Custom CalculationsYour business is unique — shouldn’t your metrics be?

October 14, 2015

Presented by

— This webinar will be recorded

— We will take questions at the end

— Looker demo at the end

Welcome & Webinar Overview

Anika Kuesters-Smith,Pre-Sales Analyst

Levi Davis,Professional Services Analyst

Meet our presenters

Moving beyond high-level KPIs

Benefits of custom metrics

How to identify key metrics and roll them out to the entire organization

Overview for Today

Moving Beyond High-Level KPIs

The Case for High-Level Metrics

Increased EngagementUsing visuals to draw in the less data inclined

Clarity and PriorityTeams driving towards a singular goal set

Data-Driven CultureData as the source of truth

Profit is going up, up, up!!!

Even if high-level metrics look good,

there are often opportunities hidden

in the data

Access to dashboards does not make a data-

driven company

Most people in an organization cannot

move top-level metrics

Digging deeper can yield unexpected opportunities.

Most important business questions are ad hoc by nature

and can’t be answered by a dashboard.

Tying incentives to metrics a person has no control over is

demotivating.

Common Pitfalls of Standard KPIsWhat’s missing?

better title

• When the entire organization can engage in ad-hoc investigations, more of the decisions being made are backed by data, and more interesting questions get surfaced.

• Frees the analyst to work on innovative analysis beyond routine reporting.

What happens when you dive deep?

What happens when you dive deep?

Infectious Media’s client wanted to better understand their customers’ purchasing behavior.

What happens when you dive deep?

What happens when you dive deep?

They found that while men made the initial cable connection purchase (almost always of premium sports packages), women constituted the majority of add-on purchases, and the majority of viewers.

What happens when you dive deep?

The Benefits of Custom Analytics

Who’s the better employee?

• Every team, team member and project deserve data-driven performance feedback

• Feedback based solely on a manager’s impression is often inaccurate and unfair

Taking Incentive Structures to the next level

• Used custom metrics to create an incentive structure for the sales team

• The incentives went beyond pay to actually include promotions,.

• Members of the sales team had constant, real-time access to their performance metrics

Taking Incentive Structures to the next level

• These performance metrics went beyond simply counting the number and size of deals

• Sales people are now motivated to sell quality deals.

• Promotions are automatically awarded as a function of these custom metrics!

• These reports were embedded in Salesforce so the sales team would have constant visibility.

Ad Hoc Analysis

● Data-driven business process is a series of quick ad hoc analyses

● New custom metrics are developed for each new situation

● Simple questions should not have to be answered by the analyst

● (Analysts should be consulted before major data-drive business decisions)

Have a hunch?

It seems like there’s a lot of money coming from North Dakota...

Test it!

● Custom metrics allow ad hoc analysis

● Custom analytics allows anyone’s hunch to be investigated

● You may need to use creativity to find the right metric

Beware of Spurious Correlations!

Results need to be repeatable, based on sound business logic, and analysts still need to check results

A Story From the Field: Creating Metrics to Predict Fraud

● Wanted to catch expense fraud -- without

having to review every item.

● Had previously focused on highest spenders,

but weren’t detecting much fraud here.

A Story From the Field: Creating Metrics to Predict Fraud

● Among top predictors of fraud was the total number of

expenses.

● Created a weighted score to surface “risky” individuals

who warrant manual review - whether for a health

intervention or fraud report!

● Shaved 3-5% annually off of tens of millions of annual

expenses (!!)

FOUR cell phone plans?!

How to Identify Key Metrics

Identifying Key Metrics

Define What do we want to drive?

QuantifyHow can we measure it?

Act and RefineHow do we improve?

Be creative!

• If you can’t measure something directly, find a proxy

• Or, measure the opposite.• Example: Can’t measure

customer happiness? Can you measure

• Engagement with the product?

• Social media shares?• Unhappiness?

Define: Be Creative!

Quantify: Set up tracking

• We were delivering trainings without

knowing their impact

• Created quiz to measure understanding

of key concepts

• Gave quiz to trainees at the end of

training session

• Loaded results into Looker

• Trainings were optimized

Maybe it’s not a yes/no question!

Data Democracy

Should analysts teach SQL to non-technical people?

“[Becoming a data-driven] will never happen in your company until people who don’t know SQL can ask questions on their own.”

- Ben Porterfield

Act and Refine: Data Democracy

• How Upworthy re-imagined their measure of success to align with their organization’s goals

• From Upworthy’s “About Us” Page:• Sensational and substantial. Entertaining and enlightening.

That's what you can expect here: no empty calories. Just a steady stream of the most irresistibly shareable stuff you can click on without feeling bad about yourself afterwards

• “20 pageviews! Zero user satisfaction!”• Daniel Mintz, Head of Data and Analytics at Upworthy

How do you measure success?

Identifying Key Metrics

Define Attention for meaningful content

QuantifyAttention Minutes

Act and RefineAdjust Marketing and Engagement Strategies

The Results

The Results

Conclusions

• To gain more understanding and control over your business, evaluate if you’re using the right metrics.

• Create KPIs that address the goals of the organization as a whole, and of the individuals and teams within it.

Q & A

Thank you

• This webinar will be posted on looker.com tomorrow.

• Demo Looker at looker.com/demo or stick around for the live demo!

Thank you