Salesforce’s newly proclaimed "Web and Mobile Analytics" capability within  Sales Force Marketing Cloud Web and Mobile Analtyics platform may initially excite us digital analytics geeks. After all – disruptions by large vendors in the name of “Web Analytics” are few and far between now days.  However before placing SFDC on your digital analytics vendor shortlist you should consider that the capability:

  1. Is targeted at Salesforce's existing Marketing cloud customers.  It is built more as "light weight" analytics capability providing BI pros the ability to natively ingest web and mobile data into their SFDC instances. Oh and it is offered at no extra charge to all Marketing Cloud users.
  2. Will not replace existing enterprise systems. Salesforce claim it will “complement” existing enterprise digital analytics systems that do very much the same thing (i.e. collect, analyze and act on customer behavioral data) and more.
  3. Is separate from the Salesforce's Wave.  Slightly confusingly the Analytics Cloud – Wave – is a separate offering from the Salesforce Marketing Cloud's mobile and web analytics capability- good to know!

Now most enterprises already have more than one digital analytics tool to deal with and not many of us can claim not to have GA and at least “one other” tool. So rather than existing Salesforce Marketing Cloud users adding yet another tag to their overcrowded digital properties, those with a strategic view should rather seek to integrate with their existing web analytics implementations – at least until Salesforce start getting serious about digital analytics.