Develop a Metrics-Driven Governance Playbook

Positive ROI is an important goal for many AI initiatives. Yet, the only way to achieve it is by making the right decisions and course corrections on a consistent basis. This piece explains how to set up your governance structure, decision-making processes, and workflows to ensure AI programs align with business goals.

These insights came from Developing a Metrics-Driven Governance Playbook, an AI Academy for Marketers course presented by Seth Earley (@EarleyInfoSci) of Earley Information Science.

Watch the video below for key course takeaways, or keep reading!

The Importance of Governance in AI

Many look at AI as a project instead of a long-term program; however, AI requires continuous management and support. That is why governance—having a formal framework of best practices and controls in place—is so important when applying AI into your business. 

There are some challenges to overcome when developing AI governance programs:

• You don’t have clear objectives. If you don’t have clear goals, your team will not be working toward the same target. Make goals specific for the purpose of clarity.
• Your budgets are incorrectly allocated. Numbers talk. Use AI to give you a clear picture of what your finances should look like. 
• Your company doesn't know what success looks like. When creating your goals, make sure you know what the overall end result will be. If you don’t know what you’re working toward, then it will be impossible to know if your efforts paid off.

Governance gives you a structured process to make decisions, implement changes, and successfully measure outcomes. It is important to establish who makes the decisions, what decisions need to be made, and who is in charge of implementing them.

The Customer Journey

Every industry has a different customer journey. Whether it is insurance, telecom, manufacturing, or financial services, there is a certain path customers take before reaching that final destination. 

However, each individual step in a journey should not be the focus. Instead focus on key performance indicators. Align your decision-making and governance with the needs of your stakeholder groups and the metrics that are important to them.

The customer journey allows us to focus on three things:

• Analyze metrics recorded at each stage of the customer life cycle. This includes search navigation, engagement, conversions, and quality content.
• Look at the improvements. Using your obtained metrics, you can identify weak points in the customer journey. Where do they stop in the journey based on the data?
• Analyze the value of interventions. Take a look at the “before and after” results after taking corrective action. Determine what was worth it.

It is important to note how to use your metrics and how they influence each other in your governance playbook

Measure Customer Impact

While collecting data is important, the ability to measure your data is even more important. To do this successfully, make sure you have established a baseline that can be used as a point of reference for your analysis.

Important questions that can be answered through data include:

• Are your customers getting to where they need to be?
• Are they achieving their goal?
• Are they taking multiple side streets before reaching that destination?

Once these questions are answered, it is time to make decisions.

You should have a decision-making procedure and someone who provides supervision and oversight. Every organizational structure will look different, because every company is different. It is just important to make sure you have clear objectives that line up with customer needs.

Measure ROI

ROI is one of the main goals in a business. To improve it, you’ll need to measure a couple things:

• Quality: Is your work successful? Is it delivering quality to your consumers?
• Completeness: Does the data allow you to measure the impact of your interventions?

Scorecards are a helpful tool. Consider a process scorecard, data scorecard, and technology scorecard. They will indicate your SEO rate, traffic and page entries, and click-through rates plus more.

Bringing It All Together

You want the ability to leverage product data and AI initiatives using metrics-driven governance processes. Here is how:

• Create a governance charter. Explain your goals and why.
• Have a set structure. Establish roles for each employee.
• Obtain necessary artifacts. These include change requests, forms, and change control logs.
• Create a communication plan. You need a place to plan for auditing.
• Hold governance meetings on a regular basis. These will keep everyone up-to-date.

Overall, take a good look at the customer life cycle. Understand who the stakeholders are and determine what decisions need to be made. Learn to monitor your results, and you will be able to put together a governance program that will benefit everybody.

Want To Learn More About What AI Can Do for You?

These insights came from Developing a Metrics-Driven Governance Playbook, an AI Academy for Marketers course presented by Seth Earley of Earley Information Science.

AI Academy for Marketers is our members-only online education platform and community. The Academy features dozens of on-demand courses and certifications taught by leading AI and marketing experts.

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• Live monthly Ask Me Anything sessions with instructors. 
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• Keynote presentations from the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON).
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