Most reporting arguments are definition arguments. Two teams bring two versions of revenue to the same meeting, and the hour is spent reconciling them instead of deciding anything.
What a metric layer is
A single place where each business metric is defined once, in code, with a named owner. Every dashboard, model and export reads from it. Nothing is recalculated downstream.
Where to start
Pick the ten numbers your leadership team looks at every month. Agree their definitions in a room, write them down, and give each one an owner who can change it. The rest follows from there.
“If two people can calculate it two ways, it isn’t a metric yet.”
Key takeaways
Define each metric once, in code.
Give every metric a named owner.
Start with the ten numbers leadership reads monthly.
Marcus Okafor
Partner, Data. Builds the platforms and metric layers that leadership teams rely on, after a decade in retail and payments analytics.
