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Shifts in the marketplace create a sense of urgency. Organizations evaluate their strategies, reprioritize, and make tough decisions. But the one thing that remains constant is performance reports. 

While all organizations use reporting to understand the health of their business, not all reporting is created equal. In fact, there are some reporting methods that might actually be hurting your business if they pull your focus away from what’s most important. 

To help you make the most efficient use of your resources, we’ve put together a guide for how to think about your reporting methods, and the most important metrics to focus on. 

Let’s get started. 

Data collection methods matter

As an enterprise organization, complexity is a constant challenge. Not only are you serving a variety of customer segments, but those segments also need different things from your product. With so many variables, it’s imperative that your data is standardized and comprehensive. The way you collect data matters just as much as the data you collect. 

For example, automated data provides a level of accuracy you cannot get from self-reported data. What’s more, consolidating the number of platforms that you pull data from helps ensure data cleanliness and relevancy. 

When you think about how to report on performance, remember to remove as many layers of complexity as possible. A single source of truth for your data will ensure every team stays on the same page and works towards the same goal. 

The danger of activity metrics

The next piece to building effective performance reports is to evolve past activity metrics and focus on business outcomes. Activity metrics, generally, are those that tell you how much of a task was completed, but not necessarily how that activity impacted the larger business objectives. 

For example, you might see in a report that one customer success manager (CSM) sent 125 emails last month. That is helpful to know, but it’s not enough information to build a strategy around. For example, how many of those emails discussed expansion opportunities compared to the number of emails about rescheduling a weekly meeting? Would you have achieved the same customer health score if that same CSM only sent 100 emails? 

When thinking about the data your team uses to make strategic decisions, make sure that each metric can be connected to your larger goals of adoption, expansion, and renewals. Going back to our example, instead of settling for numbers of emails sent, pull data on the email types. How many emails does it take to get your customer to talk to an account manager for an upsell? What emails push your customer health score up and which ones lower them? 

The more context your data has, the easier it is to take actions on. Make sure that the reports you use to build efficient growth strategies are contextual, granular, and connected to revenue. 

Create a single metric your entire team can work towards

The final consideration is to determine the single metric your entire organization can work towards. A north star both focuses your entire organization on what’s most important, but it also helps refine your strategies to be more efficient. Anything that doesn’t work towards the single most important goal gets deprioritized. 

For most enterprises, that metric will be net revenue retention. But your team might have a different goal in mind for the next year. Whatever you decide, make sure that each department understands how their efforts ladder up to that goal, and how they can help each other create more strategic workflows. 

Learn more about how Retain.ai improves your data and workflow intelligence

To see why Retain.ai is trusted by enterprises to be the single source of truth for data, reporting, and workflow intelligence, check out our website. You can also schedule a demo to see how we can help your organization in a matter of days.