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Getting started with PowerMetrics

Welcome to PowerMetrics, a cloud-based web app that helps you succeed with data!

This article introduces some PowerMetrics fundamentals to get you on the path to data discovery, including:

Why PowerMetrics?

Here are just a few of the reasons PowerMetrics is the right choice for your analytics:

PowerMetrics brings self-serve analytics to business users. Consumers access metrics from a centralized catalog, managed by the data team. Choosing from a list of certified, curated metrics makes it easy for business users to select the right metrics for single-source-of-truth data. They’re free to explore, analyze, and personalize metric visualizations (without affecting the source data) and to build and share dashboards and reports.

PowerMetrics makes it easy to see current values and monitor historical and projected trends. Making effective decisions begins with understanding performance for your key business metrics, not only for today, but into the past and the future. Our advanced analysis tools provide everything you need to monitor trends and assess metric values over time.

PowerMetrics lets you interactively explore your data. Dig into your data, try out different visualization types, apply various date ranges, and choose unique ways to segment and filter the results. It's quick and easy and you can see the impact of your choices while you experiment and explore! Need help building visualizations? Rely on PowerMetrics AI for accurate, fast results.

PowerMetrics meets you where you are today and grows with you into the future. With several metric types that can be used standalone or combined as multi-metrics, calculated metrics, and on dashboards, there’s a solution for every data scenario. Data feed metrics are a perfect way to get started. As your data stack matures, our direct to data warehouse and semantic layer solutions enable your analytics journey to continue, seamlessly.

What is a metric?

Metrics represent the numerical values you want to track. Metrics can be simple, like employee count or revenue, or more sophisticated, where the result is based on calculations or aggregations, for example, Revenue per Employee or Customer Acquisition Cost.

Dimensions provide context for the numerical values in your metric. When you create a metric, you choose dimensions by which to segment and filter your data, enabling you to see your business performance from different perspectives. For example, you might choose to segment your sales data based on region, sales rep, or product type.

A metric is a BI artifact that captures the data and meaning around a single business concept. Every metric has a clear, opinionated, structured definition that includes its calculation, its meaning, and how it should be used. Metrics typically also include a primary date (for time series data), historical data, and dimensions that can be used for segmentation.

Every area of business has specific performance metrics that should be monitored. For example, marketers may track marketing and social media metrics, such as campaign statistics, sales teams may monitor sales performance metrics, such as new opportunities and leads, and executives may focus primarily on the big picture financial metrics.

Your PowerMetrics journey

Your journey begins with deciding which metrics are essential for tracking your business’ progress. Next, you’ll connect to your source data and create metric visualizations.

Data analysis takes on many forms in PowerMetrics. Whether it’s viewing and personalizing visualizations in a metric’s homepage, building and experimenting with metrics in Explorer (with optional help from PowerMetrics AI), consolidating related metrics on a dashboard, sharing your insights with others, or monitoring data trends, PowerMetrics will help you make effective, timely data-based decisions!

Discover the metrics you should track

Choosing which metrics to track is not always a "one-size-fits-all" decision, however, there are several key metrics that offer benefits to everyone. Learn more about key metrics.

Interested in learning even more about metrics? Check out our ever-expanding library of metrics at MetricHQ. Not only can you access information for almost 300 metrics across multiple business divisions, such as Marketing, Sales, Advertising, and Social Media, you can also add metrics to your account directly from MetricHQ. Find out how you can learn from, interact with, and contribute to MetricHQ.

Connect to your data and add metrics

Connect to your data - wherever it is!

Is your data coming from spreadsheets and cloud/API services? Instant and custom data feed metrics are likely the best fit.

  • There are two types of data feed metrics. Instant data feed metrics are available for many popular cloud/API services. Based on data feeds that are created and managed by Klipfolio, instant metrics help you visualize data quickly. Custom data feed metrics, based on data feeds you create and manage, can connect to data from just about any service you can think of and are fully customizable. Learn more about adding data feed metrics.

Is your data managed and stored in a warehouse? Set up a connection to PowerMetrics and add data warehouse metrics.

Is your data stored in Cube or dbt Semantic Layer? Connect to the semantic layer service and add semantic layer metrics.

