Using KPIs To Get Buy In For More Advanced Data Science Projects
KPIs are often Data Scientists' first product. They mature with the business. KPIs allow us to showcase the business value more advanced projects can provide.
Show me the KPIs (key progress indicators, I’ve heard key process indicators too) a business uses to understand itself, customers, competitors, investors, products, marketplaces, etc. and I can tell you how long until it goes out of business. This week, I am going through the KPIs for a large multi-national. All of them. This is part of my assessment phase for every new client.
Why? KPIs are how businesses initially consumes data. As a bonus, KPIs point me to almost every data source throughout the company. I build a catalogue as part of my KPI review. The data supporting low data maturity businesses is sketchy at best.
KPIs are an important part of what Data Scientists do. They start out as simple dashboards and reports. It is easy to look at them as low end analytics. KPIs typically start out worse than analytics but they should not stay that way.
In my Business Strategy For Data Scientists, I get in depth about how to use KPIs and decision support systems to become a strategic partner for senior leadership. This post is an introduction to the basics principles of that process.
Why Data Scientists Should Treat KPIs Like Products
Part of our job is to optimize the way the business consumes and interacts with data. That’s more than building backend infrastructure to automate gathering, cleaning, and serving. Data is served to people. We often forget users and their needs.
KPIs are often our first product, and we need to treat it like one. Who are our customers? They fall into several segments I need to track.
What needs do customers expect data to meet? Knowledge, tracking, and decision support are early need categories.
What unmet needs do my customers have? Some needs they are unaware of and do not realize data can meet. I can teach my way to new projects and delivering early wins.
What are my customers’ expectations of quality and usability requirements? I walk through the progression of basic Product Management questions.
This is my gateway into every part of the business. Treating KPIs like a product allows me to start a conversation anywhere data is used or should be used, is gathered or should be gathered.