#293: Tool Selection and the Unhelpfulness of Feature Comparisons

[Announcer]: Welcome to the Analytics Power Hour. [Announcer]: Analytics topics covered conversationally and sometimes with explicit language. [Michael Helbling]: Hi everybody, welcome. [Michael Helbling]: It's the Analytics Power Hour.

[Michael Helbling]: This is episode 293. [Michael Helbling]: Okay, listen, we draw a hard line of this show. [Michael Helbling]: We don't talk about tools, but we never said anything about tool selection. [Michael Helbling]: And let's be honest, we have all been there trying to figure out which vendor to go with after putting in tons of effort into our carefully crafted spreadsheet with all the selection criteria, which somehow every vendor says, yes, they can absolutely do all the stuff on there.

[Michael Helbling]: It's enough to make a person cynical. [Michael Helbling]: And we analysts don't need help with that. [Michael Helbling]: So take a pause from reading the cold sales emails from the latest analytics AI SAS vendor. [Michael Helbling]: And let's talk about the ins and outs of selecting a tool.

[Michael Helbling]: But first, let me introduce my co-hosts, Tim Wilson. [Michael Helbling]: Or as I like to call you, Tim, tool selection, Wilson. [Michael Helbling]: No. [Michael Helbling]: How are you doing, Tim?

[Tim Wilson]: I'm just about ready to select a new podcast recording platform. [Tim Wilson]: Oh, perfect. [Michael Helbling]: That's going to probably trigger a bunch of inbound emails. [Michael Helbling]: All right.

[Michael Helbling]: Moee Kiss, how are you going? [Michael Helbling]: I know you do a lot of vendor evaluation and selection in your role. [Moe Kiss]: I certainly do. [Moe Kiss]: I'm very pumped to talk about this.

[Moe Kiss]: I think the only thing you missed is the like, oh, don't worry. [Moe Kiss]: If we can't do it yet, it's on our roadmap. [Moe Kiss]: Oh, yeah. [Tim Wilson]: That happened yesterday to a client.

[Tim Wilson]: They turned to the vendor and they're like, yeah, we can't do that. [Tim Wilson]: And the response from the client, which was a very large company was like, well, is it on your roadmap? [Tim Wilson]: It's on our QN plus one roadmap. [Moe Kiss]: Yeah.

[Michael Helbling]: All right, and I'm Michael Helbling, and we wanted to bring on a guest, and we found a great one. [Michael Helbling]: Jason Packer is the founder of Quantable Analytics. [Michael Helbling]: It's an analytics consultancy focused on analytics engineering and implementation. [Michael Helbling]: He's also the author of the book, Google Analytics Alternatives, now in its second edition.

[Michael Helbling]: And the genius behind the Measure Music channel on the Measure Chat Slack group. [Michael Helbling]: And now he is our guest. [Michael Helbling]: Welcome to the show, Jason. [Jason Packer]: Thanks, Michael.

[Jason Packer]: I'm really happy to be here. [Jason Packer]: It's a bucket list item to finally make it on the podcast. [Michael Helbling]: Well, it's awesome to have you. [Michael Helbling]: All right, so maybe to kick things off, Jason, maybe just walk us through sort of what brought up the idea and was behind the idea of writing the book in the first place.

[Jason Packer]: Yeah, so I've always been really interested in evaluating software and knowing what's out there, even back to my early days as a Unix administrator and software developer. [Jason Packer]: I liked looking at all the different tools and back in the era when the Google Universal Analytics Universal Sunset was coming up. [Jason Packer]: There was a lot of people that were asking these questions. [Jason Packer]: There were a lot of people asking me these questions.

[Jason Packer]: And so I thought, well, I may as well start doing this research. [Jason Packer]: Seems like a fun thing to do. [Jason Packer]: And I started out thinking, well, maybe I'll write a series of blog posts. [Jason Packer]: And then someone at Columbus at the time, Web Analytics Wednesday, said, well, why don't you just write a book, Jason?

[Jason Packer]: And that seemed like a good idea to me. [Jason Packer]: And so I did it. [Jason Packer]: And now a few years later, there's some, you know, things have changed. [Jason Packer]: There's some new tools I wanted to look at.

[Jason Packer]: And I thought I would just, you know, make the same mistake again. [Jason Packer]: So that's here. [Jason Packer]: Here we are. [Tim Wilson]: Wait, who was it?

[Tim Wilson]: Who was it? [Tim Wilson]: It didn't last Wednesday. [Tim Wilson]: Who said that? [Jason Packer]: It was Ahmad.

[Jason Packer]: Ahmad. [Jason Packer]: Oh, OK. [Jason Packer]: Nice. [Jason Packer]: Which I think I credit him for in the first book, at least for the for the idea.

[Tim Wilson]: Look, I read it. [Tim Wilson]: I didn't memorize the acknowledgments. [Tim Wilson]: Jeez. [Tim Wilson]: Come on, Tim.

[Moe Kiss]: But it sounds Jason like a big part of your process and like understanding the capabilities of the tool is like really playing with it, right? [Moe Kiss]: And I think one of the things that I'm often thinking about is like, I see folks trying to evaluate tools without getting their hands dirty. [Moe Kiss]: And so like, [Moe Kiss]: Do you think that's what everyone should be doing, or is that just the thing that's always worked for you? [Jason Packer]: Well, I think everybody loves to have an opinion about a tool, and it's very easy to form an opinion.

[Jason Packer]: You get in there, you see how it looks and how it feels, and that's fine. [Jason Packer]: I have opinions about that too, but you really have to balance that against really learning what the tool is about. [Jason Packer]: And for me, the way to do that is to use it and to use it with real data, not to use it, not to watch videos about it, not to be walked through a demo by somebody, but to install it on a website, even if it's just a trivial website. [Jason Packer]: install it and use it.

[Jason Packer]: And that's how I learn best. [Jason Packer]: That's how I learn most quickly. [Jason Packer]: And do you think that using it with real data? [Moe Kiss]: The bit that I'm taking away from that is it helps you understand it.

[Moe Kiss]: But how do you think it changes the evaluation process itself? [Jason Packer]: I think using real data will show you a lot more about where the issues are. [Jason Packer]: For example, if you're working with a vendor and they walk you through it, they're going to show you the highlights. [Jason Packer]: They're going to show you the things that work well.

[Jason Packer]: They're going to show you a tool that's completely, perfectly set up. [Jason Packer]: and we all know. [Jason Packer]: That's not how it is. [Jason Packer]: In the book, everything that I evaluate, I used on real websites with real user data.

[Jason Packer]: For example, one of the issues with those real websites is one of them had a terrible bot problem. [Jason Packer]: It was a site that I bought on the secondary market. [Jason Packer]: I didn't make the website, I just bought it. [Jason Packer]: you know, it had some real traffic, but it was just like, you know, littered with bots.

[Jason Packer]: And so the traffic looked really weird. [Jason Packer]: And like, there was all kinds of strange hits to pages that weren't there. [Jason Packer]: But that led me to learn a lot about how, you know, these different tools worked in the cases where there's a bunch of 404s or there's huge amounts of bot traffic. [Jason Packer]: So like, that's the difference between no vendor, whatever, like, [Jason Packer]: show you a demo where 90% of the traffic was bots.

[Jason Packer]: That'd be crazy. [Jason Packer]: And in some ways, it can be challenging to do that because that might not be your use case. [Jason Packer]: So a lot of the things I talk about in the book is use case match. [Jason Packer]: That's the challenge as a tool evaluator is to match your constraints of your use case to the best match of a tool.

