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Lessons in Flying Blind

Below is a lesson in how flying blind is not serving your company and also what the promise looks like if you can buckle up and commit to the work to get there.

Story 1 | Centralized Company Analytics for Sustainable Growth

As with all companies, growth brings complexity and potential information silos. In this case, the company had the usual tech stack including CRM, a marketing platform, a subscription billing system, and a SaaS platform all disconnected from each other.

Challenges

  1. The topline revenue was growing rapidly.

  2. The company was losing more money as the company grew.

  3. The executive team could not accurately articulate the health of the company.

Assessment

  1. Multiple sources of truth for departmental data.

  2. No centralized, common, or automated means to gather company performance in real-time or without significant staff time.

  3. Information on company performance was not widely available to contributing staff.

  4. In short, the company was flying blind.

Execution

  1. Created and installed a master common identifier for all clients across all related systems.

  2. Hired and assigned a business intelligence team and assigned them to the COO.

  3. Convened a committee of staff to create a common definition and set of benchmarks for their company.

  4. Built an internal product roadmap for the BI team to create a common data repository to build a common operating picture for the executive team. Multiple rounds were spent to validate the calculations with multiple departments from finance to customer support.

  5. Appropriate views of company reports were created for the various roles of the company to automatically distribute reports in real-time for a broad awareness of company performance.

Results

  1. The common operating analytics were distributed to every department in the company. 

  2. Company and individual incentive programs were tied to business goals more readily.

  3. Predictive reports were developed to proactively address client issues before they led to churn and to prioritize future product enhancements.

Lessons

  • You must start with a single universal ID that ties all systems together. Without a single ID, you can't tie the customer lifecycle into a single view of the health of the business.

  • Simplify your back office before you start. If you have 2 CRMs (one in marketing and another in sales), bite the bullet and consolidate them. Be ruthless and make people defend their favorite system of choice.

  • Take the time to build consensus on the top three things (no more than five) that determine the success of your company. Next, get strict agreement on how to calculate it and then train everyone on what it means for your business...BEFORE you build any dashboards. You'd be surprised how many ways people feel Net Revenue Retention (NRR) should be calculated.

  • The upfront investment to build a common operating picture can be daunting and plan on it costing 2x what you thought, but don't back away from the endeavor. The results are astonishing and pay huge dividends for years to come.

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