#metric-attributes

#metric-attributes

The biggest challenge is that Learning and Development is not positioned as a strategic function in many organizations. Instead, L&D often operates as a function for the sake of having a function. It is rarely used by executive leadership as a strategic support capability and is more often treated as a nice-to-have necessity rather than an integral part of business decision-making.

The more attributes you add to your metrics, the more complex and valuable questions you can answer. Every additional attribute provides a new dimension for analysis and troubleshooting. For instance, adding an infrastructure attribute, such as region can help you determine if a performance issue is isolated to a specific geographic area or is widespread. Similarly, adding business context, like a store location attribute for an e-commerce platform, allows you to understand if an issue is specific to a particular set of stores

Imagine you're selecting an influencer to work with on your new campaign. You've narrowed it down to two, both in the right area, both creating the right sort of content. One has 24.6 million subscribers, the other 1.4 million. Which do you choose? Now imagine you could find out the first had 8.7 million unique viewers last month, while the second had 9.9 million. Do you want to change your mind?

Many organizations, Gans suggests, resemble public airports - full of people waiting for phones to ring, managing buffers, absorbing uncertainty.

Traffic. Focusing on traffic obscures the purpose of AI answers: to satisfy a need on-site, not to generate clicks. AI-generated solutions do not typically include links to branded websites. Google's AI Overviews, for example, sometimes links product names to organic search listings. Thus visibility does not equate to traffic. A merchant's products could appear in an AI answer and receive no clicks.

AI was everywhere, but I wasn't focused on product launches. I was looking at how companies think about data itself: how it's shared, governed and ultimately turned into decisions. And across conversations with executives and sessions on security and compliance, a pattern emerged: the technical limitations that once justified locking data down have largely been solved. What remains difficult is human. Alignment, trust and confidence inside organizations are now the true barriers.

They were trying to get to the bottom of how to diminish catalogue distribution without having a negative impact on store and online sales. They were also keen to define the geographic areas where digital content would work best and how to profile those areas to classify digital purchase behaviour. Together with Analytic Partners they were able to uncover opportunities to eliminate 22% of catalogues with negligible sales impact and increasing digital support in high-performing topologies, preserving€ 294 million in sales.