Overview

What are Governed Metrics?

Governed Metrics are the official, trusted definitions of business metrics in Athenic AI. They turn common questions like “What is ARR?” or “How do we calculate retention?” into one consistent definition that everyone in the organization can use across dashboards, reports, and AI-driven analysis.

Governed Metrics are built on a semantic modeling layer meaning each metric is defined with:

• A clear calculation (the “math”)

• The underlying data sources (models/tables)

• Consistent filters and business logic

• Supported dimensions, entities, and time grains (where applicable)

In short: Governed Metrics are how you standardize metric definitions so the numbers are reliable and repeatable.

What issues does it solve?

Without governance, metrics tend to fragment:

• Different teams calculate the “same” metric differently

• Dashboards disagree

• Analysts spend time reconciling definitions instead of answering questions

• AI tools return inconsistent results depending on how a question is phrased or which dataset is queried

Governed Metrics solve this by providing a single source of truth for KPI definitions. That means:

• Consistency: the same metric produces the same result everywhere

• Trust: stakeholders know what a metric includes (and what it doesn’t)

• Scalability: new dashboards, ad hoc analysis, and AI queries all reuse the same definitions

• Observability: metric logic is explicit and reviewable

How Governed Metrics enable AI-powered Insights

Governed Metrics provide a structured, trusted layer that allows AI to answer business questions using the same logic your team has approved.

Deep Research (Exploratory & Agentic)

Deep Research does not currently support Governed Metrics. This is in active development.

With Governed Metrics, Deep Research can:

• Explore trends and drivers using consistent KPI definitions

• Break metrics down by supported dimensions (e.g., region, product, segment)

• Compare time periods using the correct grains and date logic

• Generate deeper investigations without “making up” metric logic on the fly

Because the metrics are governed, the AI can focus on insight generation (what changed, why, what’s driving it) instead of creating and inferring its own definitions and KPIs.

AI Analyst Queries

When someone asks:

• “What was revenue last quarter?”

• “Why did churn increase in December?”

• “Show me retention by cohort”

Athenic AI can map those questions to Governed Metrics and return answers that are:

• Consistent with dashboards and reporting

• Reproducible by analysts

• Grounded in your approved semantic logic

What to expect next

In the rest of this documentation, you’ll learn how to:

• How to setup Governed Metrics

• How to create and manage metrics

• Data cleaning and common pitfalls