Metrics can become an essential ingredient of proposals, marketing collateral such as fact sheets, and even internal employee reviews to testify to accomplishments. Unfortunately, few organizations do a fine job of collecting metrics, despite the growth of tools and cloud platforms that make it easier to do than ever.
A missing element is that collecting metrics needs to become part of your organizational culture. Here are some tips to get there:
Make metrics part of the team conversation from day 1
Too often during my career, I’ve had to go on a mad scramble for metrics that didn’t exist because nobody was ever taking the time to collect them. I could trace that issue because metrics were often not part of the usual corporate discussions I was privy to as a writer. Sure, somebody somewhere was bound to have the numbers, but then there was the concern if the numbers were even correct.
I came to see that some corporate cultures are reactive, not proactive, that comes with metrics. Over time, I realized it was not knowing any better, so the organization kept itself ignorant about collecting metrics. There were also cases of subtle shame about the metrics, too, I suppose. Over the years, I saw over one case of an organization that didn’t yet know what positive metrics were for them.
Know your analytics tools and data
For the Microsoft 365 stack and other software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms, too often, backend analytics never seem to reach their potential. There’s just not the attention paid to get them working because the IT department is more focused on just keeping the lights on for these applications.
Once, I worked in a SharePoint shop and wanted to track the visits and downloads from a SharePoint document library my team was maintaining. Well, what seemed like a simple task was a no go because no setup had been done on the backend of the SharePoint implementation.
The first step to collecting metrics is often just a little extra setup on your SaaS platform’s backend. In cases such as SharePoint, it doesn’t require a data scientist.
Checkbox IT — when an IT department implements a technology just to get it off its list — is a typical culprit behind backend systems not already being set up for collecting metrics.
Consider low code/no code analytics tools
There’s a new generation of low code/no code analytics tools coming to the market that can help organizations collect and publish their metrics. Opening up these sorts of tools to data-hungry business users is an alternative way of meeting the challenge of collecting metrics. Even better, you can push collecting metrics to your business users, freeing up your IT department from the task when you implement these tools. Even with a startup investment in end-user training on a low code/no code analytics, you’ll still save money and time because it frees higher-paid IT staff from doing the work.
There’s a new generation of low code/no code analytics tools coming to the market that can help organizations collect and publish their metrics. Opening up these sorts of tools to data-hungry business users is an alternative way of meeting the challenge of collecting metrics. Even better, you can push collecting metrics to your business users, freeing up your IT department from the task when you implement these tools. Even with a startup investment in end-user training on a low code/no code analytics, you’ll still save money and time because it frees higher-paid IT staff from doing the work.
Final thoughts
Gathering data and metrics needs to be a proactive act. It’s best to factor the tools and work into your SaaS and cloud application designs and implementations. Not to mention, it needs a spot in the design of your internal reporting such as status and project closeout reports.
Gathering data and metrics needs to be a proactive act. It’s best to factor the tools and work into your SaaS and cloud application designs and implementations. Not to mention, it needs a spot in the design of your internal reporting such as status and project closeout reports.