Justify Your Investment in Data Cloud
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Select the appropriate KPIs, and learn how to calculate them.
- Articulate Data Cloud’s business impact and return on investment.
- Identify the benefits of consumption-based pricing.
Identify Key Performance Indicators
The goal of Data Cloud is to help you make sense of your data and make more informed data-driven decisions that can improve your business. To prove this goal is successful, it’s important to focus on and define specific goals that are trackable and measurable before and after implementation. This can be done by defining key performance indicators (KPIs).
KPIs are measures that demonstrate how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. When selecting KPIs, consider the specific use cases you’re implementing with Data Cloud. For example, personalized marketing campaigns use unified customer profiles to increase engagement and conversion rates. Enhanced customer service uses complete customer histories to reduce average handling time and increase customer satisfaction.
Similar to SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) your KPIs should be realistically measurable.
Explore How Data Cloud Can Impact KPIs Across Your Business
Here are a few examples of how Data Cloud impacts KPIs across different areas and how they’re calculated.
Increase New Sales Revenue
Total sales generated after using Data Cloud to improve cross-sell and up-sell opportunities by using data insights.
- KPI calculation: (Total Revenue from New Sales/Total Sales Revenue) X 100
- ROI: Financial gain through new revenue from business growth
- ROI calculation: Total Sales Revenue - Previous Total Sales Revenue
Improve Win Rate
Percentage of sales opportunities converted into wins based on data-driven lead qualification.
- KPI calculation: (Number of Won Deals/Total Number of Deals (Won + Lost)) x 100
- ROI: Financial gain through new customer acquisition
- ROI calculation: Increase in Won Deals x Average Revenue Per Deal
Increase Click-Through Rate
Improve the number of users clicking a specific link or call to action (CTA) based on content optimization.
- KPI calculation: (Number of Clicks/Number of Impressions) X 100
- ROI: Improve campaign return on investment.
- ROI calculation: Increase in Qualified Clicks x Estimated Value Per Click
Decrease Case Resolution Time
The overall time to resolve a service case is accelerated by data-driven insights and automation.
- KPI calculation: (Old Avg. Time from Case Creation to Case Resolution) － (New Avg. Time from Case Creation to Case Resolution) + (Old Avg. Time from Case Creation to Case Resolution) X 100
- ROI: Improved service agent efficiency and value
- ROI calculation: (Hours Saved Per Case) x (Number of Cases) x (Average Agent Hourly Cost)
Decrease IT Costs
Overall IT operational and infrastructure expenses are reduced by cloud optimization and automation.
- KPI calculation: (Old Avg. Deployment Time － New Avg. Deployment Time) + Old Average Deployment Time X 100
- ROI: Reduction of IT Budget
- ROI calculation: Previous Total IT Cost － New Total IT Cost
View a full list of example KPIs.
Calculate ROI
Once you’ve identified relevant KPIs, make sure you know what data is needed to track that KPI, and then identify how you’ll present your metrics to showcase value. Here’s an example.
For a new automated marketing segmentation, if you save 6.5 hours per campaign cycle, with an hourly rate of $55, and 12 campaign cycles per year, with a setup cost of 30 hours, the annual savings could be $2,640.
- ROI ($) = (Time Saved x Hourly Rate x Campaign Cycles) － Setup Cost
(6.5 hours x $55/hour x 12 cycles) － (30 hours x $55/hour) = $2,640 annual savings
Before implementation starts, the team needs to make sure they track how much time they’re currently taking along with their hourly rate.
Plan Your Credit Usage
When planning for a successful use case that highlights ROI, you also need to be aware of the investment! Data Cloud uses a flexible, consumption-based pricing model, unlike traditional seat-based fees. You pay for used services and resources, like an à la carte meal. Costs adapt to usage changes, with credits tied to data volume, speed, features, and storage. Purchase credits in advance and track them with Digital Wallet, a Salesforce admin tool.
It’s important to look at your first use case and identify features that can cause the most credit usage, such as real-time ingestion. Then review your KPIs. By understanding credit consumption and knowing KPIs in advance, you can link costs with the value you hope to achieve. With your use case in mind, try out the Data Cloud Discovery and Sizing Calculator.
Share Your Success
Once you’ve implemented your use case, it’s time to calculate your ROI and share your results. Start building benchmarks and when presenting your findings, focus on growth over time, improved monthly and quarterly averages, and monetize what you can.
What’s Next
In this module, you learned ways you can gain value by using Data Cloud. You also learned about planning KPIs and identifying ROI, all while planning for consumption pricing. Armed with the metrics and measurement tools to measure, after implementation, you can confidently showcase the strategic value of your Data Cloud investment.
Next, learn more about consumption pricing in Data Cloud Credit Consumption: Quick Look.