I spent quite a bit of time these past few years talking to various companies in all manners of business verticals about their data. I was presented with this unique kind of opportunity because I was offering a service which lived, breathed and optimized data. The interesting commonality between each of these companies that was revealed to me is that in the great majority of instances most organizations don't really know their data.

I would ask them questions about what their goal was for introducing a recommendation engine into their tech stack and invariably I was told; "we want to increase sales".

There are many drivers behind a rise in sales; from presenting a more personalized product browsing experience, increasing dwell time or converting free players to paid. Yet it took some vigorous dialog for us all to reach consensus.

That experience got me to thinking about businesses in general.

Are businesses paying attention to the right metrics in order for them to know the health of their company as well as drive the bottom line.

KPIs are interesting measures in business unit isolation but the real power happens when the symphony of data that can be captured across the enterprise (big or small) comes together in a meaningful fashion: The KPI dashboard.

image source: mirror42.com — image source: mirror42.com

When DevOps can see the impact outages have on the retention of customers - awesome. The unified data in the dashboard delivers insights such that each group can visualize their role in the success of the company and gives those team members measurable numbers to strive for.

Take the blinders off.

Know your data. Share your data. Succeed.