Full KPI Dashboard Guide: Definition, Types & Benefits

When you start a business, you will most likely set some specific goals that you want to meet in certain time frames. Some of those will be short-term goals, while others will be related to a longer period of time. Both of those types of goals will be equally important, though, and you will need to track your progress on a regular basis. How can you do that, though?

Well, you could put a lot of effort into doing everything manually, but here’s the catch. If you do things like that, you should be ready to account for a lot of mistakes. After all, we are human beings and we tend to make mistakes, especially when bombarded with a huge amount of data, and there’s no doubt that you’ll have a lot of data to track when your business is in question. Is there, however, a way for you to avoid making such mistakes?

The good news is that there is a way to do it. Simply put, all you have to do is get properly acquainted with KPI (key performance indicator) dashboards. Once you understand what those are and how you can actually benefit from them, you will probably understand just how much you need them. Well, I say it is time for you to go through the learning process.

In plain words, you should read a guide, such as the one I’ve prepared for you here, which will get you familiar with KPI dashboards in general, tell you more about the different types of those and explain how you can benefit from them. Benefits of KPI dashboards are certainly numerous and quite significant for your entire business, but let us not get ahead of ourselves. We will take things one step at a time in this guide and begin with the very basic question.

What Is A KPI Dashboard?

Unsurprisingly, the very basic question is the question of what KPI dashboards actually are. So, as previously mentioned, you have most likely set a lot of different goals for your particular business. The actual performance of your business is influenced by numerous different processes and activities. Since you want and need to be aware of how successful all of those activities really are, you will need to get real-time reports and overviews of all the departments in your company.

That is where KPI dashboards come in. These tools help you track, organize and visualize all the important metrics of your company, with the aim of providing you with a clear overview of your business’s performance and the expected future growth. Since these dashboards will allow you to track your success indicators in real-time, you will get the opportunity to make informed business decisions, which will keep bringing you closer and closer towards achieving your long-term business goals.

Which KPI Types Are There?

I suppose that you now understand the importance of these dashboards at least to a certain extent. At this point, you have become curious about the various types of KPIs that actually exist, as you need to be aware of those in order to manage to create and get the perfect dashboard tool for you. So, we are now going to help you get a better idea about those different KPI types that are certainly of huge importance for your business.

As you might have understood by now, key performance indicators are metrics that can be measured and that help you evaluate the overall performance of your business and the progress you are making on the path towards achieving the goals that you have set. There are, of course, various different indicators that need to be monitored here. You need to be aware of those different indicators in order to be able to create your overall dashboard strategy and basically get a tool that’ll help you measure everything. Read more about performance indicators in general.

So, the most significant KPIs that are monitored frequently include:

  • Net profit
  • Revenue growth rate
  • Average revenue for each of your customers
  • Customer lifetime value
  • Churn rate
  • Project schedule variance

How Can You Benefit KPI Dashboards?

Before we go any further, I need to remind you of one specific thing that you should always keep in mind. Basically, the list that I have provided you with regarding the most significant KPIs is certainly not complete. So, if you have some other important metrics in mind, you should feel free to incorporate those into your plan, because these indicators can sometimes be different from one business to another. Thus, you need to figure out specifically what is important for your particular company in order to create and get the perfect dashboard.

If you are still unclear on how you can benefit from these dashboards, which is preventing you from getting the right tool for you, let me now speak of that in more details. For starters, I am sure you understand that it is practically impossible for you to measure how your business is doing without actually keeping track of certain significant metrics. Well, the dashboards that we are talking about here help you do the necessary tracking.

The possibility to do the tracking in an easy manner leads to another significant benefit. Essentially, all company owners have to make important decisions on a regular basis – decisions that will impact the success of their business. Making those without having proper data in place is, however, not a wise move. So, by relying on those dashboards, you’ll get all the relevant data that’ll help you make wise decisions.

Jeff Campbell