All of the data, none of the intelligence

This was originally part of our “Why this? Why now?” article. Pablo had some good points and it could make a great article:

All the data, none of the intelligence

Yes, there is a lot of data, but as the saying goes, there is very little information, and even less intelligence.

In fact, there is a big black hole between the company’s operational metrics and financial outcomes. The art of connecting non-financial metrics to financial outcomes has not advanced despite cutting edge business intelligence, excel modeling, and in-house custom reports.

The problem is bigger than what it seems at first, and nobody talks about it.

And the comment by Pablo:

Pablo Vidal Arean 5:23 AM Aug 12 Sometimes is more “things taken for granted” vs “ nobody talks about it”.

“Should we grow or optimize?”…of course grow. But if you realize your unit economics are crap, any growth will make the hole bigger.

Same happens with “Brand”. Sure its key. But tell me why with numbers.

Or user segmentation…

Article idea:

Sure, nobody really understands what it means to go from a non-financial metric like Unique Users to a financial metric like ARR. We use things like AOV and ARPU to try and back into it.

But clearly the customers do not think in this way. There is a reason, some non-financial reason that they deem there to be a greater utility/value than the price they pay.

To Pablo’s point, perhaps the reason that nobody talks about it is because it’s just taken for granted. E.g. “Sure, we sell a widget so all we need to do is get more customers that want to buy widgets”.

There must be more in there. There is a reason the customer wants a widget. There is a reason they choose this widget over that widget. There are definitely reasons they would/not come back to buy more widgets.