[Jason Packer]: Like I said, opinions, everybody's got them. [Jason Packer]: And there are in some ways in which some tools are more technically advanced than others, or some tools are faster than others or whatever. [Jason Packer]: But it's really about matching use case to tool through the lens of those constraints. [Tim Wilson]: Back to the using the actual data, so the book was kind of digital analytics, product analytics stuff.

[Tim Wilson]: I would put BI platforms in there, put data warehouse platforms. [Tim Wilson]: All of those when it's like, you want to try it with your data. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, a really high bar or a real challenge seems to be, we want to do a bake-off or we want to do a proof of concept. [Tim Wilson]: We want to try it out.

[Tim Wilson]: I've gone through processes where it's like, we're going to do the RFPs, we're going to select some finalists, we're then going to do a bake-off. [Tim Wilson]: And that does mean you're fundamentally doing some sort of mini implementation and trying to draw the line of, you know, and that can include getting through some compliance hurdles to say, yeah, we're using our real data, or do you say, well, we're going to dummy up or we're going to do an effort to make it's kind of like our data, but it's been anonymized to the point that it's not our data, but it's still [Tim Wilson]: mimics our data enough that we could actually try it in this platform.

[Tim Wilson]: It does seem like companies [Tim Wilson]: To me, that's what motivates a lot of the not wanting to go through that process. [Jason Packer]: Ideally, it would be great to use your actual data and to do, like you say, a real mini implementation, but that's just not feasible in a lot of cases. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, Moe, have you done that? [Moe Kiss]: Yeah.

[Moe Kiss]: I'm not going to bait around the bush. [Moe Kiss]: I do a lot of... [Moe Kiss]: like analysis of different vendors and different tools and that sort of stuff. [Moe Kiss]: I would say I definitely lean towards the, we should do multiple POCs.

[Moe Kiss]: Like the last major tool selection we did, I think I wanted to do maybe four POCs. [Moe Kiss]: And obviously like that's a negotiation with the business and capacity and things like that. [Moe Kiss]: We ended up agreeing on two. [Moe Kiss]: But I think the thing that I found really hard is like, [Moe Kiss]: often the folks doing the evaluation and the assessment and those sort of things.

[Moe Kiss]: I don't know if the incentives are always there to do multiple POCs. [Moe Kiss]: I find that hard to reconcile with because it is. [Moe Kiss]: It's really hard to understand how good [Moe Kiss]: a feature is or a particular capability that you're looking for without stress testing it. [Moe Kiss]: And yeah, I don't know if I just air too far on the POC side maybe.

[Moe Kiss]: I think folks internally would probably say I do. [Jason Packer]: I think that's really challenging, right? [Jason Packer]: Because a POC is great, but even before you want to get to that POC, you want to feel like you've narrowed it down to something that's worth the effort there. [Jason Packer]: And for me, part of that can be not even doing a real POC, but doing a toy test.

[Jason Packer]: Oh, let me do it with my podcast website. [Jason Packer]: Let me do it with my... [Jason Packer]: a personal website or whatever. [Jason Packer]: That's part of the reason also why I'm a big proponent of free tier, even on enterprise tools.

[Jason Packer]: That can be a challenge, right? [Jason Packer]: Not everybody can offer that. [Jason Packer]: Sometimes, if you're talking about a huge BI platform or something, [Jason Packer]: what would a free tier even mean if it's even doing a simple example, implementation means putting in 100 hours of work or something. [Jason Packer]: But the ability to get a little bit into the product before you really start talking about committing company resources to it, I think, because I do love the POC approach and the more, the better.

[Jason Packer]: But it can be hard to get those resources for sure. [Moe Kiss]: Also, just getting it through security is a really big step. [Moe Kiss]: You're basically doing a procurement process for something that you're running a PRC on. [Moe Kiss]: It takes a lot of time and energy, but I obviously am very biased here because I lean strongly on the side that that's worth it.

[Moe Kiss]: Yeah, that's my lived experience, but yeah. [Tim Wilson]: Well, Bill, have you run into, because I can see the doubt. [Tim Wilson]: Say it's only two, you get down to two tools and you get in and you've got multiple people who are all trying it and they all have different things they most care about. [Tim Wilson]: And then you get to the end of that, and you're like, all we've done is allowed people to dig their heels in further on their preferred tools, because now they have hard evidence that that other tool doesn't do this thing that I think is really important, and it does this thing.

[Tim Wilson]: Like, do you wind up saying, well, this is supposed, we're hoping that we arrive at a clear winner, but even if you do a POC of four tools, [Tim Wilson]: They're still not the one clear winner and you're still in kind of a negotiating phase. [Tim Wilson]: And you're also setting up the people who didn't back the ultimate winner to be able to say, see, we did the POC and I told you we shouldn't have that one. [Tim Wilson]: Sorry, that's just depressing me. [Tim Wilson]: No, no, no.

[Moe Kiss]: I can still remember like a few years ago, we were doing a BI tool selection. [Moe Kiss]: It must have been like five years ago and all the data analysts got in a room and we like this, this was the absolute worst way to do it. [Moe Kiss]: I would never ever do this. [Moe Kiss]: But we were like, how important is this thing to you when everyone would go to one side of the room or the other side of the room?

[Moe Kiss]: And almost every time I was on the side of the room on my own. [Moe Kiss]: And I think, so it's suffice to say we did not pick the tool that I wanted to get, but it is what it is. [Moe Kiss]: I think the thing that I find so difficult about data tools in particularly, and I know we had Colin on previously, [Moe Kiss]: from Omni talking about how especially BI tools, you're trying to be many things to many different people. [Moe Kiss]: And I think what's so challenging about data tools is data folks have very strong opinions about the things that they do and don't want to work with.

[Moe Kiss]: But also their opinions are normally representing what is best for them and not always what is best for the business. [Moe Kiss]: And that's human nature, right? [Moe Kiss]: You think about what's going to make your own job easier. [Moe Kiss]: And so I think I [Moe Kiss]: I often come with this perspective of a data tool is actually for our stakeholders.

[Moe Kiss]: So even if it's a little bit trickier or a little bit harder for us in our day-to-day, is it going to help our stakeholders in their relationship with data be better? [Moe Kiss]: Because I will up wait that. [Moe Kiss]: But I don't think that's the common. [Moe Kiss]: I'm not sure that's necessarily a common view.

[Tim Wilson]: Michael, what's your relationship status with SQL? [Michael Helbling]: Oh, I think you know it's complicated. [Michael Helbling]: It keeps gaslighting me with a syntax error near from, like, I don't know where from lives. [Tim Wilson]: Well, here's a healthier relationship.

[Tim Wilson]: Prism by Ask Why. [Tim Wilson]: You ask in plain English? [Tim Wilson]: Prism writes the sequel. [Michael Helbling]: Ooh, like Revenue by Channel week over week, excluding refunds.

[Michael Helbling]: And instead of me crafting a 47-line query and a three-line apology, Prism just does it? [Tim Wilson]: That's right. [Tim Wilson]: The best part? [Tim Wilson]: It doesn't forget everything the moment you close the tab.

[Tim Wilson]: Prism's jam of memory remembers your reality, your definitions, your quirks. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, not your personality ones, but, you know, your coding quirks. [Michael Helbling]: Well, but like the BigQuery table is the source of truth and conversion means this and not whatever gets decided by somebody like mid-meeting somewhere. [Tim Wilson]: Exactly.

