Duke: Business Metrics for Data-Driven Companies (Week 1, first 35 terms) – Flashcards
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When a web visitor clicks on an advertisement or sponsored link and arrives at the "landing page" of the sponsor.
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click-through
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The time delay in a computerized response caused by processing requirements or distance a signal must travel.
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latency
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Numbers with significant business relevance. Metrics guide the process of inquiry - What decision should we make? What processes should we change to increase revenues, improve efficiency, or minimize risk?
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metrics
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Computer systems that provide a customized response immediately (typically in less than 1 second).
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real-time
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The portion of customers who leave within a year.
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churn rate
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Failure to pay interest or principal on a debt.
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default
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Delivering products or services of consistent quality while minimizing the cost of doing so.
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efficiency
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Costs that do not increase or decrease with small changes in production. An example are salaries for current full-time employees.
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fixed costs
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Finished goods on hand and not yet sold.
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inventory
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Planning for all physical stages of a commercial enterprise from delivery of raw materials to a factory through delivery of products to customers.
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logistics
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Metrics related to production, and in particular, to production efficiency.
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operational metrics
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Net Income, or gross sales minus all accounted expenses during a certain time period.
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profitability
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Customers who buy again repeatedly after a first sale.
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recurring-revenue customers
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Gross income, the dollar amount of sales booked during a certain time period.
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revenue
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The chance of a major negative event such as a product recall, default on a debt, insolvency, etc. In finance, "risk" is often also used to refer to volatility (standard deviation) of returns from an investment.
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risk
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The metrics used to track the steps in the process of converting individuals or Companies with a potential interest in one's product or service into paying customers.
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sales "funnel"
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The process of creating positive awareness about a company's products or services in a target audience, and converting members of that audience into paying customers.
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sales & marketing
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Entities, such as banks, with the contractual right to seize certain assets ("secured" assets) if they are not paid on time.
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secured creditors
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The portion of inventory of a perishable product that becomes unsaleable because it is held too long.
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spoilage
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Costs that go up when production increases and go down when production decreases.
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variable costs
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The standard deviation of a time series of investment returns.
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volatility of returns
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The portion of inventory that becomes unsaleable because it is damaged or lost before sale.
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wastage
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The document that shows a company's assets, liabilities, and shareholder's equity. Traditional financial accounting uses three systems: profit and loss, cash flow, and the balance sheet, to capture all changes in
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balance sheet
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Companies that provide edge caching for a fee. The best-known is Akamai.
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Content Delivery Network (CDN)
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Defined here as Business metrics that show significant change over time intervals of a month or less, and can be impacted directly by changes in business processes.
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dynamic metrics
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Paying third parties (Content Delivery Networks) to locate copies of one's web content on servers physically nearer to customers and other visitors.
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edge-caching
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Accounting used to determine the profitability of individual products and services and make management decisions.
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managerial accounting
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The change in actual cash on hand held by a business over a particular time interval.
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net cash flow
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Informal terms to contrast aggregate metric- which many factors impact - and highly focused metrics that can easily be impacted by changing a single factor.
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"noisy" vs "twitchy" metrics
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How much time is required for a web page to be complete and usable from the point of view of a visitor.
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page-load time
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Accounting measure of whether a company is generating net economic value, after including capital investment and other sunk costs.
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profits and losses
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Total revenues are an "aggregate" metric because they reflect sales across all products and services, and combine new sales and long-term contracts, and involve an element of random variation. For this reason even big process changes for the better or worse may be hard to detect in total revenues.
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revenues as an "aggregate number"
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Also known as "stockholder's equity" - the accounting value of a company's assets minus its liabilities.
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shareholder's equity
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As defined here, Business metrics related to financial and managerial accounting, in particular those used for required quarterly or annual financial reporting. In contrast to dynamic metrics, traditional metrics rarely, if ever, show significant changes within the time interval of a single month, and as aggregated measures, are difficult to impact with isolated business changes.
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traditional metrics
