Migration, Compliance, and Prioritization Challenges
Our customer, a global pharmaceutical company, faced immense challenges managing their marketing technology stack during multiple migrations across several business units worldwide. The project included transitions from Google Analytics to Adobe Analytics, Google Tag Manager to Adobe Launch, and various authoring platforms to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). Stakeholders operated in different time zones and spoke different languages, adding complexity and confusion. Without continuous MarTech monitoring, the customer relied on manual QA, spot checking, and auditing, which proved ineffective, leading to frustration and implementation delays.
The tag management team identified a need for a new approach. Due to the project’s scope, data integrity problems often went unnoticed until they escalated. The reactive nature of operations led to inefficiencies, wasted resources, compromised marketing efforts, and reputation damage. Additionally, the tag management team felt the effects of an inadequate consent management implementation. This led to instances where visitors were tracked against their wishes. With a global user base and stringent GDPR compliance requirements, manually monitoring the MarTech stack for consent validation was exceptionally challenging.
The customer needed to improve data quality, streamline operations, and enhance collaboration between disparate teams. The tag management team sought a solution that would provide continuous visibility into marketing data collection and enable better prioritization based on real-time insights. They knew they needed to shift from reactive to proactive operations. Realizing the need for continuous MarTech monitoring, the team decided to work with Sentinel Insights.
The Sentinel Solution for Continuous MarTech Monitoring
One of the main reasons why the company adopted Sentinel Insights’ real-time monitoring tools was to assist with issue identification and prioritization. The tag management team was small, and the company was in the midst of several rounds of layoffs, forcing them to pivot often and find ways to do more with less. However, just because the team was shrinking didn’t mean that the workload was reduced. Migrations needed to continue as planned. To help with the burden of migration, the Sentinel tag was implemented on websites as they transitioned to AEM, providing continuous oversight of their MarTech stack during the tumultuous migration period. An added benefit: because they were freed from tedious manual audits, each team member was able to contribute in much more meaningful ways, and the team made meaningful improvements to data architecture and collection during the migration.
Step 1: Implementing Sentinel Insights for Real-Time Monitoring
Continuous Data Oversight: After the tag was deployed on each migrating website, Sentinel Insights continuously monitored the customer’s MarTech stack, detecting anomalies and tracking changes in the data layer. This ongoing surveillance and alerting ensured that major issues were identified as soon as they occurred.
Detailed Reporting: The Sentinel Insights dashboard provided comprehensive reports, offering immediate visibility into data issues. This allowed the team to address problems quickly, reducing the risk of long-term data discrepancies. Moreover, detailed insights into the data enabled the team to understand the root causes of issues, facilitating faster resolution and preventing recurrence.
Step 2: Integrating Findings with Work Management Tools
Tagging Insights: The tag management team logged insights from the Sentinel Insights dashboard in their program’s work management tool. This allowed everyone to view relevant, timely insight data alongside other project tasks, facilitating informed decision-making across teams. This established a seamless flow of information, ensuring that critical data was always accessible to the right team members.
Task Prioritization: Sentinel Insights’ built-in best practice recommendations and issue categorization helped the tag management team prioritize tasks by severity and impact. Critical problems, such as consent validation errors, were addressed first. This was followed by website errors, then opportunities for cost savings in analytics implementations. The assisted prioritization from Sentinel Insights helped the customer allocate resources more effectively, focusing efforts where they were needed most.
Collaboration Between Silos: The integration of Sentinel Insights broke down silos between the web development and tag management teams. Comprehensive, detailed insights ensured both teams were able to analyze the same data. Joint review sessions and aligned priorities helped streamline workflows. The transparency facilitated by Sentinel Insights helped both teams understand each other’s challenges and align on solutions. Consequently, they could resolve issues faster, optimize resource use, and enhance data accuracy.
Example: The tag management team was receiving complaints from stakeholders that Google Analytics was still present on some pages, even after the migration to Adobe Analytics. Using Sentinel Insights’ data export, they quickly identified the pages in question. The tag management team then dispatched a ticket to the web development team, who was able to swiftly remediate the issue by removing hardcoded Google Analytics tags. Going forward, continuous Sentinel monitoring helped ensure a thorough and accurate cleanup.
