What is an Analytics Expert?

At the very end of my first week on the job at E-Nor, I sat down with Feras to make sure we had covered all the steps in the on-boarding process for new consultants. With my head spinning from the barrage of new processes, clients, and projects, I was feeling just a little overwhelmed. Thinking about how much more I had to learn before traveling back to the Portland, Oregon office, Feras began describing what he expected from the expert analytics consultants at E-Nor. As my confidence was already reeling from the week’s introductions to some entirely new concepts and to new depths of familiar ones, he explained that I didn’t have to know everything about everything.

T-Shaped: Depth meets Breadth

“I like to say that a good consultant is T-shaped,” said Feras. As any good analytical communicator would, he grabbed the marker from the tray on the whiteboard behind him. He drew a horizontal line and then a long vertical line extending below the first line’s midpoint.

Tapping the horizontal line, he said, “You should be familiar with all of the concepts that affect our business, but you should explore the area that most interests you to develop a level of expertise,” as he dragged the marker along the vertical line.

He went on to explain that the experts at E-Nor weren’t experts in all the same areas. Feras talked about the range and variety among the individuals on the team.

“Some can integrate data and talk data visualization all day long, while some are into the bits and pieces of JavaScript and Google Analytics customizations, including those who are so ahead of the curve that they create Google Analytics hacks and tricks years before they appear on the product roadmap, and some of us operate in the analytics wonderland.

“Others are closer to reality 🙂 and know every little in and every little out of almost every digital analytics tool known to mankind. And some are super creative, super right brained, and are very social and are able to apply their innovative ideas toward qualitative analysis, as well as all things site optimization and mobile usability. And then you get those of us who can do account management in their sleep and some who just love to coach and train on all things Google Analytics.

“And then some of us see the big picture clearly and develop optimization frameworks and analytics methodologies, and love to publish and speak at leading marketing conferences and can extract insights from Google Analytics Premium and BigQuery. But the point is, we are collectively very broad and individually very deep. Together, we provide a comprehensive level of service and consultation to our clients.”

Clearly, the results speak for themselves.

So now that I’ve been on the job for a few months, I have first-hand experience on what Feras was talking about. Each of these unique, but overlapping skill sets equals way more than the sum of their parts. It’s clear to me that if the letter “T” describes an expert, it also stands for Team.