James McCormick

Principal Analyst Serving Customer Insights Professionals

James serves Customer Insights Professionals. He is the leading global analyst tracking and defining the value and impact of digital customer information on digitally transforming businesses. His digital intelligence models recognize the big data and advanced analytics approaches that transformed businesses have taken to continually optimize and evolve decisions, experiences, and actions. With his research and experience, he works with senior leaders on insights strategies for sustained market differentiation. James also works with all sizes of technology and services vendors in the digital data, analytics, personalization, and optimization space to define their business strategy, go-to-market, and product road maps.

His responsibilities at Forrester include leading the research on digital intelligence, insights-driven business, and location intelligence; providing end user and vendor strategic advisory; keynoting at industry events; and maintaining a role of key market influences in his field.

Previous Work Experience

Prior to joining Forrester, James held a number of leadership posts running consulting teams that delivered marketing, eCommerce, location intelligence, and performance management solutions and services.

Education

James graduated from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, with a B.Sc. in geology. He followed this up with a B.Sc. (honors) in geographic information systems (GIS).

Print Bio

James McCormick

Principal Analyst Serving Customer Insights Professionals

Read Read James's blog posts

Previous Work Experience

Education

James graduated from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, with a B.Sc. in geology. He followed this up with a B.Sc. (honors) in geographic information systems (GIS).

Research Coverage

James McCormick's Research

Most RecentMost Popular

For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Gauge Your Insights-Driven Business Maturity

The Assessment Report In The Insights-Driven Business Playbook

February 10, 2020James McCormick

Insights-driven businesses sync data, analytics, and optimization capabilities across their enterprise. They do this at unprecedented scale, unleashing a level of decision making and innovation that provides them with sustained differentiation in their markets. This report guides CIOs through Forrester's insights-driven business assessment to gauge how well their organizations perform the essential activities they need to be insights driven, and it helps CIOs discover which activities they must strengthen in order to progress. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Optimize Customer Experience With A Digital Intelligence Business Case

Business Case: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

January 3, 2020 Cinny Little, James McCormick

Today's digital analytics practices are advancing the ability to take actions on insights about customers' digital behavior. But that's not enough: Customers' expectations continue to change faster than firms' ability to measure them. This report helps customer insights (CI) professionals build value-based business cases for investment. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Data To Experience At The Speed Of Engagement

Executive Overview: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

December 31, 2019James McCormick

Insights-driven businesses have an edge on the rest of us: Their digital intelligence (DI) practices synchronize digital analytics with digital interactions to continuously deliver optimized customer experiences at scale. It's time for customer insights (CI) pros to follow suit. They must work with teams across the enterprise to build a mature intelligence practice capable of fostering competitive differentiation. Forrester's digital intelligence playbook sets the groundwork for the strategy, technologies, and best practices for building a DI practice. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Transform Customer Engagement With A Digital Intelligence Vision

Vision: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 21, 2019James McCormick, Cinny Little

The opportunity to engage customers digitally has never been greater — but so is the cost of failing to meet their expectations. Current digital analytics practices are siloed, tactical, and fixated on channel-obsessed dashboard reporting that's not actionable. This report describes Forrester's vision of digital intelligence: a modern competitive approach to analytics that customer insights (CI) pros can use to combine interaction insights from existing, new, and emerging channels to enable timely, customer-obsessed decision making. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: The Forrester Wave™: Digital Intelligence Platforms, Q4 2019

Tools And Technology: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 6, 2019James McCormick

In our 23-criterion evaluation of digital intelligence platform providers, we identified the nine most significant ones — Acoustic, Adobe, Cxense, Evergage, Google, Mixpanel, Oracle, SAS, and Sitecore — and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps customer insights (CI) professionals select the right one for their needs.

For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Transform Customer Engagement With A Digital Intelligence Vision

Vision: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 21, 2019James McCormick, Cinny Little

The opportunity to engage customers digitally has never been greater — but so is the cost of failing to meet their expectations. Current digital analytics practices are siloed, tactical, and fixated on channel-obsessed dashboard reporting that's not actionable. This report describes Forrester's vision of digital intelligence: a modern competitive approach to analytics that customer insights (CI) pros can use to combine interaction insights from existing, new, and emerging channels to enable timely, customer-obsessed decision making. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Data To Experience At The Speed Of Engagement

Executive Overview: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

December 31, 2019James McCormick

Insights-driven businesses have an edge on the rest of us: Their digital intelligence (DI) practices synchronize digital analytics with digital interactions to continuously deliver optimized customer experiences at scale. It's time for customer insights (CI) pros to follow suit. They must work with teams across the enterprise to build a mature intelligence practice capable of fostering competitive differentiation. Forrester's digital intelligence playbook sets the groundwork for the strategy, technologies, and best practices for building a DI practice. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Optimize Customer Experience With A Digital Intelligence Road Map

Road Map: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

April 1, 2019 Cinny Little, James McCormick

Tracking and understanding the interactions with your customers as they digitally engage across channels is hard enough. Using that understanding to take actions that optimize their experiences across multiple digital channels is even harder — but it's the critical next step for digital analytics today. In this report, Forrester has devised a strategic road map to help customer insights (CI) pros accelerate their digital intelligence journey. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Measure Your Digital Intelligence Maturity

Assessment: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

March 21, 2019 Cinny Little, James McCormick

Digital intelligence (DI) is advancing, but firms must speed their progress to remain competitive and catch up with insights-driven businesses. The breadth and depth of DI requirements to keep pace with customers' changing expectations and digital behaviors stymie many firms. This report provides customer insights (CI) pros with a self-assessment and scoring model that complements and feeds Forrester's DI road map report. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Insights-Driven Businesses Set The Pace For Global Growth

October 19, 2018 Brian Hopkins, James McCormick, Ted Schadler

A new kind of company — we call them insights-driven businesses — has formed. They are growing at an average of more than 30% annually and are on track to earn $1.8 trillion by 2021. These customer-obsessed firms systematically harness insights across their organization and implement them to create competitive advantage through software. Read this report to find out how insights-driven business are different from most data-aware firms and how CIOs can help redirect their firm's data ambitions toward effective insights and action. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.