Use data to help grow – Too much of using data to “help businesses grow” is about predicting (guessing) revenue or profit in five years. This is kind of fun intellectually (and there are cleverly named tools like “Crystal Ball” to do this), but it’s less useful than finding real things that we can do today or in the near future that will meaningfully impact the business. This means focusing on why people cancel, how they interact with signup pages, etc.

via 37signals.com

This is a great, simple overview of how approach "analytics". As complex as we make it, it really just comes down to a couple priorities.