[Tim Wilson]: So you don't have to re-explain your business context like it's a bedtime story for robots. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, I have to admit I'm a little tired of starting every session with previously on analytics. [Tim Wilson]: And when Prism generates SQL, you get traceability. [Tim Wilson]: You can track changes, see what was created, and follow the logic.

[Michael Helbling]: I like that, because when somebody asks me where this number come from, I can stop saying, well, from the number tree. [Tim Wilson]: It's like version control for your analytics brain. [Michael Helbling]: I like it. [Michael Helbling]: A little bit of accountability, but it's convenient.

[Tim Wilson]: That's right, so do you want in? [Tim Wilson]: Go to asky.ai and join the waitlist. [Tim Wilson]: That's ask-the-letter-y.

ai and use code APH to go to the top of that waitlist. [Michael Helbling]: I like the idea of letting AI write some of the SQL. [Tim Wilson]: And let your memory do literally anything else. [Jason Packer]: No, I think it's not.

[Jason Packer]: And I think, you know, everybody also wants to work with the cool that's good for them. [Jason Packer]: Like personally, well, like, right, like this idea of sort of like you're implying that like, hey, I want to work with the new tool. [Jason Packer]: I want to work with the cool tool. [Jason Packer]: I want to work with a tool that's good for my career.

[Jason Packer]: I want to work with a tool that my LinkedIn posts are going to be, you know, go with. [Jason Packer]: And, you know, that, that. [Jason Packer]: A lot of times that's not the right fit. [Jason Packer]: It's really about the whole organization, not just the analysts, but a lot of times the analysts isn't even really the one.

[Michael Helbling]: Flip it around and people want to work with a tool they're familiar with. [Michael Helbling]: I used this in my last job, so I want to use it here. [Tim Wilson]: Which was good when GA4 came out and Universal Analytics got sunset, then it was like, well, nobody's familiar with it. [Tim Wilson]: So reset, yeah.

[Jason Packer]: Yeah, that's what I was going to say, too, is that a lot of times a tool switch is not the right answer. [Jason Packer]: We all like to think, hey, there's a tool out there. [Jason Packer]: The perfect tool out there that's going to fix my problems is going to make my personal life better, my company do better, et cetera, et cetera. [Jason Packer]: But there's no perfect tool.

[Jason Packer]: There's no [Jason Packer]: Grasses looks greener, but a lot of times the tool you have now just isn't implemented correctly. [Jason Packer]: The new one you get isn't going to be implemented correctly either. [Jason Packer]: That can be a real challenge too, especially if you're like, hey, I want to do these [Jason Packer]: Hey, we're going to do two POCs and put in all these resources. [Jason Packer]: In the end, we're going to say, oh, well, actually, I think the answer is that we stick with what we got and we just spend a little more time trying to improve our reputation.

[Jason Packer]: Nobody wants that answer. [Moe Kiss]: In your experience, talk me through when [Moe Kiss]: There are trade-offs, right? [Moe Kiss]: We've all said no tool is going to meet the brief perfectly. [Moe Kiss]: How have you approached balancing those trade-offs?

[Moe Kiss]: What's your thinking? [Moe Kiss]: And how do you, when you're working with businesses, convince them of the trade-offs they should make versus shouldn't? [Jason Packer]: Yeah, it's really difficult because how I evaluate the tools from the book is a totally different mindset than how I think when I'm talking to an organization. [Jason Packer]: A lot of times, I won't even really be talking about the same things.

[Jason Packer]: In the book, I talk about [Jason Packer]: the underlying tracking structure of different tools, the databases that different tools use, how they work with consent, things like that. [Jason Packer]: And when I'm talking to a particular business, I listen for what their real pain points are. [Jason Packer]: Is this an organization that they just need to get off of GA because of compliance issues? [Jason Packer]: And that's like, [Jason Packer]: Then I focused their selection on solving those pain points as directly as possible, but also trying to not get into the weeds with them about the details of the tools that the people listening to this might find interesting because they're not going to find that interesting.

[Tim Wilson]: I think you just kind of mixed it because part of what you did and maybe it's worth having you [Tim Wilson]: What I loved about both editions, because the structure stayed the same, is that the tool by tool, blow by blow, and it's not a feature by feature, but the tool by tool kind of write ups are the second half of the book. [Tim Wilson]: The first half of the book is you got to have kind of [Tim Wilson]: a framework of what matters to you. [Tim Wilson]: You admitted throughout, you're like, there is no perfect categorization, but you just talked about one of those was the tracking methods.

[Tim Wilson]: I could see for the right company, they would say, we've been getting burned by our current tracking method and we have got to find something. [Tim Wilson]: You're like, cool, well, let's then think about the philosophical difference from the different tools. [Tim Wilson]: If somebody else says, we just need something super cheap, it's like, okay, well, then let's talk about the nature of your digital [Tim Wilson]: experience in the different pricing models. [Tim Wilson]: If somebody says, we just got to get off a GA because it's compliance.

[Tim Wilson]: We actually love everything about it. [Tim Wilson]: Our compliance team has said we have to get off of it. [Tim Wilson]: I would say in the example you just gave, it was how you approach the book. [Tim Wilson]: It's just where you're going deeper in that understanding what attributes truly matter [Tim Wilson]: and then going deeper, right?

[Jason Packer]: Yeah, I think actually that's fair. [Jason Packer]: One of the things I've talked about is how things like that's all about constraints and how price is a constraint. [Jason Packer]: Price is a real important thing for organizations. [Jason Packer]: It's not the coolest thing to talk about when it comes to tooling.

[Jason Packer]: Similarly, it's just a question of how you're engaging with the decision makers, I guess. [Jason Packer]: are in that first half of the book are just a long list of the things that I think about. [Jason Packer]: I might think about a bunch of those when talking to a particular organization about a tool. [Jason Packer]: I might not be talking to them about all those things, but I'm certainly thinking about a lot of them.

[Jason Packer]: I think it's important to understand [Jason Packer]: them to a certain degree. [Jason Packer]: For example, in the new edition, there's a chapter on server side. [Jason Packer]: Obviously, I'm not going to teach someone everything about server side analytics in a chapter, a 3,000-word chapter of my book that's not primarily about that. [Jason Packer]: understanding at least enough about that to know if you're talking to a vendor when they say, oh, yeah, we support server side.

[Jason Packer]: It's easy. [Jason Packer]: This is what you do to be able to understand, interpret what they're saying, to know like, oh, well, really kind of like anybody could do server side. [Jason Packer]: It's not really about [Jason Packer]: the tool, it's more about the deployment about, oh, are you using server-side GTM to deploy that? [Jason Packer]: And if you are, then this, and perhaps the real underlying problem is tracker blockers or something like that.

[Jason Packer]: And then your lens for viewing that is different. [Jason Packer]: So that's why I think that the [Jason Packer]: The first half of the book, the guide part of it, rather than the product evaluations, is the lens in which I look at all product evaluations, and I'm trying to share that viewpoint in the first half. [Jason Packer]: Tim liked it at least. [Tim Wilson]: Can I ask, and this is probably also a question for multiple people like you, and you said it in kind of some of the earlier discussion that you explicitly [Tim Wilson]: did not talk to the vendors, even though they were, especially after the first edition, they knew you were doing the second edition.

