I’ve been in the restaurant industry for a while, and over the years I’ve seen it change a lot. When I wrote my first lines of code for a restaurant I recall asking the vendor, “where is your API?” API means more than Application Programming Interface, it is more of a mindset. Think of them more like cultures rather than some technical speak, API’s mean someone thought about partnership when they built the product. Today, loads of companies in the industry have APIs, and there are companies that sell you the API for those that do not offer it. While the technology stacks have evolved, and companies like maple, eatsa and spoonrocket failed, the industry’s fundamental questions and answers are pretty much the same. The way we get our food is changing with delivery, direct to consumer and read to eat at the grocery store. Despite it feeling like things are moving 100 miles an hour parts of the industry are still moving really slowly.
When we at PXY have our pitch sessions or even kickoff meetings with clients, they all go the same way. “I know what you do is important, but I do not know why”. The reality is, most people in all industries really do not know where to start when it comes to data. It has very little to do with intelligence honestly, because I’ve sat at the conference room with true geniuses. These people know their industry inside and out; they have a process for making change. The process they created years ago did not have access to the data that exists today, and they probably did not know what data existed. During this first meeting, we try to talk as little as possible; we set the meeting up to learn, not to explain. The first part of any data process needs to be the questions, not the data. After listening to their process, and understanding what they find value in, our brains goes off to the races to figure out what data will validate or nullify their thoughts. Do snowcones sell better when a slight mist is blowing from the street corner, does a 2 degree change in the ocean temperature cause people to buy more salmon vs oysters, or does baseball on the screen sell more funnel cakes than basketball?
The reality with the industry is that we’ve made getting raw data really simple for the experts. You can now get a replication of the database, you can hire data warehousing companies to pipe all your data into a single source and you can even download every transaction and put it into a google sheet. People for ages always thought the problem was not enough data, or access to the data; but now that we have the data, we realize the problem all along was the process. We started filling warehouses with data that really meant nothing. To be clear, you should still do this, you can never get old data once it is gone; but you should building reports with what actions that will change your business today. Peter Drucker is famous for saying : “What gets measured gets managed”, but at the same time make sure you can manage what you are measuring.This discipline needs to be instilled in your organization from day one. Do not worry so much about data values, but rather data culture. Start to shift your organization around what do I do with the data once I get it. When starting this process off, we often ask “If this metric increased by 20% what would you do”. If the answer is something hypothetical, then that metric probably isn’t as valuable.
Data culture is important because it forces you to focus. Focus on the things that are going to change your business in a meaningful way. Create a simple, easy to understand report in excel or google sheets and live by that report. It should be so easy to explain that in the time you hail a rideshare to the them it arrives, you can explain the entire report. If it takes more than that amount of time, it is too complicated. You can swap metrics in and out over the years (or months), but focus is the primary objective. If you’re a big organization with dozens of departments, the rule still applies. Just apply one metric per department, and those departments can identify more discrete metrics help move that single most important metric.
If this sounds crazy, think about how you manage your life. You probably have a few things you monitor on a daily basis that let you know if you’re doing a good job. Your health app tells you how many steps you’ve taken, your screen time app tells you how much you’ve been on your phone, and your bank tells you your top line cash flow. It isn’t until something seems off that you start monitoring it more closely; your data pipeline is probably a lot of the same.
The good news is, you still have time. Yes, even now (or especially now) you can start to measure the simple things that move company with enough people’s help. Think, in these times, what can you change, and then gather the metrics to see if those changes are being impacted. If you can not do delivery because you sell nitrogen ice cream; think about things you can deliver then worry about measuring if those items are selling better or worse.
As always, here to help. If you loved (or hated) what you read, let us know at hello[at]pxydata.com
