You manage what you measure.
One way to implement that age-old business principle is with new-age analytics to align teams working toward a shared definition of success each day.
Working closely with clients to set goals, monitor progress and optimize activities not only makes it easier to demonstrate the impact of their work but makes it exceedingly easy to show return on investment come budget time.
To support this laser focus on performance and analytics often requires not just a shift in mindset but a shift in organizational and operational structure so you can optimize work based on progress toward achieving your agreed upon goals.
An overarching imperative that should drive such a transformation: We are all accountable to the results we generate.
Analytics no longer can be siloed with a small group of analysts crunching numbers. The companywide outlook must be toward creating opportunities for all members of a client team, from senior leaders to creatives to production managers, to see the results of their work in real time and adapt based on performance.
We are all accountable to the results we generate.
This means making data available and digestible across client teams. Dynamic dashboards displaying client goals, key performance indicators and related metrics serve as the centerpiece for all client engagements. This approach has the added benefit of providing radical transparency — clients can check in at any time to monitor progress toward the objectives.
Although establishing dashboards or similar frameworks is a step in the right direction, it’s meaningless if the data isn’t actionable. That requires an agile analytics process. Following this six-step process and answering key questions at each phase will orient teams to results:
- Choose metrics — How will you evaluate the success of your work?
- Define goals and rhythm — What are your goals for each metric, and how often will the team meet to review those metrics and goals in the dashboard?
- Build hypotheses — What do you see in the data, and what can be tested based on those insights?
- Evaluate, prioritize and implement hypotheses — How will you rank each hypothesis, and what will be greenlighted for testing?
- Test and analyze — How will you collect results from the tests, and how will it be displayed to the team on the dashboard?
- Rinse and repeat — What worked well? What did not work? How can you improve this process?
Regardless of which framework you use to develop these data centerpieces, it’s most important that all members of the client team are engaged throughout the process. Building hypotheses and prioritizing the tests to implement is a group effort, and every team member brings unique ideas to the table. That group ownership of the process will drive significant progress toward the imperative of making everyone accountable to the results generated.
In the digital advocacy landscape, we’ve learned that every tool and approach must be continuously challenged and improved as we work to squeeze more out of the data we collect every day. As we work toward that goal, these dashboards provide our clients with tangible ROI and radical transparency, plus the confidence of a fully engaged team that is laser focused on results.
