Lean Analytics – Ken Norton (Google Ventures)

Watch this video. It is a fundamental staple from my self-guided education over the past year. After learning from Ken’s excellent presentation, I was able to think about how to properly design my data analysis so that every metric that I collected, analyzed, and visualized would have some actionable piece of information realized. The beautiful business term of INSIGHT!

A personal example I made Excel macros at work as a majority of my work function involved formatting and thus was ripe for automation. I packaged these macros into an add-in that allowed the rest of my team to easily load the macros into their instance of Excel and click buttons. After watching “Lean Analytics”, I made a call that recorded the main metrics I was interested in: the computer name of whoever was using the add-in and what macro they were running. By collecting this information I was able to tell my boss that I was saving cumulative about a third of a team member’s time. I can also see which macros have had the most effect. By recording this information I have been able to focus my attention on where I can have the most impact.

The ability to gain these insights is limited by creativity during both analysis AND planning. To make life easier, think about creating your databases, tables, and other data structures with the intent that you are going to query for specific, actionable information. The more time you spend properly designing your data storage will pay off exponentially during the rest of the business’ life. If you don’t know about data storage best practices, you should google them.

Photo Source: Simran Jindal