A Better Way for Business Users and Data Professionals to Work Together

The old cycle: report requests and bottlenecks

Here’s how it usually works:

1. A business user needs a number. They file a request: “Can you give me last quarter’s sales numbers, but exclude Brazil this time?”
2. The data person carves out time, runs the query, and delivers a CSV or dashboard.
3. A week later, the request comes back slightly tweaked: “Actually, could you show the same report, but broken down by product line?”
4. Variations pile up. Copies of copies circulate. Nobody’s 100% sure which version is the “official” one.

This cycle isn’t anyone’s fault. Business users need answers quickly, and data people want to help. The result is wasted effort and growing frustration:

• For business users: Waiting on tickets instead of answering questions in the moment.
• For data professionals: More time spent cranking out ad hoc reports than improving data quality, pipelines, or governance.

As the company grows, the cycle gets worse. Watch this quick video to see what I mean:

A shared goal: trustworthy, usable data

Business users and data professionals want the same thing.

• Business users want data they can trust, accessible when they need it, in a form that makes sense.
• Data professionals want accuracy, consistency, and governance, so decisions never hinge on a broken query or a one-off spreadsheet.

The gap isn’t in intentions. It’s in the workflow.

A better way: metric-first thinking

Metric-first thinking replaces one-off reports with reusable business artifacts.

Think of a metric as a building block, a clear, governed definition of something like:

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
• Customer Churn Rate
• Active Users (30-day)

These aren’t just formulas in a spreadsheet. They’re centrally defined, quality checked, and enriched with context (metadata, lineage, definitions).

Once defined, these metrics live in a metric catalog, a trusted library that business users can browse, explore, and combine.

How it helps business users

• Faster answers: Instead of waiting for a ticket, they can self-serve. Want sales excluding Brazil? Apply a filter. Want churn by segment? Slice it.
• Consistent numbers: Everyone uses the same definition of “revenue,” “active users,” or “customer.” No more meeting debates about whose number is right.
• Confidence to explore: Business users can ask new questions, build dashboards, or use AI to query data, knowing answers are grounded in trusted, governed metrics.

How it helps data professionals

• Fewer ad hoc requests: Once the core metrics are defined, they can be reused many times without new work.
• Focus on higher-value work: Freed from one-off reports, teams can improve pipelines, governance, and strategy.
• Better governance: Metrics are consistent, transparent, and auditable. There’s one source of truth, not ten slightly different CSVs floating around.
• Scalable impact: A well-defined metric can serve dozens of business users, multiplying the value of each hour of work.

Small and mid-sized companies: this works for you, too

This isn’t just for enterprises with a 20-person data engineering team. Small and mid-sized companies often benefit most.

Why? Because in these organizations:

• “Data professionals” are often embedded in other roles, a finance manager with Excel chops, an ops lead who knows SQL, or a marketing analyst who moonlights as the data team.
• Business users need to be nimble. Waiting a week for a report isn’t an option when customers or markets are shifting daily.
• Budgets are tighter, so making the most of each data person’s time is critical.

By moving to a metric-first model, even a lean team can scale its data impact.

PowerMetrics: a metric layer for everyone

This is what PowerMetrics was built for.

• Metric catalog: Data professionals define and curate a governed library of metrics, complete with lineage, definitions, and metadata.
• Self-serve building blocks: Business users can explore metrics, combine them, and build dashboards without writing SQL or filing a ticket.
• AI ready: Users can ask questions in plain language, knowing answers are grounded in trusted metrics.
• Governance and agility: Data teams maintain control and quality, while business users gain speed and autonomy.

The result is a healthier, more productive relationship between business and data. Business users get the agility they need. Data professionals get the time and trust they deserve. The company makes better, faster decisions.

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The future is collaborative

The future of data isn’t business users vs. data professionals. It’s business users with data professionals, each playing to strengths, aligned around a shared metric layer that makes data both trustworthy and usable.

The old cycle of report requests and bottlenecks doesn’t scale. A metric-first approach does. It’s already reshaping how small and mid-sized companies work with data.

Curious how this looks in practice? Try PowerMetrics free to explore a shared and trusted metric catalog.