[Tim Wilson]: And they're like, come on, just let our sales engineer help you out. [Tim Wilson]: You know, once you just understand, and I think you did that to say, I want a level playing field and I need to finish this book at some point. [Tim Wilson]: And if doing 15 POCs is tough, letting their sales teams get their hooks into you would be absolutely impossible. [Tim Wilson]: Whereas, yeah, and so whereas Moe, I feel like if you're down to a couple, the [Tim Wilson]: where does sales play?

[Tim Wilson]: So I don't know, maybe you can talk through that. [Jason Packer]: I mean, yeah, that's sort of an unusual choice that I make in the book is to like, I mean, I definitely have talked and I know a lot of really great people at a lot of these vendors, like, especially after the first edition, you know, I've talked to a lot of these, these people and there's a lot of them told you what you got wrong. [Jason Packer]: Not as many as some, some, yeah. [Jason Packer]: But it's important to me that I was really, really fair more than I was particularly making any value judgments or anything like that.

[Jason Packer]: But the not engaging with them is about [Jason Packer]: loving the playing field to some degree. [Jason Packer]: It also fits in well with how I learn, like describing the learning from doing. [Jason Packer]: Again, getting a demo account or some kind of account where I can use the product is the fastest way for me to learn rather than being on sales and engineering calls. [Jason Packer]: But I think that was my case for writing the book.

[Jason Packer]: That's different than [Jason Packer]: most case with engaging with vendors from a large org that has specific needs. [Jason Packer]: I think that a lot like engaging with [Jason Packer]: vendor reps can be really, really helpful, but it also gives you an idea too of the culture fit between the product and your organization, which is a real thing. [Jason Packer]: Something that when I started the first edition of the book, I didn't expect to be so important, but is, I think, quite important.

[Michael Helbling]: Do you hear that, Tim? [Michael Helbling]: Culture is very important. [Michael Helbling]: I just wanted to reiterate that point really quickly. [Michael Helbling]: Sorry, you're going to mo.

[Moe Kiss]: Just to add to that, I have personally found that engaging with sales, engineering support, whatever, is like [Moe Kiss]: a really big part of the process because I want to make sure that we can learn from their expertise that we're not facing challenges that are very easily fixed. [Moe Kiss]: And I think part of then, even in the playing field, is making sure that you get that with all the companies that you're PGO seeing. [Moe Kiss]: It's not a favorites game. [Moe Kiss]: And you're so right, Jason.

[Moe Kiss]: Such a big part of it is about the culture or the ways of working that you then get to explore with that other company. [Moe Kiss]: And very transparently, I've talked about our relationship with Snowflake quite a bit and a big, big part of our success. [Moe Kiss]: I will rail on about implementation for years to come. [Moe Kiss]: But a big part of it is we've had really close relationships with their product teams, with their product managers, their tech leads, [Moe Kiss]: we will have calls like testing out new features and new functionality and being able to influence a roadmap.

[Moe Kiss]: That is a huge, hugely important thing for us when we're doing vendor selection because we want to make sure that in a year's time, we have the kind of relationship where we can push their product if we need to. [Moe Kiss]: And so I think that letting those folks in the room so that we can stress test each other is a big part of the evaluation for me. [Jason Packer]: Yeah, I agree with that. [Jason Packer]: Again, it depends on your organization and why you're buying the thing to start with.

[Jason Packer]: If you're a tiny startup and you're not really going to [Jason Packer]: if you're the thing that I hate is like you're you're a tiny startup and you're you're talking to an enterprise software provider and you know you get to the point where okay we're ready to actually like talk some real prices and like okay well you know start for for your volume data we're starting out with $65,000 a month and you're like that's my what are you talking about that's like my entire yearly budget for all of my analytics so you know it [Jason Packer]: I love transparency.

[Jason Packer]: I make that pretty clear book. [Jason Packer]: And I think that like, you know, that's just a great thing to get people on the same page as quickly as possible, because that's super important. [Jason Packer]: And I think that like, [Jason Packer]: When you are engaging with the vendors, being transparent with them helps everybody. [Jason Packer]: Nobody wants to seem like a dummy when they're talking to a vendor, but if it's a new tool, I don't know the tool.

[Jason Packer]: They know the tool. [Jason Packer]: They know they're immediate competitors far better than I will. [Jason Packer]: I try to be very direct about, hey, the budget is this and here's my seemingly very stupid question. [Jason Packer]: When you gave me answer, I didn't understand, I'm going to just ask that stupid question again because it's important to everybody that we find the best fit in the most direct way possible.

[Moe Kiss]: And I do think, obviously, I come from a place of absolute tech privilege. [Moe Kiss]: I think a lot about what are the hills. [Moe Kiss]: We say that all the time. [Moe Kiss]: We're like, well.

[Moe Kiss]: Well, anyway, I just want to be conscious of other folks have very different budget constraints when it comes to tool selection and things like that. [Moe Kiss]: But there are things I will die on a hill for. [Moe Kiss]: And one of them is, I do think, obviously, budget is incredibly important. [Moe Kiss]: But if there is a very good tool and it is not 10x, [Moe Kiss]: like other options, but it is a good fit.

[Moe Kiss]: I personally think that is a fight worth having with the business, like getting support for that extra budget to make the right tool decision versus being so constrained by it that you make a really, really shitty choice. [Moe Kiss]: And again, everyone's not in that position, but that situation you just described, Jason. [Moe Kiss]: Knowing the prices much earlier in the process is absolutely something that folks should be doing. [Moe Kiss]: You can't wait till you've done a POC to start getting an idea of their pricing because if it is way out of the realm of possibility, you don't want to waste your time and energy on it.

[Jason Packer]: I guess I haven't thrown Google under the bus yet. [Jason Packer]: There we go. [Jason Packer]: Here we go. [Jason Packer]: Yeah.

[Jason Packer]: One of the things that I think Google really made hard for is that they made a, with Universal, they made a pretty darn good product, and they made it free to just an incredible degree. [Jason Packer]: It was technically free to 10 million hits a month, and in reality, it was quite a bit higher than that. [Jason Packer]: And with GA4, of course, there's no hard event limit. [Jason Packer]: the one million per day export limit to BigQuery is probably the thing that people hit first.

[Jason Packer]: But they're giving away so much for free. [Jason Packer]: And that's really caused people in the industry to think that analytics should be basically free, that the software should be free. [Jason Packer]: And it's very distorting. [Jason Packer]: things really hard for new tools to come out there and to get a foothold in the market.

[Jason Packer]: It makes what Moee you're saying as far as, hey, we need to understand that even if this tool is a little bit more money, think of the cost in people, the cost in data decisions in the organization. [Jason Packer]: you're really undervaluing analytics, and part of undervaluing analytics started with VA being free. [Jason Packer]: And that's still happening. [Moe Kiss]: Oh, Jason, I feel like we could sit around and like...

[Moe Kiss]: chat for hours because I think fundamentally one of the biggest mistakes I see is, yes, folks want to work on cool shit to put on their resume or LinkedIn or whatever, but it's also the open source fallacy or the free fallacy, which is like, oh, this is open source or it's free, it's not going to cost us anything. [Moe Kiss]: I will push pretty heavily on like, that does not mean it's free. [Moe Kiss]: We need to actually think like, we're talking about a solution here that has five full-time engineers supporting it.

[Moe Kiss]: That is not free to me. [Moe Kiss]: That is actually a huge cost to the business. [Moe Kiss]: And if we want to do that because we think that's the right decision, that's okay. [Moe Kiss]: But that needs to be a line item in our decision as well, not just the like on paper cost of the tool.