Step 3: Creating the Feedback Loop
Regular Reviews: The feedback loop involved regular review meetings where the team analyzed the insights gathered through Sentinel’s continuous monitoring. This helped them adjust their strategies and priorities based on up-to-date data. These reviews fostered a culture of continuous improvement, encouraging the team to stay proactive in managing their MarTech stack.
Agile Response: The feedback loop ensured that the team remained agile and responsive to changing data conditions. By continually adapting their approach, they were able to prevent issues before they escalated and maintain a robust MarTech stack. This agility allowed the customer to quickly pivot and address new challenges as they arose, maintaining data integrity and operational efficiency.
The Results Speak for Themselves
The implementation of Sentinel Insights’ real-time monitoring tools resulted in enhanced data quality, improved collaboration, efficient task prioritization, and fostered a proactive approach to marketing data management.
The customer experienced a significant reduction in data discrepancies, enabling more reliable marketing insights and decisions. They was able to promptly and proactively identify and correct consent issues, ensuring compliance and building trust with website visitors. Collaboration between teams improved, operations became more streamlined, and task prioritization ensured optimal resource allocation. The proactive measures and continuous improvement efforts helped maintain a robust and agile MarTech stack.
In Summary, Our Customer Realized:
Enhanced Data Quality
- Reduced Discrepancies: Continuous monitoring significantly reduced data discrepancies, ensuring data integrity across the MarTech stack. The team could trust the accuracy of their data, leading to more reliable marketing insights and decisions.
- Immediate Issue Resolution: Real-time alerts allowed for the immediate resolution of data issues, minimizing the impact of any discrepancies on their marketing efforts. Quick issue resolution prevented minor problems from becoming major disruptions.
Improved Collaboration
- Seamless Communication: The integration facilitated better communication between the partner teams. By having a single, comprehensive source of truth for marketing data issues, teams were able to collaborate more effectively and address problems together. This improved communication fostered a stronger sense of teamwork and shared responsibility.
- Streamlined Operations: The streamlined operations reduced friction and improved overall efficiency. The teams could work more cohesively, leading to faster and more accurate data management. Efficient operations allowed the customer to achieve their goals more quickly and with fewer resources.
- Tag Management and Web Development Collaboration: The integration of Sentinel Insights fostered collaboration between the tag management and web development teams. Comprehensive data analysis and specific guidance between teams enabled quicker issue resolution and optimized workflows.
Efficient Task Prioritization
- Focused Efforts: Real-time insights allowed the customer to prioritize tasks based on the most pressing data issues. This focused approach helped them ensure that they allocated resources efficiently and effectively. Prioritizing tasks based on data-driven insights and built-in best practice recommendations in the Sentinel Insights platform helped the customer make better use of their time and resources.
- Optimized Resource Allocation: By addressing critical issues first, the customer was able to optimize their resource allocation, ensuring that their efforts had the maximum impact. Effective resource allocation helped the customer achieve better results with fewer resources.
Proactive Approach
- Preventive Measures: The feedback loop enabled the customer to adopt a proactive stance, preventing issues before they became critical. This approach not only maintained a high level of data quality but also reduced the need for crisis management. Preventing issues before they escalated saved the customer time and resources.
- Continuous Improvement: The regular review of monitoring data allowed for continuous improvement in their data management processes. The customer could refine their strategies and optimize their MarTech stack based on real-time insights. Continuous improvement ensured that the customer remained competitive and agile in a rapidly changing market.
Continuous MarTech Monitoring For the Win
By leveraging Sentinel Insights’ real-time continuous MarTech monitoring platform and integrating these insights into their work management processes, the customer transformed their tag management operations. The proactive approach not only enhanced data quality and collaboration but also ensured that their MarTech stack remained agile and responsive in a rapidly changing environment.
For more information on how Sentinel Insights can help your organization achieve similar results, contact us today.
