You’re right, analysis does improve effectiveness — resulting in ROI for an organization’s communications activities.

Furthermore, if organizations establish or adopt well thought out business processes, even greater ROI can be realized.

That said, I truly believe communication professionals can even have a greater role within their organization. Their role should also encompass being the eyes and ears of their organization by engaging in issues management and competitive analysis.

By leveraging the media and providing intelligence, communicators can help energize sales, provide valuable information to marketing, and help steer strategic decisions.

I totally agree with everything you say. I have worked in PR consultancy for ten years now and last summer joined Metrica – a PR measurement, media analysis and evlaution firm – because I have become so passionate about the difference measurement makes to the profession, both in terms of its success and credibility.

Hard data, real facts about what PR can and can’t achieve is critical to support consultancy – both in terms of delivering results and counselling clients – yet very often the investment required to deliver those hard facts is not made.

While I understand that budget is often a factor here it is worth giving consideration to the fact that analysis and evaluation in the PR lifecycle not only proves ROI, important for protecting budget, but also for improving effectiveness and efficiency of budget.

As you say, analysis is an important function of an organisation’s communication effort – only by proving the value of what PR does will it ever get the true credit it deserves.