Modeling and Metrics

In Structured, the way you interact with data becomes streamlined and intuitive. Instead of dealing with a tangled mess of raw tables and columns, Structured transforms that complexity into coherent, understandable models. These models represent the key concepts your business revolves around—like “Customer,” “Order,” or “Revenue”—bringing structure to your data and making it usable for everyone, not just the technical folks.

Next, we’ll dive into how you can take this foundation of models and use it to build and manage your company’s key metrics, ensuring consistency and clarity in your reporting and decision-making.

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Introduction to Metrics in Structured

In any data-driven business, metrics are essential. They’re the numbers that inform your decisions, track your progress, and measure your success. But without consistency, metrics can lead to confusion. Structured’s metrics management makes sure your key metrics are defined once and used consistently across your entire organization, providing a single source of truth for everyone.

Metrics in Structured are not just out-of-context numbers anymore. They are tied directly to your business objects. This connection between business objects and metrics makes sure that your metrics are always grounded in your core business concepts. Instead of having multiple teams define their own version of “revenue” or “customer churn,” Structured makes it possible to centralize these definitions, so that everyone is working with the same understanding.

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Understanding Metric Definitions and Usage

Every metric in Structured starts with a definition. A definition is simply a rule for calculating the metric. For example, Customer Churn Rate might be defined as the number of customers lost during a period, divided by the total number of customers at the start of that period.

Structured ensures that these definitions are easy to find and use, so no one has to guess how a particular metric is calculated. These metric definitions are also self-documenting, meaning they include:

• The data source(s): Where the data behind the metric comes from.
• The calculation method: How the metric is calculated (e.g., sum, average, ratio).
• The business object: The high-level concept the metric is tied to (like Customer or Revenue).

This documentation helps ensure everyone understands the meaning behind the metrics and uses them consistently.

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Creating and Managing Metrics

Creating and managing metrics in Structured is a straightforward process. Whether you’re defining a new key metric or managing existing ones, Structured gives you the tools to ensure accuracy and consistency.

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Step-by-Step Guide to Defining Metrics

Now, the new metric is available for reporting, dashboards, and queries across the platform. And because it’s tied to your business objects, it will update automatically as new data comes in.

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Organizing and Managing Existing Metrics

Once you’ve defined a few metrics, you’ll want to keep them organized and easy to manage. Structured offers a simple way to:

• Search and Filter Metrics: You can filter metrics by business object, data source, or type (e.g., financial metrics, customer metrics).
• Edit or Update Metrics: If the underlying business logic changes (e.g., you change how you calculate customer churn), you can easily update the metric’s definition. Structured will apply the new logic across the platform automatically.
• Archive Deprecated Metrics: As your business evolves, some metrics may no longer be relevant. You can archive those metrics without deleting them, preserving historical data while keeping your current metrics list clean.

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How to Track and Monitor Metrics Over Time

Structured’s dashboard lets you not only define metrics but also track them over time. This is key for understanding trends and spotting anomalies.

Here’s how to monitor your metrics:

• View Historical Data: Each metric comes with a timeline view where you can track how it has performed over days, weeks, months, or years. This is particularly useful for metrics like Revenue or Customer Growth.
• Set Alerts: You can set up alerts that notify you when a metric crosses a specific threshold (e.g., if churn rate spikes or revenue drops).
• Export or Share: Structured allows you to export metric data for further analysis or share it with key stakeholders. You can also sync metrics to tools like Notion or Slack for real-time updates.

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Best Practices for Metric Management

Good metric management goes beyond defining metrics—it’s about making sure the metrics stay consistent and relevant as your business changes. Here are a few best practices:

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Keeping Metric Definitions Consistent Across the Organization

Inconsistent metrics are one of the biggest causes of confusion. If two departments define “Revenue” differently, you’ll end up with conflicting reports. Structured ensures consistency by centralizing metric definitions. Once a metric is defined, everyone uses the same version of that metric, no matter where they are in the company.

Here’s how Structured helps:

• Define Metrics Once: Set up key metrics centrally in Structured, and make sure everyone uses these standardized definitions.
• Document Changes: If you update a metric definition (e.g., changing how you calculate churn), document why the change was made and how it affects your reports.
• Communicate with Stakeholders: Make sure relevant teams know when key metrics change to avoid confusion.

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Example Use Cases for Metrics in Decision-Making

Metrics are only useful if they help drive decisions. Here are some real-world examples of how companies use metrics in Structured to inform their strategies:

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Summary

Metrics are the heartbeat of any data-driven business. In Structured, metrics are tied to your business objects, ensuring they’re always accurate, consistent, and actionable. You can easily define, manage, and track metrics, ensuring everyone in the company is on the same page when it comes to key numbers.

By connecting metrics to your core business objects and tracking them over time, you get a full view of your company’s performance without worrying about miscalculations or conflicting reports. In the next section, we’ll explore best practices for collaborating with your team and using Structured to share insights across your organization.