From my days of monitoring the site stats of a business-to-business company I used to work for, I recall sifting through tabs and getting lost in reports. I might have begun with the intent to review the path analysis of visitors who had downloaded a white paper, but would invariably get lost on a seemingly interesting yet ultimately off-topic tangent.

The issue was not that the analytics provider we used at the time was unable to meet my company's needs. Rather, it wasn't able to be the tool I needed it to be, and as a result left me, as the person responsible for reporting, lost in information. Of course I was not working at a major brand, and I understand the needs of a large retailer, for example, are very different than mine. But who can't relate to wanting to have the right metrics at the right time without wasting valuable time?

According to a study from Knexus Community, a corporate digital business network, 62 percent of marketers would recommend their analytics platform to their colleagues and peers. And while a full 70 percent of marketers have changed their analytics platform over the last two years, the main reason cited for doing so was to gain a more powerful tool.

Perhaps the way to minimize the effort of having to trudge through one giant reporting tool is to ensure you have the best-of-breed platform for each marketing effort you're running. Sure, you have to manage logging in to a number of different systems, but if you know your time spent with each of those systems will be relatively painless, wouldn't it be worth it? Or, taking it a step further, maybe the key to making the analytics review process easier is to be provided with the analysis of and insight into the data as well. That's a concept to which I am fairly sure all the big-brand online marketing managers can relate.

This commentary is insightful. I recommend it to others.