James McCormick

Principal Analyst Serving Customer Insights Professionals

Read James's blog posts

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 Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Elevate Your Online Testing Program With A Continuous Optimization Approach

Benchmarks: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

February 15, 2018James McCormick

Online testing approaches are the core of a continuous optimization strategy to deliver the best possible customer experiences by iteratively improving customer interactions. This report assesses the state of online testing and calls on customer insights (CI) professionals to boost the strategic value that their practices can deliver using the four continuous optimization dimensions. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy.
For CIO Professionals

REPORT: Gauge Your Insights-Driven Business Maturity

The Assessment Report In The Insights-Driven Business Playbook

February 2, 2018James McCormick, Brian Hopkins

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 helps them discover which activities they must strengthen in order to progress.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Optimize Digital Intelligence For Your Insights-Driven Business

Vision: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 10, 2017James 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 entitled "Optimize Customer Experiences With Digital Intelligence"; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy. This update factors in advances in the business impact of traditional web analytics practices and current trends in the adoption of digital intelligence practices.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: The Forrester Wave™: Web Analytics, Q4 2017

Incumbent Vendors Lead While Newcomers Invigorate A Mature Market

November 7, 2017James McCormick

In our 32-criteria evaluation of web analytics providers, we identified the seven most significant ones — Adobe, AT Internet, Cooladata, Google, IBM, Mixpanel, and Webtrekk — and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps customer insights (CI) professionals make the right choice.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Continually Optimize Experiences To Differentiate And Compete For Customers

Processes: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 1, 2017James McCormick

Competing for empowered customers and keeping up with their shifting digital expectations means that firms must always be evolving their digital experiences. This is only achievable through a digital intelligence process that uses customer data, analytics, and insights to continuously optimize digital interactions. This report defines continuous optimization and describes the strategies that customer insights (CI) pros can use to achieve it. 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 Digital Intelligence For Your Insights-Driven Business

Vision: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

November 10, 2017James 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 entitled "Optimize Customer Experiences With Digital Intelligence"; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy. This update factors in advances in the business impact of traditional web analytics practices and current trends in the adoption of digital intelligence practices.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Build Digital Intelligence For Your Insights-Driven Business

Executive Overview: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

August 15, 2017James McCormick

Insights-driven businesses have the edge on the rest of us. Their digital intelligence 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 mature an 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 digital intelligence practice. This is an updated report, which takes into account new research embedding digital intelligence within Forrester's research on artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and systems of insight.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Rate Your Digital Intelligence Mastery

Assessment: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

September 6, 2017 Cinny Little, James McCormick

Digital intelligence (DI) is advancing, but firms must speed up progress to remain competitive and catch up with insights-driven businesses. Many firms are stymied by the breadth and depth of digital intelligence requirements needed to keep pace with changing customer expectations and digital behaviors. This report provides customer insights (CI) professionals 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, most recently to reflect increasing mastery levels as digital continues to grow in importance.
For Customer Insights Professionals

REPORT: Organize For Digital Intelligence With These Three Models

Organization: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

August 16, 2017 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: Combine Digital Measurements For Intelligent Engagement

Performance Management: The Digital Intelligence Playbook

May 3, 2017 Cinny Little, James McCormick

Customer insights (CI) professionals have a wealth of data resources and technology at their disposal to measure digital customer interactions. But many programs still fail to capture a complete set of metrics, leaving you blind to how your customers' perception of your digital experience affects their relationship with you. Read this report to hone your measurement programs and get the holistic view of customer experience (CX) that everyone needs. This is an update of a previously published report; Forrester reviews and revises it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy, most recently to reflect our latest research on the business impact and adoption of digital analytic practices.