This post is mainly for -

First-time founders

Anyone interested in setting up a data culture and practice in their workplace

Why is it important?

Often, while starting up, we either do not make much use of the data or end up doing a quick Excel analysis. Though excel works for individual needs, it does not paint any picture for your team members.

This is where the need for a central data-based dashboard comes in! Be it tracking DAU or anything more completed, this could be one of the things your entire team should look at once a week at least.

Not only this ensures everyone is on the same page, but it also helps to point out patterns that would have been missed out otherwise.

Enough about the motivation, let’s quickly look at some of the exciting tools that can be used for this!

Metabase

Metabase is an open-source, FREE to use platform for all your questions related to data. Having researched a lot, this is the one I liked the most!

It’s easy to set up - takes less than AN HOUR!

You do not need to have SQL/Query expertise to get answers to your questions! It gives you a quick scan of each table and then lets you select, filter, aggregate, join and visualize using a simple UI.

Link

(Do share if you want to recommend anything else)

How to make the most out of it?

  1. Investors/Board Members Dashboard
    Make use of the groups and permissions settings to set up a separate dashboard for external people, with the answer to some of the most important questions.

  2. Top 3 or 5 questions
    Just like too many cooks spoil the broth, looking at too many metrics might divert the attention from the most important ones. Keep a list of 3 (at max 5) questions you would like to look at each day.

  3. Schedule
    Once you have the top list of questions, set up scheduled emails or slack messages that include all of the questions on a dashboard. PS - You can email a dashboard subscription to any email address, so even members who don’t have Metabase accounts can receive the data (they would n to be able to click on charts to view it in Metabase though)

  4. Track KPIs, performance, etc.
    Have not used this myself but if you have an operation/support heavy team and your data tracks any action performed by a team member, this could be another use case, where the team members can track the number of cases resolved.

  5. Groups and Permissions
    Use these features to let team members dig up their own patterns and set up their own metrics!

An Interesting Use Case

Adding an interesting use case from personal experience - If you’re a B2B company, then you can use Metabase to set up personalized dashboards for your clients. We had set up a dashboard for our big clients where the relevant stakeholders (HRs in our case) can use it to track the usage of our offerings by their employees, at department, location, and many other levels!

Summary

  1. Use Metabase - free, no SQL expertise required !!
  2. Decide 3 questions/metrics you want to track
  3. Set up the internal and external dashboards (encourage team members to track it at a particular frequency)

Play around!

Metabase dashboard

image

Source

That’s it for this post. Ping me if you want any help setting it up, have any questions, or anything related!