Useful and Meaningful Dashboard Metrics for Daily Review

As a business owner, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the seemingly countless metrics you need to manage to keep your operations running efficiently. To accomplish this, some might be tempted to extremes: regularly plowing through all available data points or just doing nothing – we call this crippling phenomenon “choice paralysis.”

However, relevant and meaningful KPIs can help you make informed, data-driven decisions without getting bogged down by unnecessary information. Below are nearly 40 must-have dashboard metrics for owners and managers who want real insight into their business’s performance.

Finding the Right Metrics to Monitor Progress & Identify Areas for Improvement

Realizing a dashboard’s decision-making advantages requires tracking metrics and KPIs that help you monitor progress and identify potential improvement areas.

KPIs differ from metrics in that they are quantifiable measurements that organizations use to evaluate the success of their objectives. In contrast, metrics are data-based measures used to gauge performance and progress. The right KPIs will be actionable and relevant, align with your strategic objectives, and help focus the organization on where it needs to go and how to get there. Further, the most helpful combination of metrics often mixes leading and lagging indicators to help you understand where you’ve been and project where you’re going.

The Importance of KPI and Metrics Dashboards

A KPI dashboard provides the user with vital indicators about progress toward their objectives and highlights areas that need more focus. Insightful dashboards and thorough analysis can help you optimize performance by ensuring that you are maximizing your advantages while minimizing risk. Workers with this enhanced understanding can make better decisions and keep track of their progress at a glance. By swiftly recognizing where they fall short, team members and management can focus on taking corrective actions.

Example Dashboard Indicators for Daily Review

Dashboards you can review daily can make all the difference in keeping track of your business progress. By monitoring a few select metrics and KPIs for each functional area with insightful dashboards, you can evaluate your efforts, progress toward your objectives, and focus on keeping your business running smoothly. 

Most of the following can function as KPIs when measured against a specific target or timeframe. Otherwise, they can serve as metrics to indicate how well your processes are working. 

Finance

1. Revenue – the total amount of money a business generates from sales or other income sources
2. Gross margin – also known as gross profit is the difference between revenue and cost of goods sold (COGS)
3. Accounts receivable and overdue – the amount owed by your customers
4. Cash in – the daily amount of money collected

Customer support

1. Average wait time – how long a customer needs to wait for service
2. Number of incidents closed – measures support team effectiveness
3. First call resolution rate – the percentage of customers satisfied with their initial service request

Operations

1. Production efficiency – an indication of how efficiently resources are consumed
2. Units produced – as a daily metric, this shows the level of daily production
3. On-time delivery rate – the number of tasks or units completed within the specified deadline

Marketing

1. Bounce rate – the percentage of landing page visitors who leave immediately without further site interaction
2. Email campaign performance – measuring open or click-through-rates for a current outbound marketing effort
3. Cost-per-click – monitor how much you’re paying per advertising click
4. Number of new leads generated – the number of potential customers expressing interest in a company’s products or services for the first time

Sales

1. Conversion rate – the number of new sign-ups as a percentage of website visitors
2. Average order size – the average purchase cost of orders
3. Sales per employee – total sales revenue divided by the number of full-time employee equivalents
4. Cart abandonment rate – an e-commerce metric that can provide insights into the user experience, pricing strategy, and payment processes

Human Resources

1. Time to fill positions – the number of days between posting a job and accepting an offer
2. New hires per day/week/month – most helpful for fast-growing companies
3. Absenteeism – can reflect on morale, employee engagement, and team dynamics
4. Staff retention rate – indicates the level of job satisfaction and loyalty among employees, as well as organizational effectiveness in retaining talent

Social Media

1. Number of followers – total subscribers to a brand’s social media channel
2. Reach (impressions and engagement) – the number of unique individuals that see a piece of content, such as a social media post or an advertisement
3. Click-through rate – the number of clicks on an ad or link divided by the number of impressions, indicating the efficacy of a marketing campaign
4. Brand mentions – any instance that a business, brand, product, or service is referenced in social media posts, blog comments, reviews, and more helps gauge public opinion and sentiment towards a brand or product

Website

1. Traffic – total website visits
2. Pages per visit – the average number of web pages a user visits on a company’s website
3. Bounce rate – the percentage of website visitors who leave immediately without further site interaction
4. Average time on site – how long the average visitor stays on a website
5. Traffic sources – where users access a website from (e.g., direct, referral, organic, social)

Product

1. Units sold – total number of products or services sold
2. Percentage of returned products – can indicate quality issues or inaccurate product descriptions
3. Average price per product – divide the revenue earned for each product by the number of units sold

IT

1. Uptime/Downtime – the percentage of time a system is running and available for use
2. Application performance – how quickly and efficiently applications respond to user input
3. Network latency vs. throughput – how long it takes a data set to get from one point on the network to another
4. Errors and exceptions logged – tracks unexpected behaviors or application failures during execution

Monitoring these metrics and key performance indicators can provide insight into each aspect of the business, help guide your team’s decisions, and boost productivity.

Tips for Presenting Dashboard Metrics and KPIs

When presenting dashboard indicators, a clear and concise visual message is critical. You can use charts that are easy to digest and tailor your presentation so the audience can quickly identify and understand the data.

Highlighting the most impactful figures can draw attention to the most relevant information. Remember that simple, clear visuals communicate more than complex graphics or lengthy texts. Showing trends over days, weeks, months, or even years adds extra insight, meaning that changes stick out quickly.

And don’t forget to focus on solutions – what can be done with all this information?

Leveraging Dashboards for Continuous Improvement

Dashboards provide the timely, insightful information required to make prudent daily decisions that advance long-term goals. You can leverage business analytics to track KPIs that show your progress toward your objectives, metrics to measure your processes, and continuous identification of areas for improvement.

Decision-makers can use a dashboard to monitor key performance indicators and strategize accordingly. When combined with other expert analysis tools like predictive analytics, dashboard indicators are invaluable for transforming how companies approach high-stakes decision-making. Of course, consistent progress requires reviewing goals periodically and adjusting to noteworthy changes inside or outside the business. 

A robust dashboard system to track your KPIs and metrics requires the right software for you and your team. You need tools that are intuitive and easy to use but also offer features that allow users to track metrics and trends over time, access real-time data insights, and create customized KPIs based on the specific objectives of various groups or departments. An intuitive dashboard can also be helpful to compare against your business’s historical performance or even other companies in your industry.