Guide to KPI reporting – Definition, Examples, Templates & Tools

Every business is interested in growing. And inorder to measure their growth they need to measure various KPIs.

KPI is nothing but key performance indicators which are quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific objective.

And KPI reporting is a management tool that facilitates the measurement, organization, and analysis of the most important business key performance indicators.

Keeping all this in mind, if you need to meet your organizational objectives? Then you need the proper measures in place. And a KPI report is a great place to start.

Let’s dig deeper…

What is a KPI report?

A KPI Report is a tool that visualizes the Key Performance Indicators of a business. Companies use these reports to track progress against targets in order to improve performance. A KPI Report will typically contain a mixture of Charts, Graphs and Tabular information.

As businesses differ, the KPI report for every business varies. The most important step for a business is to figure out which are the crucial KPI they want to measure and then measure them correctly.

In this article, I will be providing a sample KPI report which is also commonly referred to as a KPI template or KPI measure template which describess every element you need to implement at your own organization.

But before we go that far, you first have to understand what is a KPI report? and why KPIs are critical to your company’s success?

Why Are KPIs Important?

Every organization has objectives or high-level company goals. Key performance indicators (KPIs)—also called “strategic measures”—are both actions and tools of measurement used to monitor the progress toward achieving these goals.

So a KPI is a measurement device that helps you understand how your organization is doing in regard to its goals.

So why are KPIs important? Because they act as a proxy between your organization and the goals you’re looking to achieve.

Types of KPI Reports

Depending on your business goals, you can set up various KPI reports. The most popular KPI report templates include:

1. Growth reports
2. Financial reports
3. Marketing reports
4. Sales reports
5. Management reports
6. SaaS reports

Before we dive into each, its important to understand the goal of your KPI reporting – why do you need to track all those specific KPIs? The best practice is to monitor only the metrics that are easily measured, informative, and actionable (meaning that you can improve the numbers by taking a specific action).

The advantages of KPI reports are:

• Important metrics are accessible in a few clicks
• Automated real-time updates on the performance
• Tracking project & sales performance
• Beautifully visualised data is easily understood
• Actionable metrics help to make the right decisions

KPI examples

Now, to illustrate the power of such Kpi reporting, here are 6 KPI examples that are specific to 3 of the most critical areas of business: financial, management, and sales.

Growth reports

For small businesses and startups, it’s highly important to be aware of growth and customer retention.

KPIs used:

• Customer Lifetime Value
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
• Account Retention
• Net MRR
• Account Expansion

Marketing reports

Businesses put in tons of effort to improve their marketing. So tracking their marketing activities is very important. These KPIs help measure marketing success. These are usually monitored by the marketing team, digital marketers, website analysts.

KPIs used:

• Website Traffic
• Social Media Engagement
• Campaign ROI
• Time on Site
• New Leads / Month

Financial reports

Financial KPI reports tell you about the financial standing of any company. They are usually monitored by the company’s accounting team and the CEO.

KPIs used:

• Net Profit Margin
• Operating Cash Flow
• Burn Rate
• Working Capital
• Monthly Net Revenue

Sales reports

This KPI example offers an ideal overview of the progress of your sales department, drilling down on sales KPIs such as sales growth, sales targets, ARPU, CAC, and CLV.

This key performance indicator report empowers sales managers to take a full snapshot of their sales operations without losing any data, enabling them to create an extensive sales report.

Here it’s possible to take an overall glance at your sales performance or analyze specific pockets of information to your advantage, increasing metrics like customer lifetime value and average revenue per unit as a result.

KPIs Used:

• Sales Growth
• ARPU
• Lead to opportunity ratio
• Opportunity to win ratio
• Lead Conversion Rate

Management reports

This management-centric KPI dashboard focuses specifically on total revenues in addition to customer-based revenues while providing vital insights that will help you set informed sales targets for your organization.

These management reports are useful to anyone who is in a managerial position in order to access the health of their business.

KPIs used:

• Customer acquisition costs
• Customer lifetime value
• Sales target

SaaS reports

The 3 most critical areas relevant to any SaaS-based organization is– customers, recurring revenue, and costs.

Saas businesses wish to track metrics like churn rates, lifetime values, MRR, ARPU etc. These reports give them a clear view of how their SaaS business is performing and what areas need to be improved.

KPIs Used:

• MRR
• Churn
• LTV

What are the best KPI reporting tools?

There are many KPI reporting tools available in the market. But since organizations differ, their goals and objectives differ too. So the best KPI reporting tool might differ based on the need of the organization.

Some of the best kpi reporting tools you could look at are:

• Putler
• Geckoboard
• Klipfolio
• Grow
• SimpleKPI
• Smartsheet

Each of these tools provide an array of KPIs and are also easy to setup.

But since KPI reporting is important for all departments of any business, it’s essential to evaluate which of these tools will be most beneficial to you and to your entire team.

But before that, let’s define which KPI reports are important for your business and later evaluate the tools that provide it.

How do I prepare a KPI report specific for my business needs?

Now that we’ve established why KPI reports are valuable, let’s explore how to go about actually creating your own KPI report to fulfill the needs of your organization.

Step 1: Decide on the scope of your KPI report

The first step in the process of creating a good KPI report is to be very specific about what you’re trying to represent.

Step 2: Select your KPI reporting style

There are several ways that you could go about presenting your KPI report. Here are two KPI examples of the most popular formats for KPI reports:

Option 1: Dashboard style
Option 2: Table / Snapshot Style

Step 3: Select the KPIs to include in your KPI report

The last part is to jot down the KPIs you want in your KPI report. If you’re struggling to come up with what KPIs you want to track in general, take a look at our KPI examples for different departments.

If you are still on the fence and need more guidance, take a look at the tool mentioned below. It’s a tool that covers the most important key performance indicators necessary for every online business.

All-in-one KPI reporting tool for your business

Now that we know the importance of KPIs and why its important to track them, lets talk about how to track all the important KPIs in a single tool.

Putler is a KPI reporting tool that helps track all the important business KPIs in a single place. So instead of using multiple tools and sharing access to each within your team, Putler helps you save time, lessen confusion and track all the important metrics for your entire business.

Key Performance Indicators you can easily track in Putler

Putler has around 153+ metrics across verticals like products, sales, customers, website traffic, SaaS and lot more. But to give you a quick snapshot, here are some of the most important business Kpis you can track within Putler.

Sales KPIs

Sales is the most important aspect for any business. So measuring sales is very critical. Putler provides multiple KPIs which makes measuring sales simple and easy for the entire team.

Sales KPIs tracked in Putler:

• Net Sales
• Gross Sales
• Average Sales
• Recurring Sales
• Forecasted Sales
• Sales heatmap

Product KPIs

Putler also provides metrics to measure the performance your products. Some of the key metrics related to products provided in Putler are:

• Product leaderboard
• Top 20% product contribution
• Fastest moving product
• Slowest moving product
• Product trending up
• Product falling down
• Product frequently bought together

Customer KPIs

Similar to products and sales, Putler provides key metrics related to customers as well.

• Average LTV
• Order/customer
• Revenue/customer
• Refunded
• Top 20% customer contribution
• Purchase history
• Customer segment
• New, Returning, Lost

SaaS KPIs

Unlike other reporting tools, Putler handles both SaaS as well as non SaaS businesses. Putler provides important SaaS metrics which help measure the performance of the Saas businesses.

• MRR
• ARPU
• Churn
• CLV
• Subscription refunds
• Trials
• Upgrades
• Downgrades

Website KPIs

Putler integrates with Google Analytics and pulls in all the important website metrics like-

• Visitor metrics
• Conversion metrics
• Google Ads metrics
• Search keywords
• Channel metrics

Our final word

A KPI is associated with the core goals of your organization. It requires an understanding of your business and its objectives and the ability to turn those objectives into measurable goals. As business goals differ, the tools to measure these goals also might differ. But if you wish to stick to just one tool for measuring all your KPI’s, Putler is a great option. It covers most of the most important business KPI’s, it can easily be shared across teams, it is easy to understand and use and takes minimal time to setup.