Step five to becoming a data-driven organization: design analytics with business outcomes in mind

In the fifth in a series of blogs focusing on the six steps organizations should take to become data-driven, we look at how designing analytics with business outcomes in mind is critical to success.

This series began by examining the importance of a modern data architecture, the role of automation in data integration, the need to provide data-as-a-service and last time out, why analytics doesn’t support a one size fits all approach. Today, we examine the importance of decision-making culture and how to determine which metrics you should focus on first.

The most successful data-driven companies often build a culture of data-based decision making from the top down. This has the key advantage that everybody sees the same types of metrics as used by the senior executives. This approach has been very successful at Miller Industries, where everybody across the management hierarchy is viewing the exact same information as the executive team, and everybody is aligned to the executive team’s key performance indicators (KPIs), eliminating insight silos and barriers to alignment within the enterprise.

Based on our considerable experience in implementing analytics with our customers, Infor® has refined a methodology for identifying and developing outcome-based metrics that answer the most important questions that organizations have. It begins by identifying the performance metrics used by the organization’s executives and leadership. For example, the most important metric for a CFO may be profitability. The next step, in this case, would be the identify the drivers that have the most significant impact on profitability.

After identifying the drivers, the next step is to determine the action points. These are things that the organization can change, and most often are some combination of people, products, and processes. These then form the metrics displayed on the organization’s dashboards and reports. As we move across and down the organization, these action points become more specific to an individual’s role, department, and span of control.

Learn more about how to design outcome-based analytics in our best practice guide on the six steps to becoming a data-driven organization and discover how you can transform your business by ensuring every person who makes decisions has access to the data they need when they need it