research project kpis

26 Most Important R&D KPIs and Metrics

• Updated on July 13, 2023

If you want to accurately measure your Research and Development performance but don’t where to start, we collected all the necessary R&D KPIs and metrics for you!

Also, we are proud to present our R&D Dashboard templates if you need to make the analysis and recording within you Research and Development department. But first, you can learn more about the R&D key metrics!

What is KPI in research and development?

Research and development KPIs or key performance indicators are used to determine the performance of research and development departments in businesses.

Why should you track r&d KPIs?

You should track research and development key metrics to have a clear point of view about the state of your R&D department. That way, you can improve and anvance your R&D department in an organized manner.

What are the most important KPIs in r&d?

Research and development departments deal with different issues in each other company, so there are various metrics you can use. However, you can see the top 26 research and development KPIs below to get a better idea.

Research and Development Metrics

1. Proposal Success Rate

R&D Metrics / Project Progress / Work Effectiveness

Description: Percentage of grant applications that successfully received funding and can go further with the R&D.

Calculation Method / Formula: number of applications that were accepted and got funds / number of all applications

Should be High or Low?: The higher % the better. Otherwise there is needed extra work time on creating or redefining ideas.

2. Ideas turned into experiments

Description: This shows of how many ideas within some period of time went into the experimental phase. It depends on how many ideas there is; has granted funds and if the R&D team is managing the time given properly.

Calculation Method / Formula: number of ideas within some period of time went into the experimental phase / number of ideas that were supposed to be in the experimental phase within specified period of time

Should be High or Low?: If the % is going down it may indicate not enough resources in people or equipment.

3. Projects completed

R&D Metrics / Project Progress / Work Effectiveness / Time Management

Description: Shows the ratio of completed within all started projects. But in case there are some changes, or the grant funds are frozen or for some other seasons the project cannot continue it can have influence on the completion ratio. This metrics allows you to track if you have enough resources and capability to open more tasks and manage to stay on time with the work planned.

Calculation Method / Formula: completed projects / all planned projects

Should be High or Low?: If the % is going down it may indicate not enough resources in people or equipment or some changes in a project or requirement that may close the project not completed.

4. Time-to-market

Description: This metrics stands for how quickly your company plan and execute the projects. It is the duration from Phase 0 to Market Release. Average number of days per project

Calculation Method / Formula: It can be calculated as simple average: Cumulative number of days of all finished projects / number of projects

Should be High or Low?: If the time to market exceed planned days, it can give some indication about incorrect assumptions or some unexpected problems

5. Time for the experiments

Description: This is metrics shows time spent only for the experiment phase. That time can be very different depending on a sector of the R&D department. The unit of time may be measured in Days as default, but it can be also adjusted for your needs.

Calculation Method / Formula: cumulative experimental time of number of projects / number of projects

Should be High or Low?: If the time goes over a target this may indicate problems that weren’t predicted in the planning phase.

6. Deviation from Schedule

Description: This metrics measures how accurate planned project schedules are. And may indicate if there is some need for changing the system of planning or find some bottleneck of the process.

Calculation Method / Formula: (Actual Time to Make – Planned Time to make) / Planned Time to Make.

Should be High or Low?: Based on the equation if the value is below zero it means the projects’ time are overcalculated and probably the time evaluation should be restructured. The same if the value goes above zero but it means the predicted time probably was too small for the available resources.

7. Portfolio in existing products

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management

Description: Percentage of R&D Budget which keep the existing products.

Calculation Method / Formula: Cost of sustaining the exisiting products / total R&D budget

8. R&D costs / Total costs

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management / Cost

Description: This metrics shows what is the percentage of exactly the R&D cost among Total Costs of the R&D department. (or among total cost of the company)?

Calculation Method / Formula: R&D cost / Total cost of R&D dept.

Should be High or Low?: This is just an orientation information.

9. License costs / Total R&D cost

Description: Shows how big part of Total costs is License Costs.

Calculation Method / Formula: Licence cost / Total cost od R&D dept.

10. R&D Costs / Sales

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management / Cost / Sales / Performance

Description: It shows the ratio between money spend on R&D and the money earned from Total Sales

Calculation Method / Formula: Total R&D cost / Total sales

Should be High or Low?: First of all, R&D cost should not be higher than total sales, but also the higher difference there will be the higher profit will be observed

11. Product improvements / R&D cost

Description: Shows how big part of R&D costs is Product Improvements.

Calculation Method / Formula: Improvement Costs / R&D Costs

Should be High or Low?: This is an orientation information. There might be some target to reduce that cost, but it depends on the characteristics of R&D projects.

12. Cost Savings Attributable to R&D

R&D Metrics / Product Investment / Budget Management / Cost / Savings

Description: This metrics helps to calculate the cost savings because of the R&D Department’s improvements. Cost savings in given period of time.

Calculation Method / Formula: Might be calculated by (time needed to compleete some task before – time needed after improvenents) * workinghour cost in some period of time

Should be High or Low?: Based on that measurement we can measure how long it will take to “pay back” the cost of improvement.

13. Total Patents Filed

R&D Metrics / Cost / R&D Investment / Product Investment / Brand Value

Description: This metrics shows the number of patents waiting to be approved by the patent institution.

Should be High or Low?: If the patents are unique or it is predicted that they will bring income higher than cost of keeping patent itself then the higher number is better but the target should be set based on how much valuable they can be.

14. Ideas in the Pipeline

Description: It helps to track the number of ideas that were completed and put in a schedule in an assumed time or period.

Should be High or Low?: Target depends on the R&D sector and taken period of time.

15. Projects that meet planned targets

Description: It helps to track the number of projects which follow to the plan schedule in each time or period.

16. Products launched on time

Description: This metrics shows how many projects were completed and launched out of the planned to be completed in that given period.

Calculation Method / Formula: number of projects completed / number of sheduled projects to be completed

Should be High or Low?: If the % is much lower the assumption in scheduling should be checked.

17. Number of products released

R&D Metrics / Work Effectiveness / Products / Brand Value

Description: Shows how many products were released in a given time.

Should be High or Low?: Target depends on the R&D sector, time and value per product.

18. Income from New products

R&D Metrics / Products / Revenue / Sales / Profitability

Description: New products (which might not be yet noticed by all the target customers) sales value among total sales in percentage.

