The Data Fluent Culture - Data Fluency: Empowering Your Organization with Effective Data Communication - page 137

Sector metric

Freight Freight cost per mile (total spent on truck or train carriage

divided by miles)

▸

Load factor (percentage utilization of total capacity)

▸

▸

Empty miles (percentage of total miles that carried no
inventory)

Warehousing

▸

Cost per square foot (total warehouse operating costs
divided by size)

▸

Inventory turns (total cost of goods sold annually divided by
average inventory value for the period)

Education K-12

▸

Change in test scores correlated with an increase in per
teacher expenditure on professional development; number
of graduating high school students matriculating in a 4-year
college correlated with hours of guidance counselling

Marketing Customer Acquisition Cost (total sales and marketing cost

divided by the number of new customers within a specific
time period)

▸

▸

Return on Marketing Investment (New sales from a market-
ing program minus cost of the marketing program, divided
by cost of the marketing program)

E-commerce Website conversion rate (percentage of unique visitors to the

website who make a purchase)

▸

Cable Subscription costs to acquire (cost of all marketing, subsi-

dies, and discounts divided by the total number of acquired
customers)

▸

▸

Average revenue per user (total revenue divided by total
number of users)

Source: Modification and expansion of figure from Janquith, 2007

uSING METRICS TO DRIVE ORGANIZATIONAL IMPROVEMENT

Have you seen that movie scene where the weathered old cowboy tames the
impossibly wild stallion? The wise frontiersman takes his time, careful not to
frighten the horse, and gradually shows it what he expects. He uses a soft voice
and doesn't ask too much at first. After he has established trust, it isn't long
before he hops on the stallion and lets it do what it wants to do naturally: gal-
lop into the sunset. There are both leadership and metric lessons in this scene.