A Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives. Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels to evaluate their success at reaching 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.
Also Key performance indicators (KPI) are a set of quantifiable measures that a company or industry uses to gauge or compare performance in terms of meeting their strategic and operational goals. KPIs vary between companies and industries, depending on their priorities or performance criteria. Also referred to as “key success indicators (KSI)”.
Key Performance Indicators, also known as KPI or Key Success Indicators (KSI), help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals.
Once an organization has analyzed its mission, identified all its stakeholders, and defined its goals, it needs a way to measure progress toward those goals. Key Performance Indicators are those measurements.
Being SMART about your KPIs
One way to evaluate the relevance of a KPI is to use the SMART criteria. The letters are typically taken to stand for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time-bound. In other words:
Is your objective Specific?
Can you Measure progress towards that goal?
Is the goal realistically Attainable?
How Relevant is the goal to your organization?
What is the Time-frame for achieving this goal?
Being even SMARTER about your KPIs
The SMART criteria can also be expanded to be SMARTER with the addition of evaluate and reevaluate. These two steps are extremely important, as they ensure you continually assess your KPIs and their relevance to your business. For example, if you’ve exceeded your revenue target for the current year, you should determine if that’s because you set your goal too low or if that’s attributable to some other factor.
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