[Tim Wilson]: That also then extended if we're going to have to support and we have those five engineers and one of those engineers leaves, what's the size of the pool of candidates that we're going to have to replace it, which is one of those where [Tim Wilson]: Market leaders and whatever tend to have a leg up, and it's a legitimate leg up. [Tim Wilson]: They've achieved some critical mass. [Tim Wilson]: Nobody got fired for buying Tableau or Power BI. [Tim Wilson]: Part of that is because everybody's been exposed and is familiar, but it's also legitimate saying, well, if I need a Power BI developer, [Tim Wilson]: That's a much larger pool to draw from, right?

[Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: When Moee excitingly get ready for a new wave of that with AI, because now people are going to be like, it's free. [Michael Helbling]: We can just build it with AI. [Michael Helbling]: It's a question to Jason, sort of from your perspective, because obviously, we've all kind of been through vendor selection processes and we kind of touched on how Google Analytics is free.

[Michael Helbling]: So obviously, as people are sort of jumping on the AI bandwagon and seeing how easy it is to prototype things, not necessarily build full-on products yet, but we're moving in that direction, I would say. [Michael Helbling]: Do you think that's going to be something that will enter the process of the build versus buy debate certainly changes a lot in the future? [Jason Packer]: Yeah, I think so. [Jason Packer]: I think that's already happening.

[Jason Packer]: I think that it's happened not exactly with AI, but the simplified realm of these tools like the [Jason Packer]: In the book, I call them simplified web analytics tools, including things like plausible and fathom. [Jason Packer]: Um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, um [Jason Packer]: And there are so many of those tools out there now.

[Jason Packer]: Every few months, a new one comes out. [Jason Packer]: Some of them are quite good. [Jason Packer]: It's not a hard thing to prototype, and it's even easier with AI. [Jason Packer]: I could go in and [Jason Packer]: especially if you start with the ones that are open source, you can be like, hey, build me an Umami clone.

[Jason Packer]: Here's the Umami GitHub repo about it. [Jason Packer]: And you could build yourself something like that pretty quickly. [Jason Packer]: And some people are doing that. [Jason Packer]: I think you run into some of the problems that Tim was talking about as far as having expertise with the tool.

[Jason Packer]: If it's some [Jason Packer]: internal tool, then the internal people are going to be the only ones that have the experience with it. [Jason Packer]: And also, when it comes to some of the more complicated underlying database things, that's I think far beyond the complexity of what AI can do a good job with. [Jason Packer]: And so, you know, like, and also things like schema AI doesn't do great job with, I mean, it can do okay, but it needs a lot of like, you know, human hand holding.

[Jason Packer]: So I think that like, ultimately, it's like, [Jason Packer]: a mistake for most organizations to try to think that they can build their own when there are so many really great platforms already out there. [Jason Packer]: I think it's maybe fine to think like, oh, we're going to extend. [Jason Packer]: We're using whatever. [Jason Packer]: We're using Postog.

[Jason Packer]: And Postog is an open source tool. [Jason Packer]: It's one of the widest tools in the market. [Jason Packer]: They have 34 different apps built into the tool. [Jason Packer]: of whether you want session recording or feature flags or whatever, or LLM analytics, they've got it probably.

[Jason Packer]: And if there was something in there that you need to add to that, then using AI on top of that, I think to extend it, it makes sense. [Jason Packer]: But trying to build a foundation to your analytics platform, your analytics practice, [Jason Packer]: without really having that real strong attention to detail that these platforms that have been out there and tested have. [Jason Packer]: It doesn't make sense whether it's, you know, humans building it. [Jason Packer]: or it's even worse if AI is building it.

[Jason Packer]: But I think it makes a lot more sense to build on some of the great tools that are already out there. [Michael Helbling]: That gave me a cool weekend idea though. [Michael Helbling]: The mommy club coming out. [Jason Packer]: Yeah.

[Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Just because you can. [Michael Helbling]: I don't know. [Tim Wilson]: But as you brought up post-hoc, because that's one that I'm not familiar with, but you mentioned them because they kind of, well, actually, I think I sat and watched you talking to a different [Tim Wilson]: vendor and you brought them up a lot as being kind of like, who was the tool built by and for?

[Tim Wilson]: Posthog is like, of by and for the developer. [Tim Wilson]: Google Analytics, Universal Analytics was kind of intended to be for [Tim Wilson]: the more casual initially, and they tried to stick with it. [Tim Wilson]: They're like, this is easy. [Tim Wilson]: This is for the marketer.

[Tim Wilson]: BI platforms seem like they're [Tim Wilson]: similar. [Tim Wilson]: If you're in the Power BI, you're in the Microsoft stack, you're like, this is built for the enterprise that wants to have the complete ecosystem and progression of tools. [Tim Wilson]: What do you think you've said here? [Tim Wilson]: You definitely said it in the book.

[Tim Wilson]: What is the philosophy? [Tim Wilson]: What is at the [Tim Wilson]: What's in the DNA of the company that's building it? [Tim Wilson]: Who do they feel is the user that has primacy? [Tim Wilson]: Is that a fair...

Absolutely. [Jason Packer]: You and I have talked about that. [Jason Packer]: Product philosophy and outlook is more important than any sort of feature comparison. [Jason Packer]: Probably some people have heard me complain about this before, but future comparisons are helpful in some ways, but they also are already outdated.

[Jason Packer]: By the time you posted your future comparison list, it's already out of date. [Jason Packer]: The one checklist item that it says it does X, [Jason Packer]: There's so much to unpack underneath that, that their version of X might not be what you really think that you're getting when you get that feature. [Jason Packer]: And people want more features, like I just talked about postdoc, they've got every feature under the sun, they've got, you know, [Jason Packer]: They've got session capture, but maybe you already have session capture.

[Jason Packer]: You're already running Microsoft Clarity or HotJar or something like that. [Jason Packer]: So while that looks like a great thing on a future comparison list, that's not something you need, or that's not something that's going to help you. [Jason Packer]: It's going to add confusion to the product. [Jason Packer]: The more features you add onto a product, the harder it can be to use.

[Jason Packer]: That's just the way these suites work. [Jason Packer]: But it can be really hard at the same time to understand, to peel back that layer of marketing a little bit and be like, well, what is really this product philosophy? [Jason Packer]: Who is this for? [Jason Packer]: you know, when you're in that job, when you're, you know, when you're an analyst and you get, I don't know, whether you get in front of like Adobe Analytics workspace, you're like, oh, okay, I get it.

[Jason Packer]: This is, for me, this was written by people that have been listening to people like me. [Jason Packer]: This makes sense to me and is useful to my use case. [Jason Packer]: That [Jason Packer]: It's clear and a lot of times once you get in and use the tool like I was saying before, but when you're just looking at the marketing, it can be like, well, both platforms say they have the ability to customize reports like done, like they're the same when they can be wildly different.

[Moe Kiss]: Talk to me about this philosophy piece because I find this really interesting, the philosophy of the platforms. [Moe Kiss]: I think maybe I was alluding to a similar idea before, but how do people figure that out? [Moe Kiss]: Is the philosophy who the user is or the direction they want to take it? [Jason Packer]: I think it's not easy because, in a lot of ways, I think the vendors themselves don't know a lot of times.

[Jason Packer]: It's a product of the history of the company. [Jason Packer]: It's a product of what the target market of that tool is, and it's a product of the people that built it and who they were listening to when they built it. [Jason Packer]: Let's take, we're talking about [Jason Packer]: possible on some of the simplified tools, they have a clear philosophy of this is a simple tool. [Jason Packer]: There's not going to be vast ability to customize reporting.

