James McCormick

Principal Analyst Serving Customer Insights Professionals

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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).

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James McCormick

Principal Analyst Serving Customer Insights Professionals

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

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James McCormick's Research

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For CIO Professionals

REPORT: The State Of Insights-Driven Business Maturity, 2019

Benchmarks: The Insights-Driven Business Playbook

January 31, 2019James McCormick

In previous reports in this playbook, we identified insights-driven businesses, how they are different, and why they succeed. The next step for CIOs is to understand the overall maturity of their insights practices. This report uses data from the Forrester Analytics Global Business Technographics® Data And Analytics Survey, 2018, to provide CIOs with a benchmark of insights maturity, identify reasons for business success in advanced firms, describe strategic approaches, and analyze operational habits.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: The Forrester Tech Tide™: Digital Intelligence Technologies, Q1 2019

Landscape: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

January 17, 2019James McCormick

Digital intelligence (DI) is increasingly critical to firms' ability to win, serve, and retain their customers. To accelerate their performance in DI, companies are evaluating and adopting a range of contributing technologies. This Forrester Tech Tide report presents an analysis of the maturity and business value of 17 technology categories that support DI. Customer insights (CI) pros should read this report to shape their firm's investment approach to these technologies.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Beyond The Map With Location Intelligence

Stop Staring At Maps: Use Modern Location Data And Technologies To Act At The Speed Of Customer Obsession

January 10, 2019James McCormick, Emily Miller

The opportunity to analyze your business and customers' location information has shifted up a gear from the niche and static map-based use cases of the past. Firms now have access to unprecedented levels of customers' location data and systems to drive spatial analysis and insights. This report shows customer insights (CI) professionals how to seize this opportunity and apply location data and analytics to drive business decisions and optimize customer experiences across the entire customer life cycle. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals

REPORT: Digitally Transform In-Store Experiences With Sensor-Based Technology And Analytics

Performance Management: The Digital Store Playbook

January 7, 2019James McCormick

Retail stores have been living in an analytical "dark age" compared with digital channels, relegated to measurement techniques that rarely consider customer behavior. However, advances in in-store customer sensor and analytics technologies are transforming how digital business professionals and retailers win, serve, and retain customers within the physical store. This report examines key metrics unleashed by retail store technologies to measure in-store customer behaviors and the associate analytics that retailers should use to guide the transformation of the in-store customer experience. 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: Measure Your Digital Intelligence Maturity

Assessment: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

December 12, 2018 Cinny Little, James McCormick

Digital intelligence (DI) is advancing, but firms must speed up their progress to remain competitive and catch up with insights-driven businesses. Many firms are stymied by the breadth and depth of DI requirements needed to keep pace with changing customer expectations and digital behaviors. This report provides customer insights (CI) pros with a self-assessment and scoring model that complements and feeds Forrester's digital intelligence road map report. 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: Inject Digital Intelligence Into Your Insights-Driven Business

Vision: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 9, 2018James McCormick, Cinny Little

The opportunity to engage customers digitally has never been greater — but so is the threat of not meeting their expectations and losing out to competitors that do. Current digital analytics practices are siloed, tactical, and fixated on channel-obsessed dashboard reporting that is not actionable. This report describes Forrester's vision of digital intelligence: a modern competitive approach to analytics that customer insights (CI) professionals can use to combine 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: Build Digital Intelligence For Your Insights-Driven Business

Executive Overview: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

October 31, 2018James 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 foster 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. We updated it to take into account new research embedding DI within Forrester's research on artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and systems of insight.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Optimize Customer Experience With A Digital Intelligence Road Map

Road Map: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 26, 2018 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 — and it's the critical next step for digital analytics today. Forrester has devised the strategic road map in this report to help customer insights (CI) pros accelerate their digital intelligence journey. 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: Organize For Digital Intelligence With Three Models

Organization: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

October 30, 2018 Cinny Little, James McCormick

Digital analytics teams still working in channel silos will fail to help their firms win, serve, and retain customers. This report describes the success factors and ownership models that help customer insights (CI) professionals build a digital intelligence organization to gain competitive advantage. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically, most recently to provide refined organizational models and new information from research and inquiries.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Measure Your Digital Intelligence Maturity

Assessment: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

December 12, 2018 Cinny Little, James McCormick

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