Ep: 7 Let's Chat About KPIs for Your Business

Hi, and welcome to the Brave Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Cindy Marie Ferguson. I'm a former corporate girl turned entrepreneur, business educator, and mentor here to help you build a profitable and successful business. After the kids' corporate and chaos. On the podcast, we'll have honesty, meaningful conversations around becoming an entrepreneur, starting a business, building a brand, and my favorite. Systems and processes and so much more. If this sounds like your thing, stick around each Wednesday through guest interviews and solo episodes. I'll be providing insights, tools, business strategies, and actionable support to help you along the way on your entrepreneurial journey. Get ready for some candid conversations, inspirations and invaluable insights. I'm so delighted you're. Let's dive in and get started. Hi, and welcome to the Brave Pivot Podcast. On today's episode, I'll be chatting about KPIs and taking a deep dive into key performance indicators for your business. I'll begin about with talking about KPIs, why they're important, the benefit and the risks of tracking KPIs, some examples of KPI tools for tracking. And lastly, I'll be talking about how to develop KPIs for your business. So let's get started. I'm gonna go ahead and begin by understanding the definition of a kpi. KPI stands for key performance Indicator, and it's a quantifiable measure performance over time for specific objectives. KPIs provide targets for teams to shoot for milestones to gauge progress and insights that help people across the organizations make better decisions. From finance and HR to marketing and sales. Key performance indicators helps every area of the business to move forward at the strategic level. Now as a business owner, it's essential to track KPIs, um, in order to measure the success of progress of your business. KPIs are used to measure the performance of various aspects of your business, such as growth, customer satisfaction, and cost effectiveness. Every business has unique key performance indicators that help them track progress. Many business owners use KPI dashboards to help them visualize, review and analyze the performance metrics in one centralized place. So why are KPIs so important? KPIs can provide your business with a clear picture of your performance across a range of areas, including sales, marketing, operations, customer satisfaction, and so much more. By regularly tracking your KPIs, you can identify trends and patterns that might not be immediately obvious, allowing you to make some data driven decisions and adjust your strategies accordingly. For example, tracking website traffic and conversion rates can provide insights into how well a business's online presence is performing. While measuring customer satisfaction can help identify areas of improvement in customer experience. It's important for businesses, for business owners to choose KPIs that are aligned with your goals and reflect your unique priorities and objectives. The regulatory monitoring and analysis of KPIs can help business owners track stay on track, stay focused on what matters, and drive ongoing success. Next, I'll be talking about the benefits of tracking KPIs. So tracking KPIs can bring many benefits to your businesses of all sizes and industries. And here are some of the key benefits of tracking KPIs. Number one. Improved decision making. By tracking KPIs, businesses can make informed decisions about their performance and prioritize areas for improvement. Now this leads to more effective decision making and better outcomes. Number two, increased accountability. KPIs provide a clear and objective way to measure performance. Allowing business owners to hold employees accountable for their results. Number three, enhanced understanding of performance. By tracking KPIs, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their performance, identify some trends and patterns, and understand the factors that are actually affecting their results. Number four, increased efficiency. By tracking KPIs, businesses can identify areas for improvement and streamline processes to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Number five, better goal setting. KPIs Provide a clear way to measure progress towards goals, allowing businesses to set realistic and achievable target. Number six, improve customer satisfaction. By tracking KPIs related to customer satisfactions, businesses can identify areas for improvement and ensure they're delivering a high quality customer experience. And my last benefit is number seven, improve competitiveness. By tracking KPIs, businesses can stay ahead of competitors and stay on top of industry trends and changes. Now, just like there are benefits to tracking KPIs, there are risks as well, for not tracking KPIs. And I wanna go ahead and bring some of these to light for you. So here's some additional risks of not tracking key performance indicators. Number one, lack of accountability. So without tracking KPIs, it might be difficult to hold employees, or perhaps maybe when your contractors accountable for the performance is there's no clear way to measure success. Number two, slow response to problems. Without tracking KPIs, businesses may not be able to identify problems until they've become more serious issues, making it more difficult to respond in a timely manner. Number three, difficulty adapting to change. Now without tracking KPIs, businesses may have difficulty adapting to change in their industry or market as they may not have a clear understanding of their performance and how it's impacted by external factors. Number four, risk difficulty with goal setting. Without tracking KPIs, businesses may have difficulty setting and achieving their goals as they don't have a clear understanding of their current performance or what metrics are actually important for success. Number five, some loss opportunities for improvement. Without tracking KPIs, businesses may miss opportunities for improvements as they're not able to identify areas that they could be more efficient or effective. And the last risk number six is poor customer satisfaction. Without tracking KPIs related to customer satisfactions, business owners and businesses may not be able to identify and address issues that are affecting customer experience and loyalty. Now that I've shared what are KPIs, why they're important, the benefit and the risk. Now I wanna move on and talk about some examples, some KPIs. Now, there are many KPIs for your business, but here are a few examples just to get you familiar with some