Top Growth Business KPIs on Grow Business Now

25 Need to Know Key Performance Indicators – Bernard Marr

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be the Vital Navigation Instruments used by managers to understand whether their business is on a successful voyage or whether it is veering off the prosperous path.

The problem is that most managers are struggling to understand and identify the vital few management metrics and instead collect and report a vast amount of everything that is easy to measure

Based on many years of helping companies across the world select and use KPIs, I have picked my Top 25.

Four Business areas:

  1. Measuring and understanding your customers
  2. Measuring and understanding your financial performance
  3. Measuring and understanding your internal processes
  4. Measuring and understanding your employees
Part 1: Measuring and understanding your customers 

1.Net Promoter Score (NPS) – How likely is it that a customer will recommend your business to a friend?

2. Customer Profitability Score – How much profit do individual customers bring your business, after deducting the costs of attracting and keeping them happy with advertising, customer service, etc?

3. Customer Retention Rate – How many of your customers are going to come back for more? And how loyal are they to your brand, organization or service?

4. Conversion rate – How well so you translate enquiries, sales calls and web page views into paying customers?

5. Relative Market Share – How big your slice of the pie is, compared to your competitors in the same market

Part 2 Measuring and understanding your financial performance

6. Revenue growth rate – The rate at which you are increasing your company’s income

7. Net profit – Income minus expenses – the bottom line, but certainly not the only metric you need to worry about!

8. Net profit margin – The percentage of your revenue which is net profit.

9. Gross profit margin – The percentage of your revenue which is gross profit (the profit generated for each dollar of sales)

10. Operating profit margin – Operating income divided by revenue – another measure of a company’s profitability.

11. Return on investment (ROI) The revenue generated by investing money into an aspect of a company’s operations, in relation to the cost of that investment.

12. Cash conversion cycle (CCC) – How long does it take for money invested in the business (for stock etc) to come back to the company in the form of increased revenue.

Part 3 Measuring and understanding your internal processes

13. Capacity utilization rate (CUR) – Are you meeting your potential in terms of amount of work you can carry out, with the resources you have available?

14. Project schedule variance (PSV) – Are your projects reaching completion on time?

15. Project cost variance (PCV) – Are your projects coming in without going over budget?

16. Earned value (EV) metric – Value generated by your company’s ongoing projects.

17. Order fulfillment cycle time (OFCT) – The time that it takes from a customer placing an order, to the product or service being delivered.

18. Delivery in full, on time (DIFOT) rate – Customer orders filled in full, and on time, compared to total number of customer orders.

19. Quality index – Is the quality of your goods or services as high as your customers are expecting?

20. Process downtime level – How much time is wasted due to downtime, technical breakdown or staff sickness.

Part 4 Measuring and understanding your employees

21. Staff advocacy score – How likely are your staff to recommend you as a company to work for?

22. Employee Engagement level – How does your employee’s behavior contribute to the business’s overall goals?

23. Absenteeism Bradford factor – How much is unauthorized staff absence costing your business?

24. Human capital value added (HCVA) – The financial value added to the business by individual members of staff.

25. 360-degree feedback score – How staff rate each other – as well as themselves.

Take the KPI quiz Here.