Awards for Excellence 2012: Recipients

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Web Analytics Rising Star (individual): Anne Cable, Web Analyst, Dell

Anne Cable was nominated by 5 independent advocates for the rising star award, demonstrating the high esteem she has earned from her peers in the industry.

She is the eBusiness advisor with Dell's Online Analytics and Testing group. She initially joined Dell as a candidate of Accelerated Leadership Program in 2009 after she graduated from Davidson College.

Anne is one smart cookie. She does what all really good digital analysts do: she communicates well, she is a change agent within the organization to drive data-informed strategic decisions, she uses tools effectively and combines data sources to provide a well-rounded view of performance. She is industry aware and results driven. She has won several Dell-internal awards and consistently exceeds her performance goals.

Anne formally joined the analytics and testing team only a year ago and she quickly became one of our best analysts in the team. She not only grasped the most complex analytics tools, including Adobe Insight, and used them to tackle the most challenging analytical questions, but has also been able to approach her day to day work from a customer centric point of view. Unlike many typical analysts, she doesn't just deliver data and reports; she provides recommendation and action-oriented ideas in a very well packaged format (see attached work samples). It is not surprising then, that Anne has become a DAA Certified Web Analysts within such a short timeframe.

What makes Anne a rising star is not only her intellectual capability and business acumen but also her desire and actions to make the digital analytics industry a better place for us all. Anne has been publishing a very well received Analytics Newsletter for Dell team members, now in its 24th edition (see attached). The newsletter has connected the analytics community dispersed in various teams and regions as well bringing in outside perspectives to Dell with the inclusion of the latest whitepapers and industry news and trends. She also participates in #measure social media (Twitter handle @Annealytics) -- all this with fewer than two years of formal experience in the industry.

Anne is also taking a leadership role in Austin's analytics community. She has helped launched DAA Austin Chapter and a wildly successful first Austin Symposium. She is now the president of the DAA Austin Chapter and leading her team to launch the second DAA Symposium in Austin, titled "Best in Class Optimization" on Feb 9th.

She also has advocates beyond her company. One of her former colleagues states that she has a natural talent for analytical thinking, a curious mind, with a talent for quickly absorbing complex analytics techniques and tools. She is quick to ask advanced questions, listening carefully to complex answers, and understanding them. Many people try to use tools such as Insight and do so incorrectly, but her ability to learn such an advanced web analytics segmentation tool in a short time demonstrates her talent.

It is my belief that Anne's analytical skills, business acumen, and many contributions to the analytical communities both inside and outside of her company, qualify her for the rising star award. All who know her expect great things from her in the years to come. I am sure Anne is the best candidate for Rising Star and I urge you to select her for this award.

Documentation:PDF
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Practitioner of the Year (individual): Isabelle Mouli-Castillo, Executive Director, Dell

Read an interview with Isabelle Mouli-Castillo.

Isabelle Mouli-Castillo is an Executive Director at Dell, responsible for Global Online Analytics, Testing and Targeting program with the vision to become the Best in Class innovation engine for dell.com. Her passion is to use insightful analytics and testing to enable fact based decision making throughout Dell’s marketing organization. In the last two years, under Ms. Isabelle’s leadership, the team has been instrumental to the success of dell.com transformation efforts in both revenue generation and customer experience improvement. Among many tangible and intangible achievements, below are the three key accomplishments to date: 1)Drove hundreds of millions financial upside to Dell’s Consumer and Small Business Segments 2)Used analytics and testing to provide direction for strategic programs including future state site redesign 3)Ramped up personalization program to provide customers with a more relevant and customized experience What really set Ms. Isabelle apart is her focus on people strategy. She has hired and kept many industry best talents and tripled the size of the team over two years. She also heavily invested in the training and development of the team: sending them to attend and present in the industry conference and become DAA certified analysts etc. Ms. Isabelle’s contribution goes beyond Dell. Due to her advocacy, Dell became a DAA corporate member, organized a wildly successful Symposium in Austin and now in process to organize the second Symposium in Feb. Many of her team members are actively involved in DAA communities or local chapter. Ms. Isabelle’s achievement is very well recognized both inside and outside Dell. A senior executive recently praised her team really "changing the DNA of Dell” through analytics and testing. Her team won three whichtestwon annual awards in 2011, more than any other corporations or organization. Her achievements, passion and contribution to Dell as well as to the analytics industry at large, really qualify her for the Practitioner of the year award. We need more senior executives like her who believe the value of digital analytics and optimization and have the leadership to make it as the "religion" of the online business.