[Jason Packer]: Everything is going to be on one screen or pretty much everything is going to be on one screen. [Jason Packer]: We're not going to have a drown you in configuration options. [Jason Packer]: This is designed to be simple and part of that is in that as privacy as well, is that it's [Jason Packer]: you're giving up some amount of complexity to make it easier and to perhaps make it more private as well. [Jason Packer]: That's a philosophy.

[Jason Packer]: And I think that philosophy for them is, can be pretty clear, right? [Jason Packer]: When you look at their marketing, you look at the sample, you know, you try out a similar product. [Jason Packer]: It can be pretty easy to understand their philosophy when they communicate it well. [Jason Packer]: And it's not, you know, a sprawling platform with 27 different components or whatever.

[Jason Packer]: versus some of the more complicated tools like I talk about piano in my comprehensive category along with tools like Adobe. [Jason Packer]: If you're looking at either of those tools, they offer so many different features and functionality. [Jason Packer]: And there's a much more complicated onboarding process that it can be really hard to understand what that philosophy is until you [Jason Packer]: get much further along in the process. [Jason Packer]: I do think that talking to the vendor and engaging with them before you get too far along can help you understand that, but it also can confuse the process too.

[Jason Packer]: I don't know that I have a real [Jason Packer]: great answer. [Tim Wilson]: I like that because you said you have to sort of where the company like looking at the roots of the tool and I don't have a million examples, but I look at like in the BI space, you had Tableau, which was like one of the second generation of tools that clearly was like [Tim Wilson]: The shit should be drag and drop, and we should be able to customize it to conform to things that Steven Fugh would give a 10 out of 10 to.

[Tim Wilson]: They were coming at it saying, it's got to be a drag and drop, WYSIWYG interface that you can have [Tim Wilson]: highly customized to be very, very clean visuals. [Tim Wilson]: So there were a BI tool philosophically, I think it was forward on the quality of the visualization. [Tim Wilson]: Contrast that with DOMO comes along a number of years later. [Tim Wilson]: And I would say DOMO was saying, no, no, no, it's all about the ease of connecting to all of your data sources.

[Tim Wilson]: And they kind of led with the connectors. [Tim Wilson]: Now, they're competing with each other, so over time, their sales teams are saying, we're losing Domo, we're losing deals because our visualizations are shitty, and Tableau's getting pushback of saying, we're losing deals because we're not easy to connect to all these different things. [Tim Wilson]: not necessarily permanently handicapped, but it is one that I would say both of those tools. [Tim Wilson]: That's where their various strengths versus weaknesses are, which means if I'm looking at a BI platform and those two are in the consideration set, [Tim Wilson]: I may be thinking, do I have stuff going pretty tightly into most of my stuff is going to go into a data warehouse and occasionally it'll be pretty normalized and I want to hook into it and occasionally I might want to hook into something else or are we going to just live in a chaotic world where I'm always going to be needing to hook into a gazillion different data sources that are all going to be messy and I'm going to need to be able to do transformation within it.

[Tim Wilson]: I think it does take a lot of [Tim Wilson]: and maturity or wisdom or thought to try to map where is my company's kind of, which philosophical or historical underpinnings are most aligned with my needs and then stand up and say, and guess what? [Tim Wilson]: That means our visualizations will never be as good as what the perfect idea would have because that's a lower, [Jason Packer]: Yeah, that's where I think I talk a lot about understanding fundamentals, how that can be really helpful to close.

[Jason Packer]: Some of that you're talking about is the gap between the marketing that you see from the vendor and the reality. [Jason Packer]: Part of closing that gap and understanding really what a tool is all about can be understanding the fundamentals of how particular things work. [Jason Packer]: If we're talking about [Jason Packer]: you know, databases, right? [Jason Packer]: If we're talking about this product uses MySQL and this product uses Snowflake and this product uses Postgres and this product uses Clickhouse.

[Jason Packer]: Knowing just a little bit about the differences between those two tools is going to tell you a lot about the product, you know, like if we're talking about [Jason Packer]: We're talking about, say, we're comparing PivotPro and Matomo. [Jason Packer]: PivotPro uses Clickhouse as the database underlying their product, and Matomo uses MySQL. [Jason Packer]: On the surface, they're pretty similar products, but they end up working quite differently because of that difference in the underlying database.

[Jason Packer]: MySQL is a simpler database. [Jason Packer]: It's something that's easy to self-host. [Jason Packer]: It's something that's easy to see the raw data from. [Jason Packer]: It's something that's not super performant in a lot of more complicated analytical queries.

[Jason Packer]: And all those things surface in the products. [Jason Packer]: And if you know that background and you know that [Jason Packer]: It's not like you need to know how to use those tools, but just knowing a little bit. [Jason Packer]: The same is true for like tracking methods like cookies, tracking with cookies versus tracking with this IP plus user agent method or tracking with browser fingerprinting or whatever. [Jason Packer]: Just knowing a little allows you to sort of see like, oh, the vendor says X.

[Jason Packer]: Oh, I think what they mean is this. [Jason Packer]: There's not as much as the vendor might say, it's not like there's a million new things and a million new ways to do things. [Jason Packer]: There's a limited number of ways. [Michael Helbling]: Before I wrap up, I'm going to give Moe the opportunity to jump in one last time, but we do have to start to wrap up soon.

[Michael Helbling]: But yeah, go ahead, Moe. [Michael Helbling]: I know you want to ask one more. [Moe Kiss]: Jason, we've talked about a lot of different concepts and things you need to think about in this whole tooling decision space. [Moe Kiss]: If I'm sitting at my desk and I just take like your one like absolute, this is the thing that should be most top of mind from all the things we've chatted about today.

[Moe Kiss]: What would be like the one thing that you would say, just if you pay attention to this, then you'll probably make a slightly better decision. [Jason Packer]: Oh, that's a tough question. [Jason Packer]: I might actually say price. [Jason Packer]: So I'm disappointed.

[Jason Packer]: It is. [Jason Packer]: I'm disappointed. [Jason Packer]: I'd like to say something cool like the fundamental database schema or something like that. [Jason Packer]: It's a shortcut to a lot of putting you in the right area.

[Jason Packer]: I don't want to do, but that's where I would go. [Tim Wilson]: Price is one input to a total cost of ownership. [Tim Wilson]: I mean, that's, again, maybe another one. [Tim Wilson]: Have you ever come at it that way, Moee, with any of your...

That's a better, you know, total cost of ownership. [Jason Packer]: Let's just say that. [Jason Packer]: Say I said total cost of ownership of price. [Jason Packer]: That's what I meant.

[Moe Kiss]: There you go. [Moe Kiss]: That needs to be in version three of your book, because I like that framing. [Moe Kiss]: Total cost of ownership sounds way better than... I think I do use total cost of ownership.

[Tim Wilson]: I don't know if... Maybe it's 10... I mean, I think it makes sense if you're going through it differently. [Tim Wilson]: Philosophically, how much am I going to have to invest in added tooling to work around a limitation in their tracking or something?

[Tim Wilson]: It could be, but yeah. [Michael Helbling]: All right. [Michael Helbling]: Well, we do have to start to wrap up. [Michael Helbling]: This is awesome conversation and honestly so [Michael Helbling]: It's a good conversation, because I think everybody deals with this in some capacity in their analyst career.

