Has an Executive Sponsor Got Your Back?

In the off­beat com­edy “Napoleon Dyna­mite”, Napoleon learned the impor­tance of the buddy sys­tem from Rex, a self-defense instruc­tor. “[At] Rex Kwon Do, we use the buddy sys­tem. No more fly­ing solo. You need some­body watch­ing your back at all times!” In terms of your company’s web ana­lyt­ics pro­gram — whether you’re the web ana­lyst or CMO — does an exec­u­tive spon­sor have your back or are you fly­ing solo?

In the first of a series of arti­cles exam­in­ing the “7 Keys to Cre­at­ing a Data-Driven Orga­ni­za­tion”, I’m going to look at the crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor of secur­ing an exec­u­tive spon­sor. Your com­pany may have invested in the tech­nol­ogy and resources for its web ana­lyt­ics pro­gram, but does it have an exec­u­tive spon­sor, let alone one that is effec­tive? Yes, no… maybe?

I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to work with many web ana­lyt­ics pro­fes­sion­als at var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions. I’ve seen the deep frus­tra­tion of web ana­lysts who didn’t have an effec­tive exec­u­tive spon­sor as well as the sin­cere appre­ci­a­tion of those who did.  Many CEOs and CMOs would be shocked to learn how iso­lated, irrel­e­vant, and frus­trated web ana­lyt­ics teams can feel when they don’t have an effec­tive exec­u­tive spon­sor. No mat­ter how smart, inno­v­a­tive, or pro­duc­tive these teams are, they can’t over­come orga­ni­za­tional iner­tia with­out sup­port from above.

The Aberdeen Group found that “com­pa­nies that invest in ana­lyt­ics plat­forms with the sup­port of senior man­age­ment have greater suc­cess in exe­cut­ing on their cor­po­rate goals.” All of the suc­cess­ful web ana­lyt­ics pro­grams that I have encoun­tered have had the sup­port of an exec­u­tive spon­sor. In this arti­cle, we’ll exam­ine who should be an exec­u­tive spon­sor, what their respon­si­bil­i­ties are, and what it takes to be effective.

Exec­u­tive spon­sor criteria

First, the exec­u­tive spon­sor should be a senior exec­u­tive within a key stake­holder group for web ana­lyt­ics (e.g., e-commerce, mar­ket­ing, etc.). In other words, the exec­u­tive must be part of a team that ben­e­fits sig­nif­i­cantly from web ana­lyt­ics. Sec­ond, the exec­u­tive needs to have suf­fi­cient power and influ­ence within the orga­ni­za­tion to ensure the pro­gram can be successful.

Choos­ing the right exec­u­tive may depend on the matu­rity of your web ana­lyt­ics pro­gram. Paul Strupp of Sun Microsys­tems found that the senior­ity level of its exec­u­tive spon­sor­ship increased as its web ana­lyt­ics pro­gram matured and pros­pered. Dur­ing the course of seven years, dif­fer­ent indi­vid­u­als assumed the role of exec­u­tive spon­sor and the senior­ity level increased from a Senior Direc­tor at the begin­ning to a VP and then a Senior VP today. Strupp men­tioned that the program’s matu­rity prob­a­bly wasn’t ready for Senior VP-level over­sight at its incep­tion. Now the group needs high-level sup­port to inte­grate web ana­lyt­ics into the full mar­ket­ing business.

Exec­u­tive spon­sor responsibilities

The duties of the exec­u­tive spon­sor are four fold:

1. Pri­or­i­ti­za­tion: In order to be suc­cess­ful, the web ana­lyt­ics pro­gram needs to be aligned with the busi­ness. The exec­u­tive spon­sor pro­vides cru­cial direc­tion to the team so it is always in line with the cor­po­rate strat­egy and top priorities.
2. Pro­tec­tion: The exec­u­tive spon­sor plays an impor­tant role in pro­tect­ing the web ana­lyt­ics team from other con­flict­ing ini­tia­tives or cor­po­rate politics.
3. Prob­lem res­o­lu­tion: Using their clout or influ­ence within the orga­ni­za­tion, the exec­u­tive spon­sor steps in to remove any prob­lems that could impede the suc­cess of the pro­gram such as resource or bud­get constraints.
4. Pro­mo­tion: The exec­u­tive spon­sor plays a key role in cham­pi­oning the ben­e­fits of the pro­gram and pro­mot­ing its suc­cesses within the orga­ni­za­tion, espe­cially among other executives.

Effec­tive exec­u­tive spon­sor — com­mit­ted and involved

In an infor­ma­tive Com­put­er­world arti­cle on ‘reluc­tant’ exec­u­tive spon­sors, Bart Perkins high­lights how exec­u­tive spon­sors need to be both involved and com­mit­ted. He shares the bacon-and-eggs anal­ogy, where the chicken is involved in the meal but the pig is com­mit­ted. An effec­tive exec­u­tive spon­sor needs to believe in the value of web ana­lyt­ics (com­mit­ted) and invest the time and effort nec­es­sary to cre­ate a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion (involved).

If the exec­u­tive spon­sor is involved but not com­mit­ted, they may go through the motions and only pro­vide lip ser­vice. On the other hand, if the exec­u­tive spon­sor is com­mit­ted but not involved, they may believe in the impor­tance of web ana­lyt­ics but not pro­vide enough sup­port to make it suc­cess­ful. In either sce­nario, the web ana­lyt­ics pro­gram will not progress. To achieve the goal of becom­ing a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion, ensure your com­pany has a com­mit­ted and involved exec­u­tive spon­sor. No more fly­ing solo.

My next blog post will focus on the next build­ing block to cre­at­ing a data-driven orga­ni­za­tion — align­ing your imple­men­ta­tion with busi­ness objec­tives.