In modern data-driven organizations, the term “data product” has emerged as a way to describe well-defined, governed, and reusable data assets. But what if your KPIs—the metrics you use to measure business success—were treated the same way?
Spoiler alert: they should be.
The Problem with Traditional KPI Management
In many businesses, KPIs are:
- Hard-coded into reports or dashboards
- Duplicated with subtle variations across teams
- Maintained in isolation, often by a single person or team
- Lacking context, ownership, or auditability
This makes them fragile, inconsistent, and hard to scale. They’re numbers, but they’re not products.
What Is a KPI Data Product?
A KPI data product is more than just a calculation. It includes:
- A standard definition and business context
- Associated metadata (purpose, owner, methodology, dependencies)
- Governance policies around usage, versioning, and updates
- The ability to be delivered, consumed, and trusted by others
In short, a KPI becomes a first-class asset—portable, discoverable, and reliable.
How RhPM Enables KPI-as-Product Thinking
Rhodium Performance Management™ (RhPM) is purpose-built to turn KPIs into data products. It provides:
- A structured environment to define and manage KPI logic centrally
- The ability to associate supporting context, dependencies, and ownership
- Tools to track comparative data sets like Actuals, Forecast, Budget, etc.
- Built-in support for version control, access control, and metric relationships
This means your KPIs are no longer single-use formulas—they’re governed, composable, and scalable products within your data ecosystem.
Why It Matters
Treating KPIs as data products:
- Aligns business logic with modern data architecture (e.g., data mesh)
- Reduces metric duplication and confusion
- Promotes reuse and consistency across tools and teams
- Makes it easier to onboard new analysts, data scientists, and executives
It’s the difference between a one-off report and a reliable performance platform.
→ Ready to productize your KPIs? Let’s talk about RhPM.