[Michael Helbling]: So Jason, thank you so much for coming on the show and being our guest today. [Michael Helbling]: One thing we like to do is go around the horn, share last call. [Michael Helbling]: It could be any topic, anything at all, just something that might be of interest to our listeners. [Michael Helbling]: Jason, you're our guest.

[Michael Helbling]: Do you have a last call you'd like to share? [Jason Packer]: So my last call is something that you already mentioned, Michael, which is Music League. [Jason Packer]: Nice. [Jason Packer]: Michael and I, and I'm how I believe your sister is a part of this as well.

[Jason Packer]: Music League is a, like, [Jason Packer]: It's a competition sort of, it's a friendly competition where every week somebody, like there's a theme, like this week's theme in the music league that I'm part of is Beatles covers. [Jason Packer]: So everybody picks a Beatles cover that they like, then a playlist is made automatically from that, whatever, 20 songs. [Jason Packer]: and everybody votes in the ones that they like and fun as hell. [Jason Packer]: It's not complicated.

[Jason Packer]: It's fun to do with your peers, your friend group, your work. [Jason Packer]: We've been doing it on the measure slack for what, three years now or something like that? [Jason Packer]: It's, I mean, it's a lot of fun. [Tim Wilson]: Is it in the measure?

[Tim Wilson]: What? [Tim Wilson]: For somebody who's interested, they have to be in the measure slack and then in the measure music channel, they can find it. [Jason Packer]: Yeah, that's where the conversation happens. [Jason Packer]: You don't technically have to be part of that.

[Jason Packer]: But anybody can start musically too. [Jason Packer]: And there's also like free [Tim Wilson]: You know, like, yeah, but we like to do stuff around, you know, us. [Tim Wilson]: Don't just get people to go out and do their own thing. [Michael Helbling]: They got to be part of the measure slack to do this.

[Michael Helbling]: So join that first. [Michael Helbling]: Obviously, top tier. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah.

[Michael Helbling]: And the group is amazing. [Michael Helbling]: Like, that's also great. [Michael Helbling]: We have tons of cool, fun, music-based conversations with all your peers in analytics and, um, [Michael Helbling]: It's a lot of fun. [Michael Helbling]: So for my own personal experience, it's it's a great time.

[Michael Helbling]: And I've got a great idea, Jason, because, you know, we've been growing as we grow and then we get the big power hour bump on this now. [Michael Helbling]: We can start like different levels of leagues. [Michael Helbling]: So there could be like a Premier League with relegation and a championship league like like British soccer, you know. [Jason Packer]: I think I would be relegated.

[Jason Packer]: I'm not sure I would like that. [Jason Packer]: I do not. [Michael Helbling]: Well, I probably would be too. [Michael Helbling]: I don't often score very well, but I have a lot of fun.

[Michael Helbling]: Anyways, it's also really cool to get a new playlist every couple weeks or so of songs you might not have ever heard or genres you're not that into. [Michael Helbling]: So it's nice. [Michael Helbling]: I like it. [Tim Wilson]: So we do occasionally get comments from people who are like, you guys mentioned the measure slack where it's like, if you literally go to measure.

chat and then you join.measure.chat. [Tim Wilson]: And we'll also have it on the show notes page.

[Tim Wilson]: So if anybody's like, you guys keep mentioning it and you, and it's in our outro and we don't have instructions for how to find it. [Michael Helbling]: So listen, if you're committed, you'll find your way in. [Michael Helbling]: All right. [Michael Helbling]: No, thank you.

[Michael Helbling]: Yeah, that's awesome. [Michael Helbling]: And Jason, thank you for kind of being the oomph behind that, as I know it's a ton of work on the back end to make it work. [Jason Packer]: The official commissioner. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah, the commissioner.

[Michael Helbling]: The ska loving commissioner of the Measure Music channel. [Michael Helbling]: All right, Moe, what about you? [Michael Helbling]: What's your last call? [Moe Kiss]: Okay, so my husband has been listening to a podcast for a long time that folks will probably be familiar with.

[Moe Kiss]: I have noticed it indexes highly to men. [Moe Kiss]: I know a lot of men that listen to it. [Moe Kiss]: I don't know a lot of women. [Tim Wilson]: Joe, you're wrong.

[Moe Kiss]: Sorry. [Moe Kiss]: the Pivot podcast. [Moe Kiss]: One of the, my husband listens to it on like loud speaker around the house and it like really like drives me nuts. [Moe Kiss]: And I have not been the biggest fan of Scott Galloway.

[Moe Kiss]: However, I have had my opinion changed very significantly. [Moe Kiss]: I am now a listener of Pivot. [Moe Kiss]: I have been incredibly impressed with how they've talked about [Moe Kiss]: I mean, AI and like tech over the last few months, but particularly the coverage on the Epstein files is something that I just really, like it really impressed me and that's why I've become a really big listener. [Moe Kiss]: Scott also last month did this like resist and unsubscribe initiative, which folks might have seen in the media, which was really cool, which was like encouraging folks to basically [Moe Kiss]: use our economic power to let tech companies know that we're not happy with how they're supporting the administration.

[Moe Kiss]: I felt like they were using their voice to share their perspective on something in a really meaningful way. [Moe Kiss]: Also, just for everyone out there, checking on the women in your life, the last few months have been [Moe Kiss]: like shaken us to the core. [Moe Kiss]: And so just to just check in on your, your wives, your mums, your daughters, all the women. [Michael Helbling]: Nice.

[Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Great. [Moe Kiss]: All right. [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, great.

[Tim Wilson]: Yeah, Tim, what's your last call? [Tim Wilson]: What have you got? [Tim Wilson]: Well, there was this episode of the Rogan. [Tim Wilson]: No.

[Tim Wilson]: So, I'm going to do two. [Tim Wilson]: They'll be quick. [Tim Wilson]: One, David Epstein, who I'm a big [Tim Wilson]: fan of like his books, like his videos, but he did a 15 minute video called why you should fail 15% of the time. [Tim Wilson]: And he talks about desirable difficulties, which is a phrase I don't think I knew, but he kind of breaks down the value of [Tim Wilson]: doing hard things the hard way and specifically what that does for you, which in the world of vibe being shit, there are a lot of people grappling with it, but he's just a well done video and he's delightful to listen to.

[Tim Wilson]: And then maybe kind of adjacent to that, there was just an article, I don't know, it was the metadata weekly, Mark Dupuis, the AI analyst hype cycle. [Tim Wilson]: And I just, there were some quotes in it that were just, I thought were gems, like quote, if AI can only answer questions that have been preconfigured by the data team in a semantic layer, what have we actually built? [Tim Wilson]: An expensive natural language interface to existing dashboards, which [Tim Wilson]: And he kind of makes the case of where is this all going?

[Tim Wilson]: It's narrowing down to where what you actually get is maybe not that great. [Tim Wilson]: But they also had the analysts who thrive will be those who can translate business problems into the right questions, validate AI output, build the context systems that make AI useful and provide the judgment. [Tim Wilson]: and recommendations that AI cannot, which I think a lot of people are saying, but that's kind of like a cheap throwaway thing to say when I look what people are then also saying, I did this thing.

[Tim Wilson]: It often kind of skips those components of it. [Tim Wilson]: The AI analyst hype cycle by Mark Dupuis is my second one. [Tim Wilson]: Michael, what's your last call? [Michael Helbling]: Well, we did an episode a while back talking about semantic layers with Cindy Hausen from Thought Spot, which was awesome.

