E-commerce: How to Get Upper Management to Approve Additional Hires

1. Identify an issue and a possible solution. “Eighty percent of companies use just 20 percent of their data,” Wolansky said. With the rise of comprehensive Web analytics packages, catalogers collect more information about what happens on their Web sites, but they don’t have the resources to act on the data. In fact, merchandising decisions at Orvis often were made on a monthly basis, meaning that any changes made to the site were often based on month-old data or results across the previous 30 days. In spring 2005, Wolansky realized he could keep up with the the data on a daily basis and increase sales if he had an additional Web analyst/merchant and a separate Web-dedicated art director.