What are Metrics?

Metrics are the quantitative indicators you use to gauge the health of your business. Organizations monitor several different metrics to keep a finger on the pulse of their overall performance.

When building or adjusting your strategy, it's important to look at trends in the metrics that matter to you and identify which ones you need to focus on the most. From there, you can create "measures" from these metrics. Measures are time-bound and have a specific target you must reach by the due date. Alongside actions, these measures serve as success criteria for the objectives in your strategy. 

Some examples:

• Metric - Total business revenue

  • Measure - Achieve total business revenue of $15m in 2024

• Metric - Revenue in the LATAM region

  • Measure - Achieve revenue of $2m in LATAM in Q1

• Metric - NPS

  • Measure - Maintain an NPS between 8 to 10 throughout 2024

Metrics vs Measures:

Metrics	Measures
Not time-bound - Metrics have no deadline or due date.	Time-bound - it is mandatory to have specific start and due dates for Measures.
No target - you should create a measure from a metric if you with to set a target to define success for your strategy.	Have a specific target that must be achieved by the due date.
Can live in any data source (Google Sheets, Excel, etc.,).	Measures live in Cascade.
Can import multiple metrics to Cascade at once if they are stored in a single data source.	Can import only related measures to Cascade at once, and cannot import multiple of those (i.e. you can import multiple measures defined for your plan(s) when you import plan(s)).
All imported metrics are available in a single page, the "Metrics" library.	Can be viewed under Objectives on the individual Plan pages, or reported on across the workspace by creating a table or chart in Reports or Dashboards.
These can exist alone and can also be connected to measures (new or existing) in the workspace.	These cannot exist alone and need to be associated with an objective.

While metrics can be tracked anywhere in any application or tool, measures connected from metrics are tracked in Cascade. i.e.,

1. Navigate to Metrics > Connect metrics to establish connection to a data source and bring those values to Cascade. Pre-requisites are:

   1. You need to have a valid account with Cascade as well as the data source (Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Zapier, and so on)

   2. And, the metric set up and tracked in the connected data source

2. On importing, the metrics are available in the Metrics > Library tab, from where you can connect those to individual measures.

   1. These imported metrics can then be connected either to a new measure or an existing measure in Cascade.

Or, you can simply build "Performance of Single Metric" widget in your dashboard or report to analyze how the metric has performed over time to decide on the further course of action.

Please note that this is an early version of the functionality, and we're working relentlessly to provide more value to this feature.

Why Metrics?

Your organization will have hundreds of metrics, with each unit and function tracking them in their own set of preferred tools and applications. Consolidating these measurable information that're scattered across tools, and driving actionable results is a daunting task. And, building a strategic plan based on this context is a fairly impossible task, let alone adapting or evolving it. 

Metrics in Cascade lets you to integrate or consolidate your metrics and track them in a single pane. The Metrics library brings all your metrics under one roof, thereby providing visibility into overall business health and the ability to identify the non-performing business metrics. There is no more need for you to start anything from scratch, but to build your strategic plan based on the existing health, and keep evolving them.

In other words, instead of creating big strategic plans for a business to launch, Cascade will help a business start with what you're already doing. Track, report on, and interrogate the health of your business in real-time and layer on the “strategy” and structure around that reporting over time - "reverse engineering". This is a bottom-up approach for strategy and will drive more value.

Build a "Performance of Single Metric" widget and based on the metrics and their performance,

• create measures with deadlines and target set from metric

• create actions and projects to attain those KPIs

• define outcomes that you wish to achieve

Now, all these together form your strategic plan.

What are their benefits?

Wherever you and your team work and track your metrics, you can seamlessly integrate those to Cascade, and create a data-driven, collaborative, and more adaptable strategy in Cascade.

Using Metrics, you can have

• visibility - single view of all metrics in one place

• adaptability - evolve strategy from existing health of business

• alignment - understand what is needed and how to contribute towards it

• efficiency - save time on going back and forth between applications or tools

• collaboration - work together to make an impact and improve the health of business

• accuracy - sync up-to-date data from every data source

• reliability - automated workflow that brings updates from other applications to Cascade

• and, guided decision making with data-driven information. 

Different types of metrics:

In the Metrics library, click Create new metric, and you can choose:

• Connect to a source, when you're tracking your metrics in a different source like Excel or Google Sheets, and wish to import them into Cascade. Click this and you can choose the relevant source from the Connect metrics tab. These metrics display the tag Connected in their tiles.

• From calculation, if you wish to create a new (aggregated) metric whose values are basically rolled up or calculated from the existing metrics. These existing metrics can either be imported from a source or manually created within Cascade. Click this and you can choose the relevant metrics from the Metric trees tab. See Create Aggregated Metrics with Metrics Calculations. These metrics display Calculated tag in their tiles.

• Manually tracked, if you wish to create a metric that can be tracked manually within Cascade. In this case, you can create a table by adding data points in the Source data tab. These metrics display Manual tag in their tiles. See Create Manual Metrics for details.

In the Metrics library, you can search for a metric or filter them from the available options. Toggle the Display manual metrics to display the manually tracked metrics along with the imported and calculated metrics.

These metrics can be left standalone or connected to the measures in your plans to track against due dates and targets. The number beside the measure icon on the bottom left of the metric tile shows the count of measures that're connected to a metric. The measure details can be seen in the Measures tab of the metrics' sidebar.

Since the metrics capabilities are integrated into Cascade, it is simple to measure and get insights from virtually any data source at any scale. You can define, integrate, and track metrics and KPIs to help drive better decision making.

Being that one source of truth with centralized access to all company data, Cascade provides the ability to transform statistical information into actionable insights and a compelling narrative with effective data storytelling.FAQs

Is this the new way of integrations?

Metrics & measures integrations for measures will now work via metrics. To hook up a measure to automatically update, first set up the metric and then connect the measure to that metric.

I already have integrations, how will this affect that?

• Connections won’t need to be set up again, the ones used to connect to measures will be available for metrics also.

• You will be able to keep your already created measures but to create new ones you will need to set up metrics first.

Eventually all current integrations to measures should migrate to metrics.

How many metrics can I bring in with this new functionality?

There is no limit to the number of metrics you can import.

Can I connect the same metrics to multiple measures?

Yes you can, this is one of the main advantages of metrics.

Can I pull the metrics data into reports and dashboards?

Yes, build a "Performance of Single Metric" widget to see how a metric is performing over time. Also, you can connect these metrics to measures, and pull the measure data into reports and dashboards to gain insights.

I'm looking for custom integrations using Power BI and Smartsheet.

In the Metrics > Connect metrics tab, under the Custom integrations section, click Request on the app tile that you wish to connect with. The Integration request window opens. Fill in the details and click Send request. We'll take it up from there.