What is KPI Reporting: A Powerful tool to Your Business Success
How do you measure success? For many companies, this is a difficult question to answer. The answer will depend on what your goals are for the business.
If your goal is to increase conversion rates, then you need to know which KPIs are most important in achieving that goal. In this post, we will discuss how KPI reporting can help you monitor and improve conversion rate optimization strategies!
What is KPI?
A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs to evaluate their success at reaching targets.
KPI Example
Depending on your industry and the specific department you are interested in tracking, there are a number of KPIs that will help measure success. Each department will want to measure success based on specific goals and targets.
- Financial KPI
A financial KPI is a numerical value that demonstrates how effectively a business is achieving key goals. Organizations use these KPIs to understand the health of their company and make data-driven decisions about future strategies. Financial metrics can include income, expenses, profit margins, debt levels, etc.
What is a KPI Report?
A KPI Report is a document that contains information on the key performance indicators. It can contain both current and historical data, with different metrics for each year or month of measurement.
For example, if you are measuring quarterly sales KPIs, in addition to actual monthly figures your report could have projected sales targets based on prior years' trends.
This is an important feature of KPI reporting because it allows you to not only track how your business is performing, but also compare the current year's performance with previous years.
How is KPI Reporting used?
KPIs are typically organized by department or team so that everyone can easily see what their colleagues are working on. A report will include current metrics and may also include projections based on previous years' performance.
Once a KPI Report has been created, it can be used to adjust budgets or determine the funding that needs to go into each department.
For example, if your business is projected to fall behind in sales this quarter, you will know which departments need more resources to achieve your goals.
How to prepare a KPI report?
KPI reports can be used by any company, regardless of size. That being said, if you are a smaller business or department and don't have the resources to build your own KPI report from scratch, there is no need to worry!
1. Connect your goals with KPIs
As we mentioned above, a KPI report is very useful for tracking and evaluating the overall performance of departments.
One of the most important aspects of creating a KPI report is ensuring you have clear goals that everyone on your team can understand and work toward achieving. You should also include an explanation of how each KPI will help you achieve your goal.
2. Use Necessary terms in a glossary
It is important to include a KPI report in your business's documentation because it will benefit everyone involved.
However, if you want the information included in this report to be clear and well understood by everyone using the KPIs then creating a glossary of terms that explains each term used.
This way, external parties who do not understand the metrics used will be able to look them up in your glossary.
3. Keep it concise and relevant
Another important thing to remember when creating a report is that less is more. The KPI reports you to create should only include information about KPIs that are directly related to reaching your goals, with no extra or unnecessary data included.
You should also make sure to include a brief explanation of why you are choosing these KPIs as opposed to others that may be relevant.
4. Orientate towards future targets
A KPI report is a great way to share information within your business because it allows people to see the progress being made towards reaching goals.
However, if you want this information to truly benefit everyone involved then orientating these reports toward future targets will ensure that they are always working towards improving.
5. Trend data
Create a historical trend graph to establish context for your audience, and help them understand the current position of department/team performance.
You should also compare this data with previous years' trends in order to see if there are any major changes over time. This way, you can make sure you have strategies in place that will allow your business to perform well in the coming months.
6. Benchmark your performance against similar businesses
In order to ensure that you have included all necessary information about department/team performance, comparing your data with benchmarking standards from around your industry is a good practice.
This will help you understand how much improvement has been made or if there are any major issues impacting certain aspects of your team's performance.
Provide a comparison against past years' data to assess the success of existing strategies and ensure future goals are achievable
As we mentioned above, comparing this data with previous years will allow you to see how far department/team performance has come.
However, it can also be helpful to include information about what was happening in the business, or what strategies were being focused on, at this time. This way, people will be able to see if the changes you are making now are having a positive impact.
There are many companies that offer these services by creating reports for their customers at an affordable price.
A good practice when preparing a KPI report is to use an external service that allows you to see what other companies in your industry are doing. This will help ensure the information and KPIs included in your report match those of similar businesses.
Once a company has all its data set up, it can keep track of progress throughout the year by sending out regular reports or updating its KPI dashboards on a regular basis.
Benefits of using KPI reports
KPI reporting is used to improve business results by giving you more insight into the activities that are most effective.
For example, if your cost per acquisition has been climbing but sales have not increased in proportion with costs, it may be time to reevaluate your strategy.
With KPI reports, you can identify what KPIs are working and which ones are not. This allows you to determine where your business is succeeding and which strategies need improvement.
The report can also help you identify trends in metrics that are working well or not so well for each department.
- Budget & Spending
It is important to monitor your department's budget and spending so that you can avoid going over. After a KPI report has been created, it provides insight into the metrics that are most effective for each team or department.
If you have hit your targets in previous years by focusing on certain KPIs, then those same KPIs could be used to help you stay within your budget this year.
- Sales
If you are measuring sales KPIs, one of the most important metrics to track is your conversion rate. By monitoring this metric over time, you can see how effective your strategies have been and which ones may need improvement.
Another KPI that is measured in the sales department is the cost per sale. This measures how much it costs to make a sale and can be used to calculate the average profit margin.
- Marketing
In addition to sales, marketing is another department that will use KPI reports. One of the most important metrics in this area is the cost per lead (CPL).
This measures how much it costs you on average for each new person who signs up for your email list or fills out a form on your website.
- Conversion Rate Optimization
In the marketing department, cost per lead is one of the top KPIs. However, in addition to that metric, you may also want to look at your conversion rate optimization (CRO) success rate.
CRO can help you increase sales by converting a higher number of leads into actual customers through email campaigns and on your website.
- Gross Margin
Another important sales metric is gross margin, which shows your total sales minus the cost of materials.
This helps you determine how much money you are making after all costs have been deducted from the revenue generated.
- Operational Effectiveness
In addition to measuring departmental success with KPI reports, it can also be helpful to measure operational effectiveness. This metric shows you how efficient your processes are.
For example, it can measure how quickly and easily employees in each department can handle tasks such as paying invoices or processing customer orders.
Monitoring KPIs is an important part of running a successful business because they provide insight into what strategies work best.
These reports help managers determine which departments and customers need more attention and which ones can be handed off to other teams.
- Productivity & Efficiency
Revenue per employee is one of the most common productivity metrics for companies that sell physical products, such as retail stores.
It measures how much revenue a company generated from its employees during a given period of time (typically expressed in terms of sales per employee for retailers), and is useful to determine the effectiveness of a company's workforce.
Conclusion
KPI reports are an important part of running a successful business, as they provide insight into what strategies work best.
These KPIs help managers determine which departments and customers need more attention and which ones can be handed off to other teams. Start to track your KPIs today to see where you can improve.