Learn how to create KPI reports for quicker, data-driven decisions. This guide provides examples and practical advice to help you create a best-in-class KPI report of your own.
A KPI report allows business leaders to quickly and easily review and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) and thereby know how their organization is performing against specific strategic goals. A modern KPI report uses interactive KPI dashboards with all the underlying data just a click away for deeper exploration. In this way, a KPI report makes it easy for even non-technical users to see trends, recognize relationships or uncover outliers in their data. These insights lead to actions and better business results.
An effective KPI report streamlines data and showcases only the KPIs organizations or teams need to measure performance over time for specific strategic objectives. The examples below should help you create a best-in-class KPI report of your own.
Executive Report
Operational Report
Tactical Report
Analytical Report
Download the KPI Planning Guide to learn:
10 steps to strong KPIs
Which questions help you define your KPIs
170 KPI examples and templates
Healthcare Report
Financial Services Report
Retail Report
Manufacturing Report
Public Sector Report
Finance Report
Human Resources Report
Marketing Report
Sales Report
Supply Chain Report
A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) report shows performance across the entire marketing funnel to identify opportunities for improvement, featuring KPIs such as:
Total visits
Opportunities by quarter
Net-new logos by quarter
A workforce diversity report shows demographic data by country to optimize for inclusion, featuring KPIs such as:
Employees by region
Workers by ethnicity
Salary by country
An interactive KPI report which allows for exploration and analysis is very similar to a modern KPI dashboard. But a traditional KPI report, produced as a static document that is distributed to stakeholders, is quite different from an interactive dashboard.
Pros | Cons | |
|---|---|---|
Traditional, Static KPI Report | Simple for all stakeholders to review | Represents a snapshot in time which means data can be out of date |
Interactive KPI Dashboard | Data is up to date (even real-time) | Stakeholders need the confidence to explore the data on their own |
Creating a KPI report should be easier and more straightforward than it is. Because it’s not, these are some best practices:
Strategic assessment – Create a direct link between your KPIs and your goals so audiences can evaluate the success of the current strategy at a glance.
Glossary – Be sure to define all necessary terms in a glossary as well as KPI formulas in case external parties that may not understand the measures used will be consuming the report.
KPI relevance – Include an explanation about why the performance indicators used are relevant or valid as a measure of success to help audiences better process the information.
Future targets – Establish a forward-looking orientation that helps readers estimate the potential for success and provides a basis for assessing future performance.
Trend data – Use historical trend graphs to establish context so audiences grasp how much performance has improved or gotten worse over time, and to evaluate the success of existing strategies.
Benchmark – Provide a comparison of performance to set it in context and help readers understand positions.
A KPI report is a critical business performance tool because they provide a clear and accurate picture of organizational performance, well-being, and potential for growth. These reports help authors communicate to specific audiences about how well parts of the business or initiatives are meeting objectives. They inspire action and investment. They enable management to identify potential opportunities and challenges early, evaluate the success of existing strategies, and fail fast, when necessary.
There are all kinds of KPIs, depending on business objectives. For example, financial KPIs such as revenue growth rate or net profit margin, sales KPIs such as net sales or sales by region, customer service KPIs such as Net Promoter Score or average resolution time, and marketing KPIs including traffic-to-lead ratio and cost per lead. There are also operational KPIs such as order fulfillment time and time to market. See all KPI examples.