Adobe CJA or Adobe Customer Journey Analytics is the new hot topic in the digital realm these days. Many firms have already started adopting this new solution and Adobe has also released the New documentation for upgrading from Adobe Analytics to Customer Journey Analytics.
Before adopting a new solution or deciding whether to train yourself in it, it's crucial to understand the key differences between your current tool and the one you aim to upgrade to, including the new features it offers.
So, utilize this article to understand how Customer Journey analytics is the next big thing to look at and why!
Let's delve into it, Shall we?
Adobe Analytics is a comprehensive digital analytics solution that enables businesses to measure, analyze, and optimize their marketing strategies and customer experiences across various digital channels.
Adobe Customer Journey Analytics is a powerful tool that enables businesses to analyze and visualize customer interactions across multiple channels and touchpoints in real time. By combining data from various sources, it provides a comprehensive view of the customer journey, helping organizations to uncover insights, optimize experiences, and drive better outcomes.
As the definitions reveal, the fundamental difference between the two solutions is the breadth of data you (can) consider when building your reports and analysis.
- In Customer Journey Analytics, any data source can be part of the data you use for reporting and analysis. Adobe Analytics is primarily aimed at online data collected from web sites and mobile apps.
- Adobe Analytics offers capabilities to import data from other sources but the main purpose of this is to provide more context around the previously mentioned online data.
- Data Collection: Customer Journey Analytics uses data stored in Adobe Experience Platform datasets. There are various methods available to collect and ingest data into these datasets, as detailed in the Data Ingestion overview. In contrast, Adobe Analytics collects data within the solution itself, with several options for data collection outlined in the Adobe Analytics Implementation Guide. To leverage your Adobe Analytics report suite data in Customer Journey Analytics, you can use the Analytics source connector. This connector ingests data from Adobe Analytics into the Experience Platform, allowing you to create a connection to this dataset in Customer Journey Analytics.
- Data Processing: Before reporting on data, it often needs to be processed to ensure its usability for analysis. This processing can occur both at the time of collection and at the time of reporting. Typically, Customer Journey Analytics is designed to handle collected and stored data in Experience Platform datasets during report time. It provides robust report-time processing capabilities to ensure data is ready for analysis and reporting. If data mapping, transformation, and validation are required before ingestion into Experience Platform, the Data Prep functionality can be utilized. In contrast, Adobe Analytics processes most data immediately after it is collected.
- Terminology: Customer Journey Analytics offers flexibility on how you define dimensions and metrics, enabled by the flexibility that the underlying Experience Data Model (XDM) based schemas provide. For example, where Adobe Analytics uses visitors, visits and hits, Customer Journey Analytics uses persons, sessions, and events as equivalent concepts (you can change the naming as you see fit). See Compare terminology for Analytics data passed through the Analytics source connector for more information on the differences in terminology.
- Virtual reporting environments and sandboxes: Adobe Analytics introduces the notion of virtual report suites, enabling the segmentation of gathered data and the management of access to these segmented datasets. In Customer Journey Analytics, a similar concept exists known as data views. These serve as containers that dictate how data from a connection is interpreted, offering extensive flexibility in configuring dimensions and metrics to prepare for reporting and analysis. Within the Experience Platform, sandboxes function as containers for data and applications within a specific environment. However, it's important to note that the functionality of a sandbox is distinct from that of Adobe Analytics' virtual report suites or Customer Journey Analytics' data views. Adobe Analytics itself does not rely on or have any connection with Experience Platform sandboxes. See Virtual report suites, Data views, Adobe Experience Platform sandboxes, and the Analytics source connector for more information.
- Identities: In Customer Journey Analytics, the identities you establish within the schemas that your datasets adhere to are supported. These identities form a fundamental concept within the Experience Platform, and Customer Journey Analytics utilizes them during connection setup (by specifying the Person ID for each dataset) and for stitching in cross-channel analysis. A key identity employed by the Experience Platform SDKs and API is the Experience Cloud ID (ECID). In Adobe Analytics, a distinct set of identity fields, such as the Adobe Analytics ID (AAID), is utilized. The Analytics source connector treats these Adobe Analytics identification fields differently. See AAID, ECID, AACUSTOMID, and the Analytics source connector for more information.
An overview of Adobe Analytics features and how these features are supported by Customer Journey Analytics can be found at Customer Journey Analytics feature support.
