A KPI (key performance indicator) is a measurable number that shows how an organisation or process is performing on something that really matters — revenue per customer, delivery time, time-to-fill, error rate. A KPI only becomes meaningful with a definition, a target value and an owner.
KPIs in practice
The difference between a KPI and 'just a number' is steering: a KPI changes behaviour when it deviates. That is why a small set of well-chosen KPIs works better than forty charts — three to seven indicators per team that someone can actually act on.
The second condition is an unambiguous definition: if sales and finance calculate 'revenue' differently, every meeting is about the data instead of the action. You will find examples by role in KPI dashboard examples; for agencies in Recruitment KPIs.
Related terms
- Dashboard — A dashboard is a visual overview of the most important figures of an organisation or process, automatically refreshed from the source systems.
- BI — BI (business intelligence) is collecting, combining and visualising business data to base decisions on — usually in the form of dashboards and reports.
- Time-to-fill — Time-to-fill is the number of days between opening a vacancy and the moment it is filled — the candidate has signed.
- Single source of truth — A single source of truth is the agreement that every piece of data has one leading source: customer data lives in the CRM, inventory in the point-of-sale system or WMS, invoices in accounting.