Using key performance indicators (KPIs) to meet your business goals

Article
10/03/2024

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that shows how effectively you’re meeting your goals. Think of KPIs as your company’s scorecard, a way of measuring whether or not you’re delivering on your objectives.

Why KPIs matter

Identifying and tracking KPIs lets you know if your business is on the right path—or if you should change course to avoid losing valuable time and money. When used properly, KPIs are powerful tools that help you:

Monitor company financial health.
Measure progress against strategic goals.
Spot problems early on.
Make timely adjustments to tactics.
Motivate team members.
Make better decisions, faster.

Get started identifying your KPIs

So how do you begin to identify the KPIs that are important to your business? Start by clarifying your strategic objectives—collectively or by department.

These goals help you identify which KPIs matter for your company. Picking KPIs that are relevant depends entirely on these objectives and the ability you have to measure your performance against them.

Next, identify the KPI targets that you’re working toward, and how you measure them. Keep in mind that targets can be short and long-term.

Talk to your team and encourage open dialogue about the KPIs and their targets. Are they too aggressive? Too easy? Targets should be challenging but achievable. You should explore the activities and tactics your company uses to achieve them. Take time to understand your current state, so you have a starting point for your KPI.

Get to know the different types of KPIs

Identifying which KPIs you should track becomes easier when you have a better understanding of the types of KPIs that are most commonly used to measure progress.

Quantitative KPIs are all about measurable facts that can be represented with a number. Think stats, percentages, and dollar signs.
Qualitative KPIs involve human interpretations and can’t be quantified with numbers. Think opinions, feelings, and experiences.
Lagging KPIs measure what happened in the past to predict success or failure. Think of looking back at what you accomplished, or where you struggled.
Leading KPIs measure performance to predict future success and long-term trends. Think of looking forward to where you’re headed.
Leading and lagging KPIs are commonly used together. Along with quantitative and qualitative KPIs, they’re a good place to start.

For each KPI that you choose to track, assign an owner and agree on tracking frequency. Whatever KPIs you decide to track, using a KPI platform or tool is key for collaborating with your team on KPI definitions. By collectively defining each KPI, then capturing contextual data and unifying it into a single view, you enable spot-on, real-time actions.

KPI reporting

KPI reports take the information presented on the KPI dashboard to a new level. They go deeper into the data to pull out more detailed insights and analysis.

A KPI report helps stakeholders and team members identify trends or bottlenecks over a specific time period, so that they’re able to make better decisions. Reporting subjects could include:

Insights into the company’s day-to-day operations.
Financial health of the company against targeted KPIs.
Notable trends or patterns presented by the data.
Deeper analysis of the data to assist with strategic decision-making.

To create your KPI report, first determine your audience and the objective for the report. For example, you might want to show company stakeholders Q3 progress toward your revenue target. Make sure that all the KPIs featured in your report point back to that central theme.

Other considerations for creating your KPI reports include:

Explore KPI report templates that might already be included in your KPI tool or platform.
Set a cadence for reporting frequency.
Decide whether your report is static or interactive, for more dynamic drill-downs into data.
Present only the relevant KPIs so you don’t overload the report with KPIs that don’t map back to the reporting - goals.
Make sure your reporting is clear, easy to understand, and actionable for the intended audience.

Tools for implementing KPIs

The following table links to articles about how to use business intelligence and reporting tools with Business Central data to implement KPIs.

To	See
Use the Financial Reports feature to produce financial statements and KPIs.	Using financial reporting to produce financial statements and KPIs
Use Power BI to produce KPI dashboards.	Work with Power BI reports
Analyze financial statements with Microsoft Excel
Integrate external business intelligence tools with Business Central.	External Business Intelligence Tools

KPI best practices

To help you successfully harness the power of KPIs, here are a few tips to get you started.

Identify KPIs:

Only pick KPIs that align to your specific goals. It's difficult to match KPIs to unclear objectives.
Use different KPIs for the same goals if they stretch across departments. For example, the marketing department has different KPIs than the sales team.
Make sure that for whatever KPIs you pick, there’s a core team responsible for defining them.

Monitoring KPIs:

Explore the different dashboards, visualization charts, and templates available in your KPI tool or platform. Select the right ones for your goals.
Make sure to include starting data for comparison, so that your dashboard shows a true representation of company performance and progress over time.
Determine a cadence for monitoring and acting on KPIs. Are KPI dashboards monitored daily or weekly? Do actions only come after reporting or are stakeholders and/or team members empowered to adjust tactics along the way?
Be sure you have simple, end-to-end data protection for data dashboards, with controls for sharing outside the organization.

Common KPI mistakes

Avoid these common KPI mistakes:

Selecting KPIs that aren’t key to your strategic goals. While it’s smart to track your relevant business metrics, not all of your metrics are worthy of KPI status.
Adopting poorly defined or vague KPIs. Collaborate with your team to define the KPIs with specific details on how they're measured. Having everyone onboard makes it easier to meet your goals.
Setting lofty or unrealistic KPI targets. It’s better to set more realistic targets based on historical data, resources, and current tactics. Consider focusing on a specific timeframe or set short- and long-term targets.
Tracking KPIs without owners. Accountability matters, not just for the results but also for the process. Each KPI should have an owner responsible for monitoring, reporting, analysis, and action.
Failing to take action on your KPIs. Whether you’re meeting your goals or falling behind, KPIs are tools to help you make better decisions. So don’t track just for tracking’s sake—take action.

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