Calculation Method / Formula: new product sales value / total incom from all product sales

Should be High or Low?: It can help to plan in future some steps to make the product more visible from the beginning.

19. Budget Variance / Cost Variance (CV)

R&D Metrics / Budget Management / Financial Performance / Revenue / Cost

Description: This metrics shows how accurate is your planning the project costs and how well you manage the budget during the time of project life from the beginning until Market Release. The percentage in the end of project shows what is the percentage of assumed at the beginning cost. If the value comes close to zero long before the end of the project it may show that the budget evaluation was wrong.

Calculation Method / Formula: Earned Value – Actual Cost

Should be High or Low?: If the conclusion is: below 0 – you are behind the schedule; 0 – you are on schedule; above zero – ahead of schedule.

20. Return on Innovation Investment (ROI)

R&D Metrics / Revenue / Budget Management / Financial Performance / Investment

Description: This metrics can help to predict if the investment in the new product was worth the cost and how long it might take for money return.

Calculation Method / Formula: ( Profits of New Product or Service Sales) / (Expenditures Generated in Creating these New Products or Services)

21. Products launched on budget

R&D Metrics / Budget Management / Product Investment / Work Efficiency

Description: This metrics shows percentage of new services or products that has been finished within expected budget. It shows how accurate is the cost projection.

Should be High or Low?: If the metrics should be as close as possible to 100%, if it is much lower it may indicate wrong budget planning or lots of unexpected changes that were not included in the calculations.

22. Research & Development Effectiveness Index (RDEI)

R&D Metrics / Work Efficiency / Revenue / R&D Investment / Profitability

Description: It shows how the profit generated by new products compares to total R&D expenses. Success of product vs development efforts.

Calculation Method / Formula: Profit from New Products / R&D Sending

23. Total R&D Headcount

R&D Metrics / Employee Management / Budget Management

Description: Number of employees in the R&D department.

Should be High or Low?: The target should be based on projections and which direction company is going, what is the budget for hiring.

24. Portfolio in Core and Growth Projects

R&D Metrics / Project Progress / Work Effectiveness / Cost

Description: This metrics is the percentage of Projects that will not be completed even though company has already invested in them.

Should be High or Low?: It will have strong negative or positive impact on the growth and prosperity of the company.

25. R&D Budget

R&D Metrics / Budget Management / R&D Investment / Cost

Description: This metrics is the budget of the company intended for the R&D Department.

Should be High or Low?: May depend on the target and the direction of the company.

26. Suggested ideas by the team

R&D Metrics / Work Effectiveness / Product Investment

Description: That is a number of ideas which the R&D Department came up with during some period of time.

Should be High or Low?: In general, the more ideas the better, but the quality of ideas has an impact on further work and eventual success.

Below is the summary of R&D KPI metrics:

Most Important KPIs for Different Industries

If you are interested in other industries or departments and their performance, you should learn more about their KPIs via our related articles!

Related Posts

Resources >

Library of functional kpis >, research and development key performance indicators (kpis).

Click on any group within the Research and Development (R&D) department to view its KPIs:

Development

Engineering, intellectual property, product management, project management, prototype & testing, quality assurance, technical writing & documentation.

Customer satisfaction

Feedback from internal or external customers on the quality and usefulness of the analytics.

Data accessibility

The percentage of employees who have access to the data they need.

Data quality

The percentage of data that is accurate, complete, and consistent.

Data security

The number of data breaches or security incidents within the analytics system.

Data utilization rate

The percentage of available data that is being used effectively.

Employee productivity

The efficiency and effectiveness of the analytics team in delivering insights and recommendations.

The percentage of errors in the data analysis process.

Time-to-insight

The time it takes from data collection to actionable insights.

Predictive accuracy

The percentage of accurate predictions made by the analytics team.

ROI of analytics projects

The return on investment (ROI) generated by analytics projects in terms of cost savings, revenue growth, or other business benefits.

Development capacity

The Development Group’s ability to take on new projects or features. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to scale up and take on more work as the business grows.

Development cost

The total cost of developing a product or feature. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to deliver products or features within the allocated budget.

Development efficiency

The number of features or products developed per unit of time. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to optimize its processes and work more efficiently.

Innovation rate

The number of new and innovative ideas generated by the Development Group. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to come up with new and innovative products or features that can differentiate the company from its competitors.

Product quality

The number of defects or bugs in a product or feature. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to produce high-quality products that meet customer expectations.

Productivity

The amount of work completed by each member of the Development Group per unit of time. This KPI is important as it helps track individual and team productivity levels, which can help identify areas for improvement.

Release frequency

The frequency at which new products or features are released to the market. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to deliver new products or features to the market on a regular basis.

Technical debt

The amount of technical debt that has accumulated over time. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to maintain a clean and efficient codebase.

Time to market

The time it takes to develop and launch a new product or feature. This KPI is important as it helps track the speed at which the Development Group can deliver new products or features to the market.

User satisfaction

The level of satisfaction of users with the products or features developed by the Development Group. This KPI is important as it helps track the Development Group’s ability to deliver products that meet user needs and expectations.

Compliance with Standards

The Engineering Group’s compliance with industry standards, such as ISO, FDA, or OSHA. Compliance with these standards is necessary for regulatory approval and customer satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction

The satisfaction of customers with products developed by the Engineering Group. This metric helps to ensure that the Engineering Group is meeting customer needs and expectations.

Design for Manufacturability (DFM)

How well the Engineering Group designs products that are easy to manufacture, minimizing the risk of costly production delays.

Design Review Efficiency

The efficiency of the Engineering Group’s design review process. This metric helps to ensure that design reviews are completed on time and with the necessary level of detail.

Innovation Rate

The rate at which the Engineering Group develops new ideas and patents. This metric is critical to long-term success in research and development.

Product Cost

The cost of developing a new product or making improvements to an existing product. This metric helps to ensure that the Engineering Group stays within budget.

Product Development Time

The time it takes for the Engineering Group to develop a new product or make significant improvements to an existing product.

Product Quality

The quality of products developed by the Engineering Group, including product reliability, durability, and safety.

The Engineering Group’s productivity by tracking the number of projects completed per unit of time. This metric helps to identify opportunities to improve efficiency.

