A good business is like a well-oiled machine. Everything running smoothly, everyone on the same page. And if you’re running a business in 2018, there’s a chance that you’re looking at a whole slew of dashboards and data points to influence your decisions, right?
With everything from risk management to marketing tied to metrics, it’s exponentially easier to make informed decisions. That said, there’s also plenty of pressure for businesses to make sense of those metrics for higher-ups and c-level execs.
It’s key to understand which metrics matter the most whether you’re the one making top-level decisions or are trying to justify changes to someone else.
But what deserves the most of your attention on any given dashboard? Keep the following five systems in the back of your mind for starters.
CRM
Any given CRM dashboard gives you a bird’s eye view of your leads, where they’re coming from and what interactions they’ve had within your funnel. In an instant, you can better understand who’s most likely to convert and which leads deserve your most attention based on what they’re worth.
However, many businesses ignore arguably the most overlooked aspect of a CRM which is the “relationship” piece of the puzzle.
A CRM is, in short, about more than just sales and leads: it’s about the individual abilities that arise from those who interact with your business. Each of those interactions, and especially the length and depth of them (think: commenting on your site, sharing content and so on) all signal just how warm or cold those leads might realistically be.
GRC
Governance, risk management and compliance dashboards track everything from audit results, incidents and everything in between when it comes to compliance.
Rather than juggle and sift through endless risk-related documents, streamlining your GRC dashboard and reporting should be a top priority to any organization looking to up their efficiency. With security as such a hot-button topic for companies today, simplifying such processes should be a matter of “when” rather than “if.”
On-Site Analytics (Google)
It’s easy to obsess over your on-site analytics without actually making much sense of them.
For example, not all traffic is created equal. There’s a gulf of difference between 100 visitors who came as the result of a targeted ad campaign and 100 spam referrals that didn’t take a single action on your site.
Besides that, the most important Google Analytics metrics are certainly up for debate, but can be boiled down to a combination of the following:
- Traffic sources: breaking down where your visitors came from in the first place
- Interactions per visit: this ultimately assess how much your visitors are actually spending engaging with your content
- Bounce rate: important for content and checkout pages alike, how long your visitors are willing to spend on-site
Email Marketing Analytics
On a related note, marketers shouldn’t be content with sub-par metrics in regard to their email marketing campaigns. Even working with a baseline open rate of 20% and a CTR of 2% or so, bear in mind that even the smallest tweaks to campaigns can make a major difference.
From experimenting with subject lines to optimized timing, most automation systems can do the heavy lifting for improving campaign performance.
BI Analytics
Finally, business intelligence analytics keep businesses focus on the big pictures of their organizations. By tracking essential KPIs (think: revenue, growth, customer acquisition cost, etc), companies can make more informed decisions and find weak links in their respective strategies. BI analytics are crucial to assessing the financial health of an organization and whether or not their tactics are quite literally paying off.
Metrics represent an objective to look at campaigns, initiatives and the performance of a company. Rather than rely on gut feelings or assumptions, keeping up with this metrics is a necessary piece of running a business in 2018.
Today’s businesses have no shortage of metrics to track, nor do they have a shortage of software to keep them in the loop above every single piece of their business. That said, not all dashboards and data points can be treated the same. With this list in mind, you can better determine which metrics matter most and what areas of improvement deserve your attention.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
