By Ravi Gupta
Managing a business can become a gruelling task when you have many data streams coming in every day. Even smaller companies have to deal with the ever-expanding flow of fresh data on a daily basis as the measurements get smarter and data income channels multiply. In this article, we’ll have a look at some of the reasons why your business needs KPI software to optimize your business management.
The importance of KPIs
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. Long story short, this is a measurement that shows how efficiently a company achieves its main goals. There are no right or wrong KPIs. Particular KPIs depend on the relevancy in your organization or industry. The important thing is to choose KPIs carefully, so they would demonstrate the process of reaching organizational goals as fully as possible. Note that each department of your organization needs their own KPIs. Some might overlap. Mostly, these indicators are chosen under the principle of ‘each to their own’.
When KPI management goes wrong
The problems usually start when KPIs are located in wildly different places. Let’s say that you have a warehouse that’s part of a larger operation. The warehouse manager isn’t at work today, but you’d want to quickly check the warehouse’s stats. First, you browse the files located on the cloud to find the total output for this month. Then you need to double-check the goals set for this month during the last meeting. Then you aren’t too sure about the stats, so you’ll need to do some calculations. Do you see where this is going? That’s when KPI management goes wrong. You shouldn’t do so many things manually even if you aren’t the person directly responsible for the relevant department or structure unit. There needs to be a better solution.
Would you drive a car without a dashboard?
Now, would you? Imagine you’d have to separately check the fuel level, engine temperature, speed, battery power… And we are just getting started here. Most of us wouldn’t even think of driving a car like that. But unfortunately, many of us agree to run a company in this fashion. Some data is on the cloud, some metrics are in a private folder on someone’s computer from the marketing department, and so on. All in all, you are bound to get frustrated because you aren’t able to get an up-to-date look on how the operating reality is unfolding for the company. That’s where KPI software comes in.
#1 you’ll get an integrated overview
That’s right. One of the main reasons to invest in KPI software is integration. As you might have understood earlier, the data flow from different sources is a huge headache if no integrational methods are applied. Using KPI software allows all your departments to enter their data manually into one big system, or the program can connect to different data flows automatically. Whichever choice is picked, you can be sure that the integrated connection will boost your business management.
#2 go big in the SEO game
KPI dashboard allows you to track some interesting SEO metrics to boost your investments in website development. You can keep your eye on organic search traffic, analyze possible improvements in search rankings, and appreciate the effort in link building activities.
#3 have a stellar call centre service
If you don’t monitor your call centre services, you have no idea how the customer service experience is for so many of your customers. KPI dashboard lets you measure on-hold time, call volume, longest delays in a queue, call completion rate, and even the longest call hold. Some call centers focus on sales instead of customer service. Then you can measure things like sales per agent, dial per hour, and revenues per call.
#3 get to the top in social media
Social media is a perfect place for measurements because there’s just so much numerical data involved. For example, you can see how your Facebook Ads campaigns are performing, or what your Facebook page demographics are. Also, there are possibilities to measure social leads, followers, shares, likes, and an array of other indicators.
#4 enhance your retail business management
Retail business is a heaven for KPI usage as the buying-selling of goods generates a generous amount of data that can be analyzed. A typical retail KPI dashboard includes customer retention, average purchase value, sales per square meter, and customer satisfaction. Many metrics can be combined to come up with unique indicators that will help you develop your retail business.
#5 Increase marketing team success
Marketing is all about measuring the return on investment for promotional activities and advertising. But nowadays, marketing managers don’t look only at the traditional metrics. Using a KPI dashboard for marketing means that you might measure newsletter signup conversion rate, brand awareness, sessions by device type, and content downloads among other key performance indicators. The particular marketing metrics really depend on your company. For some, content download rate is the absolute key indicator for success. Others might base their marketing decisions on the fluctuations of customer lifetime value (LTV).
#6 Regain control over company’s finances
Revenue management and financial leadership are absolutely essential to any business. Having an overview of financial key performance indicators is easy when you use the right software. Even people and institutions outside of your organization are interested in knowing about the situation concerning finances. Investors, tax authorities, and stockholders demand to see your financial KPIs. Among other things, you can use a KPI dashboard to have a solid overview of inventory turnover, return on equity, and net profit margin.
#7 Manage your supply chain
Logistics can become a real burden if you don’t use a supply chain KPI software. Fortunately, there are a lot of different programs and apps available that let you measure inventory to sales ration, track order statuses and see what the inventory turnover currently is. Advanced systems let you see a map overview of all orders, so you can track as they move across the world. Innovative solutions will help you in supply chain management beyond any expectations.
#8 Save on workforce
Gathering all of these indexes, metrics, and analyzed data means a lot of work. If you prioritize the automatization of measuring your KPIs, then you’ll save on all the workforce costs that are linked to many departments across the whole organization. You might be surprised how much value a few hundred dollars’ worth of software can bring you in the big picture.
Ravi Kumarr Gupta is a niche writer and activate blogger. He loves to write about hot and trending topics and currently writing on business and technology news.
