KPI管理

Key performance indicators are a vital part of business operations that give you a snapshot of how your business is doing at any particular time. Some KPIs, run monthly, show how much your company earned versus how much it spent. Other metrics indicate whether a sales team signed more deals or if customer service improved its interactions. The point of KPIs is to give your company the information it needs to bring in more profits.

What KPIs Measure

KPIs measure the goals set forth by leadership. Individuals, teams and the company as a whole work to meet the goals using quantifiable methods. For example, when a company wants to increase profits by 10 percent in one month, managers may determine the firm needs to add hours to employees, increase prices, reduce expenses or a combination of all three.

Computer software compiles statistics from various areas of the company to create visual representations of how a company performed throughout a specific period of time. A spreadsheet may show how much a restaurant sold during each hour of the day. A line graph could indicate the increase in sales during the past week. A pie chart might illustrate the many things that go into a company's expenses for one month.

The overall aim of KPIs is to give you an idea of how the firm needs to change to make its goals. You must interpret the information correctly so the business gets closer to meeting or exceeding the stated goals. As such, KPIs help improve several facets of your business.

Business Drivers

To effectively use KPIs, you need to know what drives your business. Do you rely on e-commerce interactions with online customers, or does your strength come from customers that order your products in bulk? KPIs help your company by quantifying the things important to your business model.

For instance, imagine that you need to finish making a new order for 5,000 items by the end of the week. Do your metrics indicate you should add more hours to a production line, or should you attempt to speed up the machines that help make the finished product? You do not want to increase hours too much. Otherwise, your profits on this order may decrease. However, you want to keep this customer coming back again if you deliver the goods on time.

Quality of the product also drives your metrics. Can you have the order of 5,000 items done more quickly without sacrificing quality? The company's goals answer these questions. Managers may determine that giving employees extra work may be the way to go as higher paychecks improve morale. On the other hand, finances may be tight during this particular month and your company may need to increase hours just a little bit while finishing the product run with a minimal amount of time to spare.

Thousands of KPIs come into play as your business tries to determine the correct course of action. How you interpret metrics within each department helps move your company towards its goals as a whole.

Marketing

The marketing department, for example, probably measures its sales leads, customer acquisition, response times and qualified leads. The overall number of leads is important, but some important KPIs measure how you convert each lead into an actual sale. How many customers visit your website and create a qualified lead? Suppose 100,000 people visit your website every month. You get 4,500 leads from that total. Your marketing team discovers that 250 of those 4,500 leads are actual people who may order items.

KPIs to take into consideration include how much time your marketing team spends trying to turn a qualified lead into an actual sale. Another metric to examine indicates how your website earns more business by creating solid sales leads from visitors. If you need to tweak the way visitors reach your website, you might need to increase your marketing budget to purchase more online advertisements to reach more people to get more clicks on your website. Once you get more clicks, you should determine how customers navigate your website so the firm creates more qualified leads from the visitors.

All of these types of KPIs help you turn a profit more efficiently. Because information, profits and customers change over time, your business must recognize changes in the statistics so you know how to move forward properly so your company remains viable.