DAMA Puget Sound Chapter Hosts Tech Meet on Rethinking Business Metrics in the AI Era

The data management association's featured speaker challenged professionals to move beyond vanity metrics and embrace causal frameworks for measuring AI's true business impact.

Apr. 17, 2026 at 7:35am

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A highly detailed, glowing 3D macro illustration of a complex data processing circuit board with neon cyan and magenta lights illuminating the intricate components, conceptually representing the tangible, high-tech nature of modern data infrastructure powering AI and analytics.As AI spending surges, data leaders must move beyond vanity metrics to uncover the true business impact of their investments.Bellevue Today

The Data Management Association of Puget Sound (DAMA-PS) welcomed data expert Dharmateja Priyadarshi Uddandarao as its featured guest speaker at the April Chapter Meeting. Uddandarao's presentation, 'Designing Non-Traditional Business Metrics to Measure Success in the AI Era,' argued that traditional dashboard metrics fail to capture AI's true incremental value, and instead advocated for causal inference methods like A/B testing and propensity score matching to reveal the actual business impact of AI investments.

Why it matters

As AI adoption accelerates across industries, organizations are struggling to accurately measure the return on their AI investments. The session highlighted how traditional metrics based on correlation rather than causation can dramatically overstate or understate AI's true impact, with profound implications for strategic decision-making.

The details

Uddandarao systematically dismantled the reliability of common corporate dashboard metrics, showing how they indicate correlation but not causation. He introduced causal inference methods as superior alternatives, including A/B testing, propensity score matching, difference-in-differences, and causal forests combined with double machine learning. Through case studies, Uddandarao demonstrated how these approaches can reveal AI's true incremental value, a distinction he argued will be essential as AI spending accelerates across industries.

  • The DAMA Puget Sound Chapter Meeting took place on Tuesday, April 14, 2026.
  • DAMA Day 2026, the chapter's flagship annual event, is scheduled for May 15, 2026.

The players

Dharmateja Priyadarshi Uddandarao

A Senior Statistician and Data Scientist at Amazon who delivered the featured presentation at the DAMA Puget Sound Chapter Meeting.

Uzma Khan

President of DAMA – Puget Sound, the host organization for the event.

Shamnad Shaffi

VP – Programs and Education of DAMA – Puget Sound, the host organization for the event.

Karrie Guymon

VP – Marketing & Communications of DAMA – Puget Sound, the host organization for the event.

DAMA Puget Sound

One of the longest-standing professional chapters in the data management industry, serving as a driving force in the Pacific Northwest for over 40 years.

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What they’re saying

“Dashboards tell you what happened, but not why.”

— Dharmateja Priyadarshi Uddandarao, Senior Statistician and Data Scientist, Amazon

“In the AI era, the companies that win won't just be the ones that invest the most, they'll be the ones that measure the best.”

— Dharmateja Priyadarshi Uddandarao, Senior Statistician and Data Scientist, Amazon

What’s next

DAMA Day 2026, the Pacific Northwest's premier data conference, is scheduled for May 15, 2026, at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington. The event will explore how data strategies, architectures, and emerging technologies can turn complexity into clarity and data into decisive, high-value actions.

The takeaway

As AI adoption accelerates, organizations must move beyond traditional dashboard metrics that show correlation but not causation. Embracing causal inference methods can reveal AI's true incremental value, empowering data leaders to make more informed strategic decisions about their AI investments.