of them. Now I'll start by the example of financial KPIs. You know, from expense and revenue to profit margins and cash management. There are lots of options to track financial KPIs. Some examples include gross profit margin. The next example is Operation profit margin, and my last financial, um, example is net profit margin. The next example of KPIs are related to sales. So for sales you can ensure that you and your team are meeting sales targets. And here's some examples for some sales KPIs, new inbound leads. Another example is total pipeline value, and the last one is average order value. Now last but not least, customer service. This one's really important. Customer service KPIs are, examples are average response time. The next one is cost per conversion, and lastly, first contact resolution. Now having insights into KPIs such as these or the KPIs that are unique to your business, it's it's critical to achieving your goals and objectives and regularly monitoring and doing analysis on these KPIs can help your business stay on track and stay focused on what matters most and driving ongoing success. A good strategy to track KPIs for your business is to automate tracking. Tracking your KPIs by using tools. Now here's a disclaimer. Some of these tools I use and some of them I don't. But here are some options for you to consider. Number one, a free option is Google Analytics. This is a free web-based analytics service offered by Google, which allows businesses to track website traffic, user behavior, and conversions. The next option is HubSpot. This is a comprehensive inbound marketing and sales platform, which includes features for tracking, website performance, lead generation, and customer engagement. Number three SEM Rush. Now this is a digital marketing tool that helps businesses track your SEO performance, including keyword rankings, and organic traffic number. QuickBooks. This is an accounting software that allows businesses to track your financial performance, including income, expenses, and profits. And my last example for tracking KPIs, if you're looking for something that's more robust and a customized solution, Microsoft Dynamic 365 is a cloud-based. Solution. It's an enterprise resource planning platform that includes features for tracking, financial performance, sales performance, and customer engagement. Now, these were just some examples of some great options for you to consider for tracking your KPIs. The next question you might be asking is, how do I develop KPIs for your business? So here's a process for you to start tracking your KPIs so that you can build a routine in a business practice for tracking your KPIs in the future. Number one, identify the KPIs to track, determine which metrics are most important for achieving your business goals. Now, you might wanna consider both financial and non-financial KPIs and prioritize those that are most critical to your success. Number two is choose the right tools. Choose the tool or a combination of tools that would allow you to track your KPIs effectively. Consider factors such as cost, ease of use, customization options, and integrations with other systems you use. Number three, set up tracking and reporting. Set up your KPIs in your tracking tool and configure any reporting or alert systems to ensure you receive the information you need in a timely manner. Number four, monitor your KPIs regularly. Regular monitoring of your KPIs. Just stay on top of your performance and identify any areas of improvement. Review your KPIs daily, weekly, or monthly, depending on the frequency of the data you're tracking. Number four, monitor KPIs regularly. Regularly monitor your KPIs to stay on top of your performance and identify any areas of improvement. Review your KPIs either daily, weekly, or monthly, or depending on the frequency of the data that you're tracking. Number five, analyze and interpret the data. Analyze your KPIs to understand what the data's actually telling you about your performance, and look for trends and patterns and consider how external factors may be affecting your results. Number six, and this one's really important. Take action based on the data, based on your analysis of the data, make informed decisions to drive growth and improvement. Consider both short and long-term options to address areas of improvement. Number seven, continuously improve the process. You might wanna continuously evaluate and improve your K P I tracking process to ensure it's delivering the information that you need to drive to success. Consider new KPIs to track as your business evolves and modify your tracking and reporting systems as needed to support your changing needs. Here's my final thought. Key performance syndicators are essential. They're an essential practice for business owners who want to stay on top of their performance and drive success. KPIs, help businesses focus on what matters most by providing a clear picture of the metrics that are most important for achieving specific goals. Here's my final thought. Key performance indicators is an essential practice for any business owner who wants to stay on top of performance and drive success. KPIs, help businesses focus on what matters most by providing a clear picture of the metrics that are most important for achieving specific goals. With the right tools, businesses can collect and analyze data in real time, making it easier to make informed decisions that drive growth and improvement. With the wide range of tracking tools available from free and simple options like Google Analytics to more customizable solutions like Microsoft Dynamic 365 means that there's a solution to fit any of your business needs. By tracking KPIs and making that a routine to your business operations, you can stay on top of performance and make continuous improvements to drive success.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. If something I shared today resonated with you, please tag me@cindymarie.co on Instagram. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave an honest five star review. When you do, it helps us to grow the podcast and helps others to find us as well. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you know when the new episodes are being. You can subscribe right from the app that you're using to listen to this podcast, or you can sign up for email alerts@cindymarie.co. Lastly, if there's something you'd like to hear about in a future episode or if you just wanna stop by and say hello, please feel free to DM me@cindymarie.co on Instagram. Thanks again for listening to The Brave Pivot Podcast and I'll see you next time.