[Michael Helbling]: And we also did an episode about AI that I remembered something Moee said about how [Michael Helbling]: So letting AIs leverage how the queries are being used in the organization is also a way of training the AI to do that. [Michael Helbling]: And I read an article recently from Jacob Mattson at Moether Duck about rethinking the semantic layer and kind of challenging the idea that a semantic layer is kind of the only way to go. [Michael Helbling]: And I just thought it was a cool counterpoint.

[Michael Helbling]: I don't know that I've got a strong opinion one way or the other. [Michael Helbling]: I very much respect the conversation we had with Cindy and I really thought it was really powerful. [Michael Helbling]: But there's some interesting research and discovery going on as well on sort of like [Michael Helbling]: letting the AI consume all your SQL queries and using that to help it understand some of the context behind where and how your data is getting pulled together.

[Michael Helbling]: So anyway, it's a good read, good to kind of think through those things. [Michael Helbling]: I don't think we've solved it for our industry. [Michael Helbling]: So I think it's early days on all this. [Michael Helbling]: So yeah.

[Michael Helbling]: Oh, and what's this breaking news? [Michael Helbling]: I'm getting word now straight from our correspondent. [Michael Helbling]: There is a book out there that Jason Packer has written called. [Michael Helbling]: What's the name of the book again?

[Michael Helbling]: Hold on. [Michael Helbling]: I haven't written down Google Analytics alternatives. [Michael Helbling]: And for listeners of the analytics power hour, he's going to give you a 20% discount. [Michael Helbling]: So that's pretty sweet.

[Michael Helbling]: If you haven't already bought the book, that is the incentive to do so. [Michael Helbling]: Discount code APH. [Michael Helbling]: So there you go. [Michael Helbling]: We'll put the link to that in the show notes as well.

[Michael Helbling]: All right. [Michael Helbling]: Well, Jason, once again, thank you so much for coming on the show. [Michael Helbling]: This has been a lot of fun and a really good conversation. [Michael Helbling]: Appreciate all the work you've done.

[Michael Helbling]: It's a labor of love, I'm sure, just to do all this. [Michael Helbling]: And so very much appreciate it on behalf of [Michael Helbling]: a vendor weary industry, I think you're doing us all a big service. [Michael Helbling]: So thank you. [Jason Packer]: Thank you.

[Jason Packer]: You're welcome. [Jason Packer]: Yes. [Michael Helbling]: Great time. [Michael Helbling]: All right.

[Michael Helbling]: Well, we'd love to hear from you too, because you've been listening and you probably have questions or you've got thoughts. [Michael Helbling]: And so reach out to us and you can do that on the Measure Slack chat group, which we've spoken about on the show. [Michael Helbling]: as well as our LinkedIn page or via email at contact at analyticshour.io.

[Michael Helbling]: And we also love to get your comments and ratings on whatever podcast platform you listen to. [Michael Helbling]: Please feel free to do that as well. [Michael Helbling]: And I think I speak for both of my co-hosts. [Tim Wilson]: Boy, have you listened to a few things that are a little important.

[Tim Wilson]: If only our show prep had it. [Tim Wilson]: So one, just know that [Tim Wilson]: Michael, you and Jason and I will all be at Measure Camp New York on the 28th of March, so if you want to see us. [Michael Helbling]: That is true, we will. [Tim Wilson]: But even more important.

[Michael Helbling]: I didn't expect by now there'd be tickets left, so I was leaving that out because it's too late, you probably can't make it. [Michael Helbling]: Well, there's something that's available. [Tim Wilson]: If you can get a ticket. [Tim Wilson]: Moere important from an operational perspective, the marketing analytics summit that we'll be at on April 29th, [Tim Wilson]: Yeah.

[Tim Wilson]: Okay, now you're... Yeah, I did skip that. [Michael Helbling]: I did skip that, yeah. [Michael Helbling]: Moere breaking news, I'm getting...

[Michael Helbling]: Yeah, we're going to be a marketing analytics summit and we need your help. [Michael Helbling]: We want your questions. [Michael Helbling]: We've got a very cool survey of which there's an Easter egg at the end that I had no part of. [Michael Helbling]: And we'll have to take the survey and ask a question to see it.

[Michael Helbling]: But yeah, go to analyticshour.io slash listener and submit a question. [Michael Helbling]: We'll be recording at the marketing analytics summit at [Michael Helbling]: on April 29th in Santa Barbara, California. [Michael Helbling]: And we hope to see you there.

[Michael Helbling]: But if you can't make it there, we can still ask a question and we may answer it on the podcast. [Michael Helbling]: So please do that if you want to ask us a question. [Michael Helbling]: And even if you don't want to, push yourself a little bit and ask what anyway. [Michael Helbling]: I highly preference questions that make Tim feel uncomfortable.

[Michael Helbling]: So like, you know, asking emotional questions about, you know, the best manager he ever had or [Tim Wilson]: Yeah, luckily, we have not figured out how we're sharing access to all the questions with all the co-hosts. [Michael Helbling]: Oh, yeah, that's the little tricky part of that. [Michael Helbling]: All right, well, before I forget anything else about the show wrap-up, let me just say thanks once again, Jason. [Michael Helbling]: And I think I speak for both of my co-hosts, Moe and Tim, when I say, no matter what vendor you need to pick, just keep analyzing.

[Announcer]: listening. [Announcer]: Let's keep the conversation going with your comments, suggestions and questions on Twitter at @analyticshour on the web at analyticshour.io, our LinkedIn group, and the Measure Chat Slack group. [Announcer]: Music for the podcast by Josh Crowhurst.

[Announcer]: Those smart guys wanted to fit in so they made up a term called analytics. [Announcer]: Analytics don't work. [Charles Barkley]: Do the analytics say go for it, no matter who's going for it? [Charles Barkley]: So if you and I were on the field, the analytics say go for it.

[Charles Barkley]: It's the stupidest, laziest, lamest thing I've ever heard for reasoning in competition. [Michael Helbling]: All right. [Michael Helbling]: Well, we do have an editor who we've been talking so fondly about. [Michael Helbling]: So we can stop and start as needed.

[Tim Wilson]: Well, without further ado. [Tim Wilson]: Well, actually before, so just like Moee, are there any, because I mean, you're kind of often in the midst of vendor selection stuff. [Tim Wilson]: So you're comfortable. [Tim Wilson]: There'll be anything you talk about.

[Tim Wilson]: You can yourself edit for whatever, named and unnamed. [Moe Kiss]: Yeah. [Moe Kiss]: So like we just signed a new BI tool, which I probably can't. [Moe Kiss]: say, but I will just say I've been involved in multiple BI tool selections and stuff like that.

[Moe Kiss]: Okay. [Michael Helbling]: Yeah. [Michael Helbling]: All right. [Michael Helbling]: All right.

[Michael Helbling]: Let's start clackin' the keyboard and record this thing. [Moe Kiss]: I think I got it. [Moe Kiss]: You got it? [Moe Kiss]: I think so.

[Moe Kiss]: I was like, I better do it before you start, because if I do it half a year, it'll be like... [Michael Helbling]: That was great timing actually. [Moe Kiss]: Pretty sure I got it right. [Michael Helbling]: Here we go in five four [Tim Wilson]: Rock flag and an instrumental rock flag rendition by our guest.

[Michael Helbling]: Oh my gosh. [Michael Helbling]: That's the permanent one at the end of every show now. [Michael Helbling]: That's incredible. [Tim Wilson]: I don't know why I was showing that it was going to play that one, and instead it just played like Transition 2, so it's good.

[Moe Kiss]: Fucking Rostat.