Identifying and Sourcing Key Metrics to Drive Progress
With an abundance of data available today, what is worth focusing on?
In our latest podcast, Justin Nguyen shared how he thinks about defining metrics and insights his customers care about. Working at a retail company, merchandising and supply chain were examples close at hand. For merchandising, he talked about pricing, selection, and cost of goods sold. For supply chain, he noted the proportion of delivery statuses like late and never delivered.
Identifying Key Metrics
He framed his approach as asking, “what's keeping them awake at night?”
Another way of getting to the answer is to ask, “what's the job to be done?” The authors of the classic HBR article about this helpfully clarified: “‘Job’ is shorthand for what an individual really seeks to accomplish in a given circumstance. But this goal usually involves more than just a straightforward task; consider the experience a person is trying to create.” (We strongly recommend reading the entire article at https://hbr.org/2016/09/know-your-customers-jobs-to-be-done)
In identifying key metrics, consider what experience your internal and external customers are seeking. What are positive aspects of the experience, and what could derail it? What distinguishes it from a similar but less preferred experience?
With these in mind, what pieces of information could help create, maintain, and monitor the experience? That's a good place to start looking for helpful metrics or data products.
Sourcing Key Metrics
Actionable, meaningful metrics can help us navigate options and understand how close we are to success. But how do you get the data to create reliable metrics?
For the non-data specialists among us, it can seem like we need to call IT or Analytics immediately. But take a few minutes to organize your thoughts, and the conversation will be more effective -- or maybe you'll realize you already have what you need!
First, define the metric you have in mind, describe it as vividly as possible, and list some examples. How frequently does it make sense to measure? Is it a point-in-time metric (a value “as of this date”) or a rolling number (year over year, quarter over quarter change)? Why do you want do understand it? Make sure the “so what” is clear to you, so you can share it with others.
With the desired insights clear, get as close as you can to describing the data sources for this metric. Is there a certain person who shares it with you, a report you’ve seen it in, or a transactional system you know that the information comes from? We’ll need to find a predictable, reliable source for your key metric to get it on a regular basis.
We just looked upstream in the data flow. Now look downstream: what other teams, reports, etc. use the information you’re describing? Perhaps they're already getting the data you need, or even calculating the metric (or something similar) that you’re seeking. Best case: you can use what they’ve already developed. If not, you will have more information and you may even have allies in your request for insights.
Now you're ready to ask the Analytics team, IT, or another business group looking at similar concepts for help in securing your metric. Describe the metric you’ve identified, why it matters to you, where you think it comes from, and ask if they can help you gain access to the insight -- or help you take the next step toward it. We hope you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much more productive the conversation is with a few critical details prepared.
If you're knee deep in data detective work and could use a helping hand, let us know.