Rework/Redesign Rate

The percentage of products that need to be reworked or redesigned after initial testing. This metric helps to identify areas where the Engineering Group needs to improve its processes.

Freedom to operate

The ability of the company to operate without infringing on the intellectual property rights of others.

IP licensing revenue

The revenue generated by licensing the company’s intellectual property to other companies.

IP strategy alignment

How well the company’s IP strategy is aligned with its overall business strategy.

IP training

The effectiveness of IP training programs for employees, including how well they understand the importance of intellectual property and how to protect it.

IP valuation

The overall value of the company’s intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.

Patent application quality

The quality of patent applications, including how well they are written, how comprehensive they are, and how well they protect the company’s inventions.

Patent infringement litigation

The success rate of litigation against potential infringers of the company’s patents.

Patent maintenance costs

The cost of maintaining the company’s patent portfolio, including filing fees, maintenance fees, and legal fees.

Patent portfolio strength

The overall strength of the company’s patent portfolio, including the number of patents, the breadth of their coverage, and their strategic value.

Time-to-file patent applications

The time it takes to file patent applications, from the initial idea to the filing of the application.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The cost of acquiring a new customer. This KPI helps track the efficiency of marketing and sales efforts.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

The amount of revenue a customer generates over their lifetime. This KPI helps track the overall value of customers and their impact on the company’s revenue.

Market Share

The percentage of total market sales a company captures. This KPI helps track the company’s position within the market and its ability to compete against competitors.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

A measure of customer satisfaction and loyalty. This KPI helps track customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can impact the success of future products.

Product Adoption Rate

The rate at which customers adopt and use a new product. This KPI helps track the success of a product launch and its ability to gain traction in the market.

Product Development Cost

The cost of developing a new product. This KPI helps track the efficiency of the product development process.

Product Development Cycle Time

The time it takes to develop a new product. This KPI helps track the efficiency of the product development process and can identify areas for improvement.

Product Return Rate

The percentage of products returned by customers. This KPI helps track the quality of a product and customer satisfaction.

Product Revenue

The amount of revenue generated by a product. This KPI helps track the success of a product and its ability to generate revenue.

Time-to-Market

The time it takes to develop and launch a new product. This KPI is important because the faster a product is brought to market, the greater its potential for success.

Budget adherence

How well the project team adheres to the budget, taking into account all project expenses.

The time it takes to complete a project from start to finish.

Deliverables completion

The completion of project deliverables on schedule.

Earned value

Compares the actual project progress against the planned progress in terms of cost, time, and scope.

Issue resolution

How quickly and effectively the project team is able to resolve issues that arise during the project.

Resource utilization

The percentage of time each team member is spending on project-related activities.

Risk mitigation

The effectiveness of the project team in identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks that could impact project success.

Schedule adherence

How well the project team adheres to the project schedule and milestones.

Stakeholder satisfaction

The satisfaction of stakeholders (both internal and external) with the project team’s performance.

Team performance

The performance of the project team as a whole, taking into account factors such as productivity, quality of work, and communication.

The time taken by the Prototype & Testing Group to complete a development cycle, from designing prototypes to testing them and generating feedback.

Defect Rate

The number of defects found during the testing phase, as a percentage of the total number of prototypes tested.

Design Revisions

The number of revisions made to the prototype design during the development cycle, which can indicate the quality of the initial design or the ability of the group to identify improvements.

The Prototype & Testing Group’s ability to complete a project within the allocated time and budget.

Failure Rate

The percentage of prototypes that fail testing or do not meet the required standards.

Innovation Index

The number of new ideas or concepts generated by the Prototype & Testing Group, which can indicate the group’s ability to think creatively and develop new products.

Prototype Cost

The cost of designing and testing a prototype, which can help to identify opportunities for cost savings or process improvements.

Prototype Output

The number of prototypes developed by the Prototype & Testing Group within a given time period, which can indicate the group’s productivity.

Test Coverage

The percentage of the product or system that has been tested, which can help to identify gaps in testing and potential areas of improvement.

The time taken to complete testing for each prototype, which can help to identify opportunities for process improvements or to optimize resources.

How satisfied customers are with the quality of the product. It is often measured through surveys, feedback forms, and online reviews.

Defect Density

The number of defects found in a product or process per unit of measure. It is used to measure the quality of a product or process over time and helps to identify areas for improvement.

First Pass Yield

The percentage of products or services that pass through quality control without requiring rework. It is used to measure the effectiveness of the quality control process and helps to identify areas for improvement.

On-time Delivery

The percentage of products or services that are delivered to customers on or before the promised delivery date. It is used to measure the reliability of the production and delivery process.

The output of a production process in relation to the inputs. It is used to measure the efficiency of the production process and helps to identify areas for improvement.

Quality Cost

The cost of quality control, including the cost of preventing defects, detecting defects, and correcting defects. It is used to measure the effectiveness of the quality control process and helps to identify areas for improvement.

Reject Rate

The percentage of products or services that are rejected due to quality issues. It is used to measure the effectiveness of the quality control process and helps to identify areas for improvement.

Return Rate

The percentage of products or services that are returned by customers due to quality issues. It is used to measure the effectiveness of the quality control process and helps to identify areas for improvement.

Supplier Quality

The quality of the materials and components received from suppliers. It is used to measure the reliability of the supply chain and helps to identify areas for improvement.

The percentage of product features or functions that have been tested. It is used to measure the effectiveness of the testing process and helps to identify areas for improvement.

Collaboration effectiveness

The effectiveness of collaboration between members of the research team or with external partners. This can be measured by the number of joint publications, patents, or projects completed with external partners.

Commercialization success rate

The success rate of the research team in commercializing their research outputs. This can be measured by the number of successful commercialization projects or the revenue generated from commercialization activities.

Funding success rate

The success rate of the research team in securing funding for their projects. This can be measured by the number of successful funding applications divided by the total number of funding applications submitted.

Idea generation rate

The rate at which new ideas are generated by the research team. This is typically measured by the number of new ideas generated per week, month or year.

Intellectual property value

The value of the intellectual property generated by the research team. This can be measured by the number of patents granted, licensing agreements signed, or the estimated value of the intellectual property.

Patent application rate

The rate at which the research team is filing new patent applications. This is typically measured by the number of new patent applications filed per year.

