📊 Finance Leaders, Time to Revisit Your KPIs

Are you measuring the right business metrics?

It’s easy for finance and operations leaders alike to shrug off this question. The way you’ve always tracked figures and leveraged dashboards has gotten you this far, right? 

But “that’s the way we’ve always done it” isn’t a strong enough reason to continue business as usual. Odds are, the time has come to replace some old metrics.

Using a dashboard populated by the right KPIs matters for growth, innovation and continual optimized performance. If you’re looking for a tip sheet on navigating business performance metrics and creating harmony between strategy and execution, you’re in the right place.

55% of Companies Don’t Have KPI Dashboards

A recent BPM Pulse survey found that only 45% of companies populate their dashboards with KPIs — meaning the other 55% don’t. That number alone is telling.

Why do so many companies choose not to do so? 

The chief culprit? Overwhelm. Dashboards — designed to serve as data visualization tools — can feel daunting to senior leadership, but finance professionals deal with these tools every day.

This means you have an opportunity to leverage your knowledge and skills. If your organization’s KPIs aren’t in a dashboard, have a meeting with senior leadership and outline the KPIs that measure business drivers, growth, and objectives. 

Use your honed data visualization skills to populate the dashboard — your teams will thank you when they have much more precise insights into their KPIs for the next month, quarter and year.

The Anatomy of a High-Quality KPI

Anyone can choose a KPI — but finding the right ones for your organization to align behind isn’t always an easy task. Your KPIs should identify what your organization cares about, ultimately selected in alignment with goals and operational strategy. 

Stuck on how to select and outline KPIs? Before you can even think about adding them to a dashboard, understanding what your company KPIs are (and how many you should have) is key.

To understand if something is a valid KPI, ask these questions ⤵️

If the answer to all of the above is “yes,” then you’ve got a quality KPI. Tapping into this nuanced definition makes it simpler to identify KPIs that are truly high-value and will go a long way in encouraging business growth.

Want to glean practical advice from a seasoned business performance manager on how to navigate the dashboards, scorecards, KPIs, and metrics that drive business success? Craig Schiff, President & CEO, Lead Analyst, BPM Partners, joins The CFO Show for a conversation that covers everything you need to know.

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What’s next…

The marketing team is a critical component of business growth ­— but its relationship with finance is often strained. Why? Because finance is driven by the numbers, while marketing professionals can’t always demonstrate the immediate ROI of their efforts. Joined by Ruth Zive, CMO at LivePerson, we detail some pro tips for smoothing that relationship and building accountability and trust across teams.