Financial KPI Dashboards: Selecting and Tracking the Right Metrics to Drive Growth
Growth doesn’t happen out of thin air—it requires strategy.
That may sound obvious, yet it can be deceptively hard to achieve. With today’s ultra-connected world saturating every ounce of our operations in stats and data, mapping a path toward meaningful growth often boils down to one question:
How can you parse the meaningful numbers from the irrelevant?
In part, the answer lies with key performance indicators (KPIs), metrics that help orient you in a sea of nebulous decision-making.
But simply choosing from a template of “Top 10 KPIs for Industry X” won’t achieve targeted growth. You need KPIs that match your business goals. And you need to track them in a way that separates the chaff from the treasures.
Let’s dive into how to choose and monitor KPIs that make sense for your growth plan.
Organic Growth: The Gold Standard?
You’ve likely heard a lot of talk surrounding the necessity of “organic growth strategies,” praised as though it were some unknowable, immeasurable force.
So let’s first make it clear—true organic growth is not:
- Skyrocketing to stardom overnight after an ad goes viral
- Sudden sales influxes after a competitor folds
- An industry disruption that sends a dark horse into the stratosphere
While these factors are the foundation for many success stories, banking on them is like waiting for a miracle—far from a logical strategy.
In contrast, genuine organic growth is often slow, even imperceptible. And it’s always based on your business’s merit alone rather than, for example, mergers and acquisitions.
To unlock this true organic growth in the current landscape, businesses must be intentional. Quantitative. Data-driven.
And that’s exactly what KPI tracking can deliver.
Choosing Growth Metrics: 3 Core Areas
Instead of waiting for the stars to align, determining the proper growth metrics allows you to build strategies based on actual numbers.
To that end, all of your KPIs should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Relevant to your goals
- Time-specific
While this narrows down the (incredibly long) KPI list somewhat, we can do better.
Let’s zoom in on three categories directly connected to growth, and consider some KPI options that might resonate with your goals along the way.
#1 Customers
Gathering as much information as you can about your customers—what they want, their pet peeves, their buying behavior, their values—is a powerful approach.
Collecting and tracking customer-specific data can help you tweak your products and services, strategically invest in support infrastructure, and lay the groundwork for improved customer retention—all things that can help you find ways to boost sales.
Some KPIs tied directly to customer behavior and satisfaction include:
- Customer support ticket resolution time
- Number of repeat purchases/contracts
- Average customer reviews/ratings
- Typical purchase times/days
You’ll notice that these all meet our KPI criteria: they’re highly specific, quantifiable, relevant to growth, and (when assessed in a certain date range) time-bound.
#2 Cost
Most businesses don’t nail their overhead-to-revenue ratios overnight. Instead, they optimize their costs over time by:
- Tracking their spending (on staffing, utilities, marketing, and so on)
- Tracking their revenue (as a whole, from specific streams, or both)
- Identifying patterns and correlations between spending and earning
If you’re looking to refine your spending approach, track KPIs like:
- Gross and net profit margin
- Total operating expenses
- Average account value
- Employee training and onboarding costs
You can compare these with earnings metrics like:
- Receivables values
- Lead conversion rates
- Dollar values for new contracts
- Gross and net sales
#3 Courtship
The cost of ‘courting’ customers—marketing—is technically overhead. But as marketing opportunities expand in the digital age, building a strategy without tracking campaign effectiveness is a sure way to blow your budget.
While there are hyper-specific marketing KPIs that correspond to specific outlets (like monthly website traffic or average engagement per social media post), businesses can also track broader marketing metrics like:
- Customer acquisition cost
- Conversion rate across channels
- Number of qualified leads
- Average conversion time
Keep in mind that, as your marketing efforts grow, the more complex (and specific) KPI tracking can become. If your business is new to making data-driven strategies, start small—tracking conversion rates on just one channel, for instance.
Tracking Metrics with the Right Tools
Keeping KPI tracking cost-effective requires building processes that are easily automated and as hands-off as possible.
Luckily, there are several tools to track growth-focused metrics. Consider your main options (from least to most efficient).
Spreadsheets…
…Does anyone like spreadsheets?
If you’re working with a relatively small staff or have a razor-thin scope of services, tracking one or two KPIs with a spreadsheet could help you get your feet wet.
That said, spreadsheets generally aren’t the best option since they:
- Require a lot of manual tinkering to update and maintain
- Struggle to present data in a digestible, legible, or any appealing way
- Often demand constant communication between marketing and sales teams
Tracking data in Excel may be better than completely winging it, but the truth is that every business can benefit from more specialized tools.
Investing in better tech or partnering with professionals should definitely be on your radar if you’re still living in Spreadsheetville.
Accounting Software
What about accounting software—platforms like Quickbooks?
These are definitely a step up from spreadsheets.
Accounting platforms make it easy to:
- Automate data entry tasks (and decrease human error))
- Generate reports, graphics, and other easily-understood visualizations of your KPIs
- Track dollar value metrics
But they’re still not the perfect solution for KPI tracking. Why?
- Non-dollar KPIs (like conversion rates, customer support metrics, and numbers of qualified leads) aren’t as easy to track on these platforms—because they’re designed for more accounting-specific tasks.
- They don’t always offer powerful analytics functions. In other words, they can tell you what’s happening with your books, but they can’t tell you why it’s happening (or what’s going to happen—a must for future-minded companies).
Analytics Platforms
If accounting software is a step up from spreadsheets, then analytics platforms are the pinnacle of growth planning and KPI tracking.
Analysis-based platforms (like Syft Analytics) are designed to log and track data across multiple arms of your business, seamlessly create graphics (or more old-school statements, if that’s what you’re into), and offer some forecasting functions.
They’re the perfect match for businesses looking to:
- Track KPIs in multiple areas (financial, marketing, and so on)
- Experiment with AI and other high-tech, generative tools
- Consolidate information from multiple sources
There’s really only one tool that beats high-octane analytics platforms—and it requires bringing a human back into the loop.
A Surefire Growth Tool: Expert Accounting Support
But let’s revisit our initial question for a moment: How can you parse the meaningful numbers from the irrelevant?
With millions of possible KPIs and nearly the same number of tools to track them, finding a match for your business requires more than guesswork.
It requires expertise.
An accountant, controller, or CFO can help you choose metrics that best match your goals, leverage tools to track them, and (most importantly) actually understand what you’re looking at once you generate the fancy graphs and charts.
And with fractional accounting services, you don’t have to hire an in-house staffer to get access to this peak growth tool.
At Quadrant Advisory, fractional accountants, controllers, and CFOs are our bread and butter. We connect businesses looking to grow with experts who can help them reach their goals—whether you’re looking to graduate from Excel or build a rock-solid operating budget.
Ready to learn more? Schedule a call with me to explore your growth opportunities.
Sources:
Forbes. Understanding KPIs and Their Importance in Your Business. https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissahouston/2023/10/20/understanding-kpis-and-their-importance-in-your-business/
Harvard Business Review. KPIs Aren’t Just About Assessing Past Performance. https://hbr.org/2021/09/kpis-arent-just-about-assessing-past-performance