Research cost per project

The cost of conducting research for each project. This can be measured by dividing the total research costs by the number of projects completed.

Research efficiency

The efficiency of the research process. This can be measured by the time taken to complete research projects or the number of projects completed within a certain time frame.

Research output rate

The rate at which the research team is producing outputs, such as prototypes, models, or data sets. This is typically measured by the number of outputs produced per week, month or year.

Research quality

The quality of research conducted by the team. This can be measured by the number of research papers published, the quality of the research (e.g. peer-reviewed publications), or the impact factor of the research.

Customer satisfaction score

The satisfaction of customers with the technical documentation created by the team, and is a good indicator of the quality of work produced.

Document completion rate

The number of technical documents completed within a specified period against the total number of documents assigned. This helps to gauge the team’s productivity and efficiency.

Document reuse rate

The percentage of technical documents that are reused or repurposed for other projects, which is an indicator of the team’s ability to create modular and reusable documentation.

Document version control

The accuracy and completeness of document version control, which is an important indicator of the team’s attention to detail and ability to manage complex documentation systems.

Documentation accuracy rate

The number of errors in technical documentation against the total number of pages reviewed, and is a key indicator of the team’s attention to detail.

Documentation process adherence

The team’s adherence to standard documentation processes and procedures, which is an indicator of the team’s discipline and adherence to quality standards.

Documentation review cycle time

The time it takes for technical documents to be reviewed and approved, which is an indicator of the team’s collaboration and communication skills.

Knowledge base usage

The number of times the team’s documentation is accessed by other teams or departments within the organization, which is an indicator of the usefulness and relevance of the team’s work.

Revision cycle time

The time it takes to revise and update technical documents, which is an indicator of the team’s responsiveness and agility.

Time to document creation

The amount of time it takes the team to create technical documents from start to finish, and is a good indicator of the team’s speed and efficiency.

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Research Project Plan Template

What is a Research Project Plan?

A research project plan outlines the processes and activities that need to be completed to achieve the desired results of a research project. The plan should provide a timeline for the research activities and identify any potential risks. It should also specify the resources and personnel needed, as well as the budget and timeline for the project. The plan should be both comprehensive and flexible, so that it can be modified as needed throughout the project.

What's included in this Research Project Plan template?

• 3 focus areas
• 6 objectives

Each focus area has its own objectives, projects, and KPIs to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Who is the Research Project Plan template for?

The research project plan template is designed for research teams in academic, corporate, or non-profit sectors who need to plan and execute their research projects. The template provides a structure for outlining the processes and activities that must be completed in order to achieve the desired results of the research project. The template is designed to be comprehensive and flexible, allowing for modifications as needed throughout the project.

1. Define clear examples of your focus areas

A focus area is a specific area or topic that a research team is investigating. The focus area should be clearly defined and specific, so that the research team can develop objectives, projects, and KPIs that are relevant to the research project. Examples of focus areas could include developing new technologies, understanding customer behavior, or studying the effects of a particular policy.

2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area

Objectives are the goals that a research team hopes to achieve by completing the research project. Objectives should be specific and measurable, and should be attainable within the timeline and budget of the research project. Examples of objectives could include developing a new technology, understanding customer behaviors, or studying the effects of a particular policy.

3. Set measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable targets that are used to evaluate the progress of a research project. KPIs should be specific and measurable, and should be established in order to track progress towards the objectives of the research project. Examples of KPIs could include product development timelines, customer satisfaction surveys, or policy implementation reviews.

4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs

Projects are the activities that need to be completed in order to achieve the objectives of the research project. Projects should be specific and achievable, and should be completed within the timeline and budget of the research project. Examples of projects could include running customer surveys, conducting interviews, or collecting data.

5. Utilize Cascade Strategy Execution Platform to see faster results from your strategy

The Cascade Strategy Execution Platform is a comprehensive software that helps research teams plan, manage, and track their research projects. The platform provides tools for project management, tracking KPIs, and monitoring progress. It also helps teams visualize their data and collaborate on initiatives. With Cascade, teams can save time and resources, and get faster results from their strategies.

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• The ABCs of KPIs: Defining Key Performa ...

The ABCs of KPIs: Defining Key Performance Indicators

KPIs, or key performance indicators, are metrics that measure the progress of a specific project toward your defined goals. KPIs need to be quantifiable and relevant, and should provide concrete evidence to make project decisions going forward.

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a quantitative metric of how your team or organization is progressing toward important business objectives. Organizations use KPIs at multiple levels—you can set an organization-wide, team-specific, or even individual KPIs, depending on which metrics you want to track. A good KPI can give you a sense of whether you’re on track to achieve your strategic goals. 

If this is your first time choosing key performance indicators, this article will walk you through how KPIs differ from other goal-setting methodologies, how to identify key metrics for your KPIs, and how to choose great key performance indicators.

What are KPIs?

Every project will have a list of KPIs that you can track. A social media manager could measure impressions, shares, likes, follows, replies, mentions, and comments, but they shouldn’t try to track all of the KPIs available to them. Tracking every KPI available is like highlighting every sentence in a textbook—it defeats the purpose, since the important things get buried in the clutter of less useful information. After you’ve set your goal, you’ll want to select three to five KPIs that will be most effective in measuring progress.

Why are key performance indicators important?

Key performance indicators are important because they keep teams focused on what matters most to an organization's success. They act like a report card showing how well a team is doing in key areas, which helps everyone understand where they stand. If things are going well, you keep going. If not, you know it's time to change things up.

For example, a customer service team might use KPIs to track how fast they respond to support tickets. By setting a target response time and monitoring their actual performance, they might find that quick responses lead to happier customers. With this insight, they could focus on improving response times and, as a result, see better customer satisfaction scores. This kind of focus can really make a difference in how a team performs.

Types of KPIs

When it comes to measuring success, not all key performance indicators are the same. Each type of KPI plays a unique role in how it sheds light on performance and success. Understanding the differences will help any organization use key performance indicators effectively.

Quantitative indicators

Quantitative indicators are the hard numbers. They are measurable and can be expressed in figures. Think of them as numerical evidence of performance. For example, a common quantitative KPI is monthly sales revenue. It's a straightforward metric that shows exactly how much money was brought in from sales in a month. A sales team might use other similar indicators to help paint a more complete portrait of its operations.

Monthly sales growth: Measures the month-over-month percentage increase in sales.

Average profit margin: Calculates the average profit made from each sale.

Annual recurring revenue: The predictable revenue generated each year, which is especially relevant for businesses with subscription models.

Revenue per customer: Shows the average revenue earned from each customer, which can help in understanding customer value.

Qualitative indicators

Qualitative indicators are more about the quality of something and are often subjective. They're not always represented by numbers, and sometimes they're captured through observations, surveys, and feedback. 

A good example is customer satisfaction. This can be measured through customer surveys asking how happy people are with your service, giving you a qualitative view of how you're doing. Here are a few KPIs that also show how customers view a brand:

Brand reputation: Measures how likely customers are to recommend your brand, gained through customer reviews or social media sentiment analysis.

Customer satisfaction index: This can be derived from surveys that ask customers to rate their satisfaction with your products or services.

Customer complaints and resolution rates: Tracks the number of complaints received and how effectively they are resolved.

Customer loyalty and retention rates: Measure how often customers return to make additional purchases and how long they stay with the brand.

Leading indicators

Leading indicators are a bit like a weather forecast for your business—they give you a heads-up on future performance. They can predict changes and trends before they happen, allowing companies to adjust their strategies proactively.

For example, let’s say you’re choosing KPIs for a blog marketing project. Some leading KPIs you might consider include:

Number of relevant keywords per post

Number of hours logged per asset created

Number of links within each post to other content on your site

Number of links to each post from other content on your site

These are all metrics that can predict how each post will perform. Articles that hit your minimum number of relevant keywords and link to and from other content on the site are more likely to be successful. On the other hand, a design asset that only took half the normal amount of time to create is likely to be below average quality and not perform as well as a result. Leading KPIs provide guidance ahead of time that maximize the project's likelihood of success after it's published.

Lagging indicators

Lagging indicators confirm what has already happened. They’re like looking in the rearview mirror to understand past performance. They can be financial, such as quarterly profits, which tell you how much money was made after all sales are done and expenses are paid.

When choosing your KPIs, you should make sure you have a good balance between leading and lagging indicators. For that same blog marketing campaign above, some lagging KPIs you might consider include:

Search engine rankings

Traffic to each post

Value of traffic to each post

Bounce rate (how quickly readers leave your site)

Conversions (how many readers end up purchasing your product)

These KPIs measure metrics that come after the post is published—or, put another way, they “lag” behind the project’s launch. Whereas leading KPIs help predict likely success, lagging KPIs measure actual success. Comparing the data from each will give you information about how accurate your predictions were and why actual performance may have deviated from predicted performance.

What makes a good KPI?

There are a ton of KPI options for almost every project, but not every measurable metric is a high-quality KPI. For example, tracking the number of words per post in your blog campaign wouldn’t be very useful, since the “best” post length for an article changes from topic to topic.

Similarly, some KPIs are great in one context but not in another. For example, financial KPIs, like labor cost per design project, are very helpful to the accounting department, but not very useful for design managers.

A good KPI:

Is quantifiable

Provides evidence of progress (or lack thereof)

Tracks something that is responsive to changes

Offers useful data for decision-making

Tracks something you can control and influence

Is easy to understand and work with

Can be reliably verified

How to set up effective KPIs

Choosing the best KPIs for the job is a process with specific (but simple!) steps. Follow these four steps to get started.

1. Define your business objective

You can’t choose KPIs unless you know what you’re trying to measure. Start the process by defining your business objective . Make sure that your project is in alignment with the rest of your organization by consulting with company leaders and referring to other company-wide documents like your organization’s mission, overarching strategic plan , and department-wide goals.

Depending on what level you’re working from—team manager, department head, director, VP, or company leader—you may be in a position to set both short-term and long-term KPIs. When planning at the executive level, you can set KPIs by the month, quarter, or year.

2. Identify important business metrics

Once you’ve defined your business objective, you need to decide which metrics are relevant to that objective. The metrics you choose for your KPIs should be indicators that directly relate to whether or not you achieve your objective.

Remember: KPI stands for key performance indicators. There may be a variety of metrics or indicators that impact your ultimate goal. Creating the right KPI is about capturing the most important details and making sure you’re tracking those metrics. Not every task or project needs to have an associated KPI. 

If you’re not sure where to start, check out some relevant metrics for each department in your organization.

Example financial metrics

Annual recurring revenue (ARR)

Net revenue retention (NRR)

Net profit margin (NPM)

Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization (EBITDA)

Operating capital

Example customer metrics

Net promoter score (NPS)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

Customer retention

Customer churn

Number of total paying customers

Number of new customers

Example process and operations metrics

Throughput time, or total lead time

Number of complaint or bug tickets filed

Supply chain metrics, like days sales outstanding (DSO)

Example people or human resources metrics

Employee retention rate

Employee satisfaction

Salary competitiveness ratio (SCR)

Example sales metrics

Revenue growth

Market penetration

Customer lifetime value

Gross profit margin

Example marketing metrics

Number of qualified leads

Lead conversion rate

Social media followers 

Content downloads

Email click-through rate (CTR)

3. Set up a tracking system

When you’re working on more than one project with more than one team, the number of KPIs you’re tracking can start to add up quickly. It’s important to have a tracking system in place that ensures your data is recorded consistently and at regular intervals. You won’t be able to draw accurate conclusions if you forgot to track some weeks or if you lost the data in a messy file folder.

A KPI dashboard is the best place to keep track of all of your KPIs. Having a central shared dashboard:

Ensures everyone is looking at the same information

Makes KPI data accessible to the entire team, no matter where they are

Eliminates the need to manually notify stakeholders every time something is updated

Can track metrics automatically, so there’s no chance of forgetting

Reduces the likelihood of human error

4. Track and share real-time progress

KPI data isn’t something you neglect until it’s time for your quarterly report. Rather, stakeholders should use KPI reports to make minor and major decisions throughout a project’s lifecycle. That’s why it’s important to keep your KPI data up to date and make it accessible to everyone at any time .

The best way to keep your data up to date is to use a dashboard that tracks and updates in real time. That way, stakeholders won’t need to wait until the next update to get the most recent information—they can just check the dashboard.

If you do track your KPIs manually, make sure you update at regular intervals that make sense for your project. For fast-moving projects, consider sharing updates weekly so everyone is tuned in to any changes. For longer-term, slower-moving projects, consider reporting biweekly or monthly to ensure each update includes enough information to be useful.

If possible, track and share progress in the same place you manage work so your team understands how their individual work contributes to the KPI and, as a result, to your broader company goals. At Asana, we use goal management software to connect our company goals to the work that supports them. With Goals, team members can prioritize projects to get their highest-impact work done.

Examples of KPIs

Key performance indicators are the compass that guides organizations towards their goals. Here are some typical examples of KPIs for different areas.

Financial KPI examples

When it comes to the financial health of a business, key performance indicators act as vital signs. For example, return on investment (ROI) is a common financial KPI. It measures the profitability of an initiative against its cost. To put it simply, if a company spends $1,000 on a marketing campaign and generates $5,000 in sales, the ROI KPI indicates a successful outcome.

When exploring financial metrics, you'll frequently find these examples of KPIs in use.

Net profit margin: Shows what percentage of your sales is actual profit.

Gross profit margin: Tells you how much you're making after covering the cost to make or buy your products.

Operating cash flow: Measures the cash your business makes from normal business operations.

Customer KPI examples

Customer-related KPIs show how well a company is performing from the standpoint of its clientele. Support tickets are a common key performance indicator here. They reflect the number of queries or issues customers report. If a new product launch sees a spike in support tickets within a short period of time, this KPI might signal the need for product improvements or better customer education.

It’s not uncommon for those working in the customer service industry to see the following examples of KPIs.

Customer satisfaction score: A quick way to see how happy people are with what you sell.

Net promoter score: Tells you if your customers like your product enough to tell their friends.

Customer retention rate: Measures how well you're keeping your customers over time.

Process KPI examples

To streamline operations, organizations can track process KPIs. An example is the employee turnover rate. This helps teams understand how often they have to replace staff. A high turnover rate over a six-month period of time could point to deeper issues within the work environment that need addressing.

Here are a few other common examples of KPIs you'll see in process tracking.

Efficiency ratio: Used to check if you're making good use of what you own to make money.

Cycle time: Measures how long it takes to get something done from start to finish.

First-time right: Shows how often you get things right the first time without any do-overs.

Marketing KPI examples

Marketing efforts can be gauged using website traffic as a key performance indicator. This metric helps businesses optimize their online presence. For example, if a new blog post aimed at explaining the different types of KPIs sees a 50% increase in visitors, the content can be considered effective in attracting more interest.

In the marketing department, it's common to come across the following examples of KPIs.

Cost per lead: Helps you figure out how much you're spending to get someone interested in what you're selling.

Conversion rate: Tells you what percentage of your website visitors are doing what you want them to do.

Click-through rate: Shows how often people click on a link you've given them.

Project management KPI examples

Project managers often use a "balanced scorecard," a strategic KPI framework that evaluates initiatives from various perspectives—financial, customer, process, and growth. 

Let's say a sales team is tasked with improving customer outreach. Their scorecard may reflect how well they're meeting this organizational goal across different performance measures, like sales KPIs, over a quarterly time frame.

For a closer look at project management metrics, consider these other examples of KPIs.

Return on investment: Measures whether the money you put into something is worth what you're getting out of it.

Earned value: Helps you see how much of your project you've gotten done at any point.

Critical path length: Measures the total time your project will take, based on the things you can't skip.

Keeping an eye on these key performance indicators helps you figure out how close you are to hitting your goals and what you might need to tweak to get there.

Pros and cons: Key performance indicators

Key performance indicators can be extremely useful, but they also have their drawbacks. Let's take a closer look at both sides.

Benefits of KPIs

They help managers see specific issues through clear data, which is great for making plans and improving an organization.

They use hard numbers to show how employees are doing, which keeps everyone on the same page and removes guesswork.

They can actually motivate employees to do better when they see their performance is being analyzed.

They link day-to-day work with the company's bigger targets and show if the company is really getting to where it wants to go.

Disadvantages of KPIs

It can take a lot of time to collect KPI data, especially if you're looking at how things change over several years.

You have to keep an eye on your indicators and update them to make sure they're still useful.

There's a risk that managers might just focus on hitting KPI numbers instead of truly improving the business.

If the specific goals aren't set right, they can be too tough to meet, which can stress out team members.

KPIs vs. OKRs

KPIs aren’t the only way to track project performance. OKRs , or objectives and key results, are another type of measurement tool that functions in a similar way to KPIs. In fact, in many cases, the KPIs and OKRs for a project could overlap.

Here are the differences and commonalities between KPIs and OKRs:

Key performance indicator (KPI): Designed to measure performance over time, a good KPI should track one measurable value that can indicate the rate of progress toward a goal.

Objectives and key results (OKRs): OKRs use the template “ I will [objective] as measured by [key result]. ”The objective is the goal you want to achieve and the key results are the metrics used to track progress toward that objective. You can have more than one key result for each objective.

KPIs often overlap with OKRs, but the difference is that OKRs don’t have to be quantifiable measures. For example, you could set an OKR to “Improve the workplace environment as measured by employee morale,” even though your OKR, employee morale, is intangible. If you wanted to set a KPI for the same objective, you’d have to find a way to quantify employee morale—say, number of HR complaints received or new hire turnover rate.

OKR vs KPI examples

Here’s another example of potential OKRs and KPIs for a customer experience team.

Example KPI: Increase net promoter score (NPS) by 2 points in FY21.

Example OKRs: 

Objective: Surprise and delight our customers to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Key result: Generate positive buzz through social media and virtual events.

Key result: Reduce churn to less than 2% per month.

Key result: Increase net promoter score (NPS) by 2 points in FY21.

What does KPI stand for?

KPI is an acronym that stands for "key performance indicator." It's a term used widely across various industries to describe measurable values that organizations can track to gauge how effectively they are achieving key objectives.

What is the most important KPI?

The most important KPI often depends on the specific goals of an organization. For many, it could be related to financial performance, like net profit margin, which shows the amount of profit made as a percentage of revenue. However, what's most important is that the KPIs a team chooses should directly support their specific goals, ensuring that they are relevant and provide actionable insights.

What is a KPI in marketing?

