricstream with the latest in Visual analytics and mobility technology to enhance user experience . They have also successfully launched the platform in the cloud .

Metricstream has developed many different apps in the GRC space for Enterprise Risk Management , Operational Risk Management , Internal Audit Management , SOX Compliance Management etc . They have also developed  specialized solutions in Enterprise GRC , Financial Control , Regulatory Compliance , Legal GRC etc. for various industry verticals like Retail , Financial Services , Consumer Goods etc .

Metricstream has  good interactions with various stakeholders in the GRC ecosystem of customers and partners . It provides certifications , trainings , marketing kits and support to its implementation partners . It engages with its customer through events like GRC summit , knowledge sharing through Blogs etc .

Objective of the Web Analytics project

Metricstream wanted to have an increased information over the reach and effectiveness of their website . They wanted to have detailed analysis of following segments :

Geographical segments &

Their different Products and Services

Therefore , they commissioned an agency to implement a web analytics software throughout the enterprise that would fulfil the above objectives . Google Analytics was selected as the Web Analytics tool .

Approach

The implementing agency gathered reporting information and arrived at following deliverables :

1. Success Metrics : Devising Metrics that could measure the effectiveness of reach of its website to existing and potential clients &
2. Effectively Segment customers  : Segmentation of customers was decided to be done on the following basis :

• Geographic Segmentation : Deciding the number of regions  for analyses &
• Segmentation based upon Business Units :  As is shown below , Metricstream divides their offerings as apps ( products ) , solutions and industries and as such it becomes quite complicated to effectively segment on these parameters . Finally it was decided that it was sufficient to segment customers based upon their required solutions and industries only .

After collecting detailed information , the agency created segments as follows :

Segments based upon geography  : These were created by grouping countries in different regions . This was quite easy .

Segments based upon Business Units : This was quite complicated to do . This was because , the page URLs did not follow a consistent naming convention .  And due to considerations of SEO , they were averse to change these URLs . Thus neither the page names nor the page URL s were allowed to be changed by Metricstream .

Therefore , the implementing agency adopted a complicated strategy of feeding traffic data to multiple Google Analytics Profiles .

The agency modified the Google Analytics .js code , to feed data into multiple profiles as is detailed below .

Main Profile : All the traffic information on Metrisctream.com is captured by this profile . Data of all pages , all geographies and all segments except internal traffic is captured by this profile .

Solution and Industries Profile : All pages belong to one industry and one solution , hence each page reports to two profiles : one of the industry and the other of the solution . The agency suggested a tagging strategy for each individual page for proper indexing .  Metricstream implemented the tagging mechanism . After the tagging was complete , the agency tested whether all profiles were recording data . Then reporting was developed .

Reports were classified as under :

Overall Reports : These look at overall performance of metricstream.com across geographies and business units . They report visits and registrations at a global level .

Segment Level reports : These look at segmentwise performance  – geographywise and industry – solutionwise , in detail . They created a reporting format from which reports could be generated as and when required .

Hence , global level reports are available and also detailed reports geographywise , industry wise and solution wise are also available . Thus an industry expert will get details about the industry related traffic for all geographies and for all solutions within the industry . Similarly , the solution expert will get details regarding the solution related traffic across all industries and all geographies .

Results

The results against deliverables were as follows :

1. Success Metrics : The basic success metric was the registration process . Metricstream’s strategy is that once a customer or potential customer leaves his contact details , he is reached out by continuous details of mixed media content . There are three paths for the registration process – the goal of all was to increment the registration counter .
2. Effectively Segment customers : We find that both geographic and industry – solution wise segmentation was achieved .

Thus the web analytics solution Google Analytics was deployed across the enterprise to all relevant employees thereby multiplying  its effectiveness and utility .

Learnings:

We learn from this case study that by proper coding we can customise Google Analytics to be deployed enterprise wide , even in a complex organisational set up .

Image Courtesy: Metricstream