Want to try things out before connecting to your data? Our sample metrics are a great risk-free way to do just that.

  • Sample metrics are managed by Klipfolio in our data warehouse. They’re based on dynamic, realistic data and behave the same way as those you create from your own data sources. Learn more about sample metrics.

Want to combine data from different sources in a single metric visualization? Multi-metrics and calculated metrics are the answer.

No matter the data source and metric type, our flexible design features will help you build metrics quickly and communicate your business data effectively. Learn more about creating metrics.

Visualize your metrics

The first time you open a metric on its homepage, it’s immediately visualized using the most appropriate aggregation type and the most effective chart styles, enabling you to quickly and easily see your data from multiple perspectives, all on one page. However, you’re free to modify the visualization settings to create your own, personal version. Learn more about personalizing visualizations on the metric’s homepage.

PowerMetrics offers a wide array of chart options for visualizing your metric data. Go here for an introduction to our visualization options.

If you want to visualize metrics in an alternative data tool, check out our PowerMetrics Query Language (PMQL) feature. With PMQL, you can extend the value of metrics to external applications, like Enterprise BI, data apps, data orchestration tools, notebooks, and analysis tools, without the requirement for a deep integration or a plug-in. Learn more about PowerMetrics Query Language.

Explore your metrics

Now that you've added some metrics, it’s time to explore your data. When exploring, you make personalization changes that are only visible to you. It’s a great way to experiment with and find the optimal visualization(s) before adding your metrics to a dashboard. Learn more about exploring metrics.

Want to speed up the exploration process or need help finding and visualizing your metrics? Turn to PowerMetrics AI. Using a natural language interface, it interprets your questions to automatically create visualizations in Explorer. Use it in conjunction with manual configuration or to automate the entire experience - the choice is yours. Learn more about PowerMetrics AI.

Create metric dashboards

On your quest to create the ultimate dashboard, you can preview all of your changes before publishing, so you're free to experiment and learn. Your personalized settings are only visible to you. Learn more about metric dashboards.

Metric dashboards are highly flexible and customizable, empowering you to create unique displays tailored to your specific needs and audience. Add several views of a single metric and then apply different filters and segmentation to display your data from multiple perspectives, add text and images, and set dashboard-wide date ranges and filters. You can also personalize your dashboard backgrounds using images and preset or custom colours. Learn more about customizing your dashboard display.

If you’re looking for an even faster path to a professional dashboard, add one of our pre-built dashboard templates. These curated, customizable dashboards include essential instant metrics for our most popular services. Learn more about metric dashboard templates.

Share your insights

Share your insights and keep everyone aware of trends in your business data. Sharing metrics and dashboards helps keep everyone informed and progressing toward common goals. It also encourages collaboration and discussion, leading to meaningful action.

There are many ways to share, including:

Monitor trends

Now that you have some meaningful metrics - don't forget about them! Regularly monitoring your key metrics helps you react to changes and make effective decisions.

Adding goals to your metrics will help you keep a close eye on your data and track its progression. When a goal is reached, you (and everyone with shared access to the metric) can be notified with in-app and email notifications. Learn more about setting metric goals.

Making effective decisions begins with understanding how your key business metrics are performing now and how they’re expected to perform in the future. Our normal range and forecast analysis tools help you assess past, current, and future trends in your metrics. You’ll be able to quickly identify outliers in your data (values that fall outside the metric’s normal range) and see a prediction of future metric performance. Learn more about normal range and forecast analysis.

Find help

Looking for help? We've got you covered! Browse articles in our Knowledge Base, watch videos on our YouTube Channel, and contribute to and ask questions in our PowerMetrics Community. Learn about metrics, as defined by product experts, in MetricHQ. If you're stuck, contact our Support Team at support@klipfolio.com.

Tip: To access our in-app Help, click the  question mark in the left navigation sidebar. In the PowerMetrics Assistant, you can ask questions and get answers (sourced from the extensive range of articles in our Knowledge Base). Click the 3-dot menu in the PowerMetrics Assistant window to open the Help Center/Knowledge Base and to see What's new. You can also contact our Support Team here.

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