17 KPIs every data-driven manager needs to lead their team

KPI Management 101

As a manager, you have the responsibility of achieving performance targets, reaching higher performance levels and ensuring that people’s work supports and furthers the organization’s goals. In order to fulfill these expectations, managers must create a cohesive and motivated team by knowing how to define your organization's KPIs and using this information to it's full potential.

When you manage your team with KPIs, data is always at the forefront of every decision you make. What this means is that you are able to adjust your work based on real time data that clearly visualizes your team’s impact on the organization. This blog will provide you with an overview on what a KPI is, and how implementing KPI management will improve not only your performance as a manager, but your teams in general.

KPI Definition

A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs to evaluate their success at reaching targets.

How can KPI Management Improve Your Organization

A KPI is only as valuable as the action it inspires. Too often, organizations blindly adopt industry-recognized KPIs and wonder why that KPI doesn't reflect their own business and fails to affect any positive change.

A lot of people overlook one of the most important aspects of KPIs which is that they are a form of communication. Therefore, they abide by the same rules and best-practices as any other form of communication. When information is succinct, clear and relevant, it is much more likely to be absorbed and acted upon.

How to Start KPI Management

If your team is finding it challenging to develop a strategy for formulating KPIs, start with the basics and understand what your organizational objectives are, how you plan on achieving them, and who can act on this information.

Selecting the right KPIs for your team should be an inclusive and interactive process that involves feedback from analysts, department heads and managers, you! As you dive deeper into your analytics, you will gain a better understanding of which business processes need to be measured with KPIs and with whom that information should be shared.

KPI Types

Selecting the right KPIs will depend on your industry and which part of the business you are looking to track. Each department will use different KPI types to measure success based on specific business goals and targets. High-level KPIs may focus on the overall performance of the enterprise, while low-level KPIs may focus on processes in departments such as sales, marketing or a call center.

KPI Management Reports

The chain of communication is most organizations situates the manager as the go-to person for executives to ask: So, how are we doing? Simple question, right? So why not give a simple answer.

KPI management on a data dashboard let’s you pull KPI visualizations from different campaigns and departments to answer this question with real-time data. Utilizing a dashboard, managers can share links to KPIs with executives or their team with published links and email reporting. Maybe your executive prefers print, KPIs can be converted into PDFs without the hassle of formatting.

KPI Management Presentation

KPI management means performance presentation all the time. When you manage your team with KPIs, you are able to use a TV dashboard to display data in your office all the time, or if you prefer, cut down on the hours spent creating a slide presentation for your weekly meeting, and just put you dashboard up on the screen. Keeping KPI presentations visual is a great way to foster conversation, particularly questions.

Questions are important for KPI management because it means you are continually challenging your team, and yourself, to ask how and why in terms of performance and improvements.

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KPIs for Different Types of Managers

Depending on your industry and the specific department you are interested in tracking, there are a number of KPI types your business will want to monitor. Each department will want to measure success based on specific goals and targets. Take a look at the departmental KPI examples below to learn more about the KPIs you should be measuring: