Hey there! It’s Jerry Garrett, back with another post. This week, let’s chat about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). You see, not everything you measure holds equal importance. KPIs are those critical measurements that truly matter.
The trouble with measuring is that if you track too much, you’ll find yourself drowning in a sea of useless data. Measurements that don’t help improve your system are simply a waste of your precious time and energy. Sadly, it’s all too easy to fixate on what’s easy to measure instead of what’s truly important—your KPIs.
Take business revenue, for example. Most people might think it’s a KPI. Sure, if you have $1 million in revenue, that seems great. But if it cost you $2 million to collect it, then profit is the real KPI here—not revenue.
Now, let’s consider code. Many believe professional coders must have millions of lines of code in their programs. But focusing on quantity isn’t the key. Instead, fixate on efficiency and maybe you can accomplish the same task with far fewer lines of code.
It gets even worse if payment is based on the number of lines written. As a pro, you could write code in 10 lines or stretch it out to 100 lines—but which is better?
Now, let’s look at four core business processes:
- Value creation: How fast does the system create value? What level of resources is currently flowing into the system?
- Marketing: When advertising through banners or social media, how many people pay attention? How many prospects give permission for more information?
- Sales: How many viewers turn into paying customers, and how many just watch the ad and leave?
- Value delivery: How fast do you deliver the product or service after receiving payment? What about complaints and returns?
- Finance: What’s your profit margin? How much purchasing power do you have? Are you financially stable? Keep your KPIs to 3 or 5 at most. Too many and you’ll lose focus trying to juggle them all.
And That’s it for this post, See you all next week.