A key performance indicator in marketing refers to a measurable metric that marketing teams use to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns and specific goals. For example, a marketing team may track the conversion rate of a campaign to determine how effectively it turns prospects into customers.

What is a KPI in business?

In a broader business context, a KPI serves as a numerical indicator that organizations use to measure their performance against their strategic goals. Teams can automate the collection and reporting of these metrics, thanks to integrations with business intelligence tools, which allows for real-time monitoring and more informed decision-making.

KPIs, OKRs, SMART goals, oh my!

KPIs are a great way to set quantifiable goals that connect to your strategic objectives. But if KPIs don’t feel right for you, th ere are a variety of other goal-setting methodologies you can try.

To get started, read our articles about how to set OKRs , write better SMART goals , or create great short-term goals .

Related resources

What is management by objectives (MBO)?

7 steps to complete a social media audit (with template)

How to accomplish big things with long-term goals

What are objectives and key results (OKRs)?

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KPI Examples and Templates

Find the right KPIs for your business. This guide provides examples, templates and practical advice to help you define the key performance indicators that matter most for your organization and teams.

KPI EXAMPLES GUIDE

What is a kpi.

Let’s start with the basics. A key performance indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measure of performance over time for a specific strategic objective. Business leaders and senior executives use KPIs to judge the effectiveness of their efforts and make better informed decisions.

KPIs vs Metrics

What’s the difference between a KPI and a metric?

KPIs represent how you’re performing against strategic goals. And by goals, we mean specific business outcomes, such as targeted quarterly revenue or targeted new customers per month.

Metrics support KPIs by representing the tactical processes or actions necessary to achieve the KPIs. Metrics track and measure the success against targets for specific actions such as monthly brochure downloads or store visits.

More resources:

Dive deeper on the question, “ What is a KPI? ”

Design your own interactive KPI Dashboard

Don’t just measure. Measure what matters.

Download the KPI Planning Guide to learn:

10 steps to strong KPIs

Which questions help you define your KPIs

170 KPI examples and templates

170 KPI Examples And Templates

In this guide, we’ve identified and prioritized the most impactful key performance indicators examples for each department. Use the table of contents below to find the KPI examples most relevant to your organization and teams.

Project Management

Customer Service

Human Resources

Social Media

Sales KPI Examples

Sales leaders and their teams need to track the key performance indicators that help them close more orders. Below are the 15 essential sales KPI examples:

New Inbound Leads

Lead Response Time

Lead Conversion %

New Qualified Opportunities

Total Pipeline Value

Lead-to-Opportunity %

Opportunity-to-Order %

Average Order Value

Average Sales Cycle Time

Cross-Sell %

Sales Volume by Location

Sales Change (YoY, QoQ. MoM)

Sales Target %

Learn more about Sales Dashboards

KPIs for Managers

Executives and managers need KPIs that reflect their organization’s strategic priorities. Below are the 15 key management KPI examples:

Customer Acquisition Cost

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer Satisfaction Score

Sales Target % (Actual/Forecast)

Sales by Product or Service

Revenue per FTE

Revenue per Customer

Operating Margin

Gross Margin

ROE (Return on Equity)

ROA (Return on Assets)

Current Ratio (Assets/Liabilities)

Debt to Equity Ratio

Working Capital

Employee Satisfaction Rating

Learn more about Executive Dashboards

Project Management KPIs

Project managers need to keep projects on time and on budget while also ensuring a high quality outcome. That’s why the 15 key performance indicators examples below focus on timeliness, budget and quality.

On-Time Completion %

Milestones on Time %

Estimate to Project Completion

Adjustments To Schedule

Planned vs. Actual Hours

Resource Capacity %

Budget Variance (Planned vs Actual)

Budget Iterations

Planned Value

Net Promoter Score

Number of Errors

Customer Complaints

Change Requests

Billable Utilization

Return On Investment (ROI)

Explore dashboard demos

Inspire Action With Your KPIs

10 ways to take your data visualizations to the next level. Learn how to choose the right ones to highlight your KPIs and metrics.

Marketing KPIs

Marketing leaders need to track KPIs which enable them to measure their progress against clearly defined goals. The 15 marketing KPI examples below cover all phases of the customer funnel and can be accurately tracked using  modern marketing analytics .

Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)

Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)

Cost per Lead

New Customers

Cost per Acquisition

Upsell & Cross-Sell Rates

Conversion Rates (For Specific Goals)

Social Program ROI (By Platform)

Organic Traffic & Leads

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Total Revenue

Revenue by Product or Service

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Learn more about  Marketing KPIs and Marketing Dashboards

Operations KPIs

Operations managers need to track KPIs around efficiency, effectiveness and quality as covered in the 15 key performance indicators examples below.

Labor Utilization

Employee Turnover Rate

Employee Absence Rate

Employee Training Rate

ROI of Outsourcing

Labor Materials

Operating Margins

Processes and Procedures Developed

Project Schedule Variance

Order Fulfilment Cycle Time

Delivery In Full On Time Rate

Rework Rate

Learn more about KPI Dashboards

Customer Service KPIs

Service and support teams should focus on KPIs that measure response times. But, like the 15 key performance indicators examples below, they should also have a clear view of the customer base and longer term, preventative KPIs such as employee engagement and knowledge base articles.

Number of Issues (By Type)

First Response Time (FRT)

First Contact Resolution Rate

Average Response Time

Average Resolution Time

Most Active Support Agents

Cost Per Conversation

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Positive Customer Reviews

Customer Effort Score

Customer Retention Rate

Support Costs / Revenue Ratio

Knowledge Base Articles

Employee Engagement

Explore more dashboard examples

Finance KPIs

Financial teams have no shortage of ratios and metrics to track. Finance managers and CFO’s should use a  financial analytics  tool to focus on margin, expense, revenue and cash management as shown in the 15 key finance KPI examples below.

