Assessing 2021 KPIs
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are critical to help us understand how our business is performing.
As we begin 2022 and become excited and enthusiastic about all future opportunities and challenges we look forward to this year, we need to pause and reflect on the year that has passed and consider how successful we were in 2021.
Failing to understand the positive and negatives of 2021 can lead us to repeat the same mistakes, missed opportunities and fail to achieve our business and personal goals for the current year.
So, what do your key performance indicators (KPIs’) look like for 2021?
Did you plan at the start of the year what you were going to achieve?
Where SMART objectives?
We need to set goals for our business every year not simply at the start of our business when we create a business plan. We also need to make sure that these KPIs are balanced and not simply focused on one element of the business that we know we are comfortable with.
Understanding how your business is performing is more than just looking at cash in the bank (although this is probably the most important).
When we think about our KPIs from a Business Analytics point of view, we want to make sure we have clear KPIs defined. We also have to make sure we have the information available to help us measure the success or lack of success we are having with these KPIs. If you are looking back to last year and feel that you don’t have all the information you need to measure or make an assessment on your 2021 KPIs, now is the perfect opportunity to address this for 2022. Not only is it important to set your 2022 goals now, but make sure you are capturing the information needed to measure these through the year.
For many, this may not the most exciting activity to be getting on with right now. I’m sure catching up on emails, networking, speaking to customers, building relationships with leads and opportunities is far more exciting.
However, this is the best time of the year to start as you mean to go on!
Learn from the mistakes and missed opportunities for 2021 and hit the ground running with 2022.
KPIs as part of a Balanced Business Scorecards
One of the best ways to ensure that your objectives for the year are giving a proper perspective on our businesses performance, it to set create a broad range across more than one area of your business. Following a Balanced Scorecard framework can support you with this and force you to create relevant business goals are right for your business but are also balanced.
The below example was create using Microsoft Power BI, meaning that the key business metrics cab be easily accessed and shared with anybody in the business. You can read more about how Power BI can help you business check out another one of our Power BI for Small Business blog or Microsoft Power BI services offered by Appsure IT.
If you want to try Microsoft Power BI yourself for free simply go to the Microsoft Power BI site and get started.
Creating Objectives is not always an easy thing to do and will require you to thing strategically about success looks like and what objectives can help you assess that. To help you with some ideas we have listed some simply examples that should help you focus your attention. This list is not conclusive and not all will be required for your business.
Examples KPIs
Finance Outlook Business KPIs
| Objective | Goals |
| Increase Revenue. | Increase net revenue by 10%. |
| Increase cash in Bank. | Increase cash in bank from £50,000 to £60,000. |
| Increase Director Dividend payment. | Increase Director Dividend payments from £30,000 to £35000. |
Customer Perspective Business KPIs
| Objective | Goals |
| Have a high average customer rating | Increase the value of each purchase by 15% on average. |
| Increase repeat / returning customers | Increase repeat customers by 10%. |
| Reduce number of complaints | Reduce number of complaints 50%. |
| Improve payment options | Increase payment options by adding online payment option. |
| Increase customer engagement | Send monthly email newsletter to all existing customers. |
| Improve reputation as expert | Produce 26 blogs on company website covering all areas for services provided. |
Internal Process Perspective Business KPIs
| Objective | Goals |
| Offer a choice of sales channels | Transfer at least 30% of sales to new sales channels. |
| Create more sales leads | Increase sales leads by 15%. |
| Convert more leads to sales | Improve conversion rate from 25% to 30%. |
| Reduce sales conversion time | Reduce sales conversion time from 60 to 45 days. |
Learning and Growth Perspective Business KPIs
| Objective | Goals |
| Have a skilled sales force | Train 100% of the sales team. |
| Perform more networking | Increase networking from 2 to 3 events per week. |
| Perform more 121 with other networking contacts | Increase 121 from 4 to 6 per week. |
| Increase staff profile | All staff to create 4 blogs for company website with the year. |