Key Performance Indicators

What is KPI Meaning?

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a defined value that is used to show and measure the progress in realizing goals. A KPI indicates whether an organization has attained its goals in a specific time frame.

How to choose the right KPIs to monitor?

The metrics that are measured and tracked depend fully on the organization’s strategy. Dragon1 promotes creating a list of priorities, goals or issues and per item breaking it down to values you can measure.

A key performance indicator can be seen as a step on a ladder where the end of the ladder is a realized goal. A KPI is often a percentage or part of your goal. With KPIs, you can see how far you are behind or how well you are on track.

KPI examples

Below are the lists of common key performance indicators for the following areas:

• Architecture Management
• Project Management
• Sales and Marketing Management
• Financial Management

Here is the list of the KPI examples:

• Monthly sales growth
• Monthly sales/new customers
• Monthly new leads/prospects
• Number of qualified leads
• Resources spent on one non-paying client
• Resources spent on one paying client
• Customer lifetime value/customer profitability
• Lead-to-sale conversion rate
• Cost per lead by each channel
• Cost of a new client by each channel
• Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual sales
• Average conversion time
• Lead-to-close rate: all channels
• Customer turnover rate
• Number of monthly sales demos
• Customer engagement level
• Number of abandoned shopping carts
• Shopping cart abandonment rate
• Number of monthly quotes/orders
• Average purchase value
• Average order value
• Sales per representative
• Sales by lead source
• Inbound calls handled per representative
• Outbound calls handled per representative
• Average annual sales volume per customer
• Average monthly sales volume per customer
• Relative market share
• Product/service usage every day
• Value of returned goods and warranties
• Asset turnover ratio (sales to assets)
• Percentage of total sales from existing customers
• Sales reps per $k revenue
• Monthly sales quota attainment
• Sales quota attainment by a sales representative
• Number of client accounts per account manager
• Days sales outstanding
• Net profit margin
• Operating cash flow (OCF)
• Current ratio
• Quick ratio / Acid test
• Net profit margin
• Working capital
• Current accounts receivable
• Current accounts payable
• Accounts payable turnover
• Accounts receivable turnover
• Accounts payable process cost
• Accounts receivable turnover
• Budget variance
• Budget creation cycle time
• Line items in budget
• Number of budget iterations
• Payroll headcount ratio
• Vendor expenses
• Payment error rate
• Internal audit cycle time
• Finance error report
• Debt to equity ratio
• Return on equity
• Cost of managing business
• Resource utilization
• Total cost of the finance function
• Planned value (PV)
• Actual cost (AC)
• Earned value (EV)
• Cost variance (CV) (planned budget vs actual budget)
• Schedule variance (SV)
• Schedule performance index (SPI)
• Cost performance index (CPI)
• Planned hours of work vs actual situation
• Overdue project tasks / crossed deadlines
• % of overdue project tasks
• Missed milestones
• Percentage of projects completed on time
• Percentage of canceled projects
• Percentage of projects on budget
• Number of budget iterations
• Percentage of tasks completed
• Project resource utilization
• Cost of managing processes
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Monthly new leads/prospects
• Qualified leads per month
• Marketing qualified leads (MQL)
• Sales-accepted leads (SAL)
• Sales qualified leads (SQL)
• Cost per lead generated
• Net promoter score
• Cost per conversion
• Cost per conversion by channel
• Average time of conversion
• Retention rate
• Attrition rate
• Monthly website traffic
• Traffic from organic search
• Returning vs new visitors
• Visits per channel
• Average time on page
• Click-through rate on web pages
• Pages per visit
• Conversion rate for call-to-action content
• Inbound links to website
• Traffic from organic search
• New leads from organic search
• New leads from organic search
• Number of unique keywords that drive traffic
• Keywords in top SERP
• Rank increase of target keywords
• Conversion rate per keyword
• Page Authority
• Google PageRank
• Volume of traffic from video content
• Leads & conversions from paid advertising
• Number of monthly PPC campaigns
• Cost per acquisition (CPA) & cost per conversion (CPC)
• Click-through rate on PPC advertising
• Traffic from social media
• Number of leads from social media
• Number of conversions from social media
• Conversion rate for social media leads
• Managed audience size
• Engagement rate
• Social media mentions
• Social media ROI
• Content quality on blog
• Number of monthly blog visits
• Blog articles published this month
• E-books published this month
• Infographics published this month
• ROI per content type
• Web traffic from PR campaigns
• Number of clippings
• Calls from PR campaigns
• Media impressions from PR campaigns
• PR ROI

Measure KPI progress

Here you see an example of how to relate the measurements of Health Informatics and KPIs or other benchmarks.