Business Improvement

Choose the few KPIs that really run your business

Stop tracking everything. Pick a handful of numbers that show whether the business is healthy.

Beginner8 min read5 steps

What you need

Start from your goals, not from available data
For each business goal, ask which number would tell you early that it is going well or badly. Data that is easy to collect is not automatically useful.
Cover the whole business with 5 to 7 numbers
Pick one or two from each area: sales (new enquiries, conversion rate), money (cash balance, gross margin), operations (on-time delivery, error rate) and customers (repeat rate, complaints). Prefer leading measures that warn you early over results that arrive too late to change.
Define each KPI exactly
Write the formula, the data source, how often it is measured and who owns it. If two people could calculate the number differently, the definition is not finished.
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Build a simple tracker
Make a row for each KPI with its target and latest value. This formula shows the status automatically. For KPIs where lower is better, such as complaints, change >= to <=.
```
A: KPI   B: Actual   C: Target   D: Status

D2:  =IF(B2>=C2,"On track","Behind")
```
Use the numbers to make decisions
Review the sheet briefly each week. When a KPI is behind, agree one action and one owner. If a number has not changed a decision in three months, replace it.

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