Datasets and KPIs

What is a Dataset?

Think about working on a monthly budget. Let’s say you have a singular spreadsheet tracking your monthly automatic payments for May that includes info such as the company name, the amount, and the date. Now just this one spreadsheet alone could be a dataset. It would be small and you may not be able to gain many insights from just one month of automatic payments, but it is still a dataset. If you wanted to gain further insight into your monthly payments, your dataset might include every spreadsheet you have of automatic payments for the past year. If you wanted an overview of your whole budget, you might add spreadsheets of your taxes, paychecks, and grocery bills to your dataset, such as the dataset below.

Diagram of a dataset with spreadsheets of automatic payments, variable expenses, and paychecks for the month of may Diagram of a dataset with spreadsheets of automatic payments, variable expenses, and paychecks for the month of may

KPIs

Key Performance Indicators are commonly used across many businesses and organizations. They aim to measure performance and provide additional insight into future decision-making processes. However, each KPI is only as effective as its parameters. Often problems can arise if KPIs revolve around goals or datapoints that don’t drive business success. When considering KPIs, we want to focus on the quality of the KPI instead of the quantity of KPIs.

Using the SMART method will help when structuring KPIs so that you ensure that they provide useful insights and observations. The SMART method when related to goals states that they should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

One benefit worth highlighting is that the proper use of KPIs can assist in cross-team collaboration and alignment around a common organizational goal.

Once a team has a good understanding of KPIs and how it relates to their project it will help you identify what kind of data is and is not relevant. Furthermore when you are viewing datasets it will allow the user to more easily and swiftly filter and clean data.