The optimization team On Line Analytics and Testing is now the innovation engine of the company and at the center of any change / innovation to improve Dell's website performance and Customer experience; In the Past 2 years the team has grown from 20 to 80 talented people , hiring some of the best talents of the industry. Team members have benefit of personalized coaching and development training to help them grow on their role and the team has had recod attrition rate fro a webanalytics team . At the same time , the focus in People, Processes and Tools has enable the team to deliver succesfull changes ideas in all regions in the world including drastic page redesign in some instances enabled by a thorough testin process allowing seamless execution and focusing on quality to increase right first time test launches. The targeting startegy developped in 2011 has contributed massively to the overall success of the OATteam. This team is marching closerand closer to become the Best In Class Optimization team in the world

Most Influential Industry Contributor (individual): Gary Angel, President, Semphonic

Read an interview with Gary Angel.

Gary Angel is seen among his peers as the "Practitioner Par Excellence" - his blog is a must-read, consistently chock-full of deep insights (very little if any "vendor fluff" baked-in) - and he is widely cited, espcially behind the scenes in the "client-side world" (we clients all quietly chatter about you consultants + vendors, folks ;-)) - as the go-to guy when you are encountering a unique analytics challenge. Gary's recurring series of blog posts on social analytics (replete with tool advice), multi-channel analysis, and other related topics have proved to, time and again, provide deep learnings on how to approach some of the thorniest areas of digital analysis. Gary is very generous with his time when you encounter him at analytics events, and has no issue with some informal meetings or email dialogue for those of us who are continually seeking to push the envelope in terms of what is possible (or not) in this continually growing field of work called digital analytics. All of this openness - combined with Gary's ongoing leadership of Semphonic, and its unique XChange conference (whereby you can have really deep conversations about analytics with the analytics elite) - make Gary my hands down nominee for Most Influential Industry Contributor.

Documentation:
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New Technology of the Year (group): Tableau Software

Tableau is not a new technology, but their updates are always so exciting it's almost like having a brand new tool every time. I've only had the 7.0 release in my hands for about a week, but it's like getting a shiny new car. I simply would not want to work without Tableau - it's like the light in the darkness. Easy to use, too.

Most Influential Agency, Vendor or Group (group): Web Analytics Demystified

Read an interview with Eric T. Peterson of Web Analytics Demystified.

2011 was quite the year for Web Analytics Demystified. At the dawn of 2011, there were the dual announcements of Adam Greco (perhaps the "Dean of Omniture implementors") and the omniscient alliance with the mercurial Keystone Solutions (which in early 2012 now seems to have every Omniture technical expert except for Adam on its staff). As 2011 progressed, the Web Analytics Demystified team continued to expand their work with the analytics community - Analysis Exchange, Web Analytics Wednesday, and #ACCELERATE as events - and Adam's continuing work with the Beyond Web Analytics podcast. Add to that John Lovett publishing an innovative book on social media analytics and his ongoing efforts with defining social analytics and DAA ethics, and Eric somehow managing to get all of this off the ground while keeping a hand in Twitalyzer, and that makes for a very impressive body of work, as a collective agency, in 2011. It'll be interesting to see how this trio continues to bring value to the analytics industry as 2012 progresses - if the Analysis Exchange Scholarships are any indicator, WAD is still THE agency to watch in the web analytics space.