Gross Profit Margin (and %)

Operating Profit Margin (and %)

Net Profit Margin (and %)

Operating Expense Ratio

Working Capital Ratio

Debt-To-Equity Ratio

Quick Ratio (Acid Test)

Current Ratio

Berry Ratio

Return on Assets

Cash Conversion Cycle

Accounts Payable Turnover Ratio

Accounts Receivable Turnover Ratio

Budget Variance

Payroll Headcount Ratio

Learn more about Financial Dashboards

Human Resources KPIs

HR managers are primarily concerned with 3 main areas: workforce management, compensation and recruitment. You can use a  people analytics  tool to track and analyze the 35 key performance indicators examples below:

Workforce Management KPIs:

Absenteeism rate

ROI of outsourcing

Succession planning rate

Open/closed grievances

Promotion rate

Time to productivity

Successor gap rate

Worker composition by gender, experience, and tenure

Internal mobility

Manager quality index

HR effectiveness

Employee satisfaction rates

Training ROI

Compensation KPIs:

HR functional operating expense rate

Labor cost per FTE

Labor cost revenue percent

Labor cost revenue expense percent

Total benefits as percentage of labor costs

Profit vs. compensation per FTE

Human capital ROI

HR functional cost per employee

Recruitment KPIs:

Quality of hire

Vacancy rate

Turnover rate

Resignation/retirement rate

External hire rate

Time-to-fill

Diversity, experience, and gender hire ratio

Recruiting funnel metrics

Talent import/export ratio

Voluntary turnover rate

Retention rate

Recruiting expense per new hire

Retirement rate forecast

Learn more about HR Dashboards

IT managers should track the on-going stream of support tickets and downtime. They should also track the projects and the team that will proactively reduce the number of these tickets in the future as shown in the top-15 IT KPI examples below.

Total Support Tickets

Open Support Tickets

Ticket Resolution Time

Reopened Tickets

Average Time Between Failures

Average Time to Repair

Server Downtime

Security Related Downtime

Total Projects

Projects on Budget

Critical Bugs

IT Support Employees Per End Users

IT Costs vs Revenue

IT Team Turnover

Social Media KPIs

Social media managers should have KPIs that represent reach, engagement, and conversion to revenue. The 15 social media key performance indicators examples below should be applied both as totals and for each social media platform that your organization is active on.

Social Share of Voice (SSoV)

Total Reach

Total Impressions

Followers or Fans or Subscribers

Audience Growth Rate

Share Rate (Shares or ReTweets)

Interest Rate (Likes, Reactions, Favorites)

Response Rate (Comments, Replies)

Key Post or Hashtag Reach

Link Clicks

Site Traffic From Social (By Platform)

Conversions From Social

Conversion Rate From Social

Revenue From Social

Social Program ROI

Learn more about Marketing Dashboards

How to Define the Right KPIs

Who, what, how. Be clear about who the audience is, what they want, and how they’re going to use the KPIs. This means working with your stakeholders to identify the core KPIs that map directly to their goals and strategy.

Be SMART. This popular acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. This is a useful touchstone whenever you’re considering whether a metric should be a key performance indicator. SMART KPI examples are KPIs such as “revenue per region per month” or “new customers per quarter”.

Iterate and evolve. Over time, see how you or your audience are using the set of KPIs and if you find that certain ones aren’t relevant, remove or replace them.

See KPI Dashboards in Action

Filter by Keywords

15 KPIs for Project Management for 2024

Sofia Azevedo

October 19, 2023

“Better safe than sorry” is such a cliché line, right?

Still, some project managers neglect to get the data that could help them prevent projects from derailing. But here’s the thing: Even the most carefully elaborated project plans aren’t problem-free.

And problems almost inevitably come up throughout the project lifecycle. They can be deviations from the project goals or complete project failure.

Regardless, avoiding those problems in a timely fashion is the project manager’s job and the purpose of KPIs for project management.

Read on and get to know our selection of project management KPIs (with examples). We want you to learn what each indicator means and identify the ones that make the most sense to your project performance.

What Are Project Management KPIs?

1. cost performance index (cpi), 2. cost variance (cv), 3. planned value (pv), 4. budget creation cycle time, 5. number of line items in the budget, 6. number of budget iterations, 7. schedule performance index (spi), 8. schedule variance (sv), 9. resource capacity (rc), 10. on-time completion percentage, 11. planned vs. actual hours, 12. employee churn rate, 13. net promoter score (nps), 14. billable utilization, 15. average cost per hour, who benefits from settings kpis, how to track project management kpis.

Project Management KPIs—or key performance indicators—are the relevant variables to measure project performance or the path to successful project completion. The indications you get from gauging and sometimes combining those variables have two purposes:

• KPIs in project management determine the progress of your project (or the project schedule)
• Project management KPIs unveil the weaknesses in your project and the potential variables that would lead to failure

For instance, your key performance indicators might disclose weak points in a process, an assignee, or a task. But it’s up to you as the project manager or team lead to make the corrections or improvements to eliminate or strengthen those points before it’s too late.

How KPIs are used to determine a successful project

KPIs in project management don’t depend on subjectiveness. Instead, they rely on quantitative data—often a measurable value you can put against your project goals.

However, you shouldn’t use KPIs in project management and performance metrics interchangeably. Because KPIs are metrics—they both measure project success. But not all metrics are important enough to become KPIs.

Read our article on KPI metrics to learn more!

Another distinction you must be aware of is the difference between objective and key results and key performance indicators. Most OKR examples you’ll run across work as a framework for goal setting, while KPIs measure factors that contribute to achieving those goals and desired outcomes.

The overall project team has to come to an agreement on the key performance indicators to assess the project’s health and to know what success looks like. But your objectives are not just answers to your project management challenges , they’re what will determine the direction and reasoning of a particular project.

If you need more information to better separate the two, check out our guide to OKRs vs. KPIs !

15 Need-to-Know Project Management KPIs

Many project management KPI examples are out there waiting for you to find them. But we want you to focus on only a few of them until you understand the link between project KPIs and goals.

Additionally, learning a limited number of KPIs to start with helps you with being selective. Because the temptation to use all KPIs for project management on the face of the Earth is just counterproductive.

You must discard the KPIs that don’t actually indicate success in your project. And you’ll only develop the ability to pinpoint those indicators with experience.

You can’t also overwhelm your project managers and teams with too much data. Every key performance indicator should be meaningful and in digestible amounts so your team can act on it. You should rely on KPIs in project management to realign the team with your overall goals.

We organized a curated list of KPIs by four common areas of project success:

Project budget KPIs

Managing a project’s money and paid resources without a budget would be a disaster waiting to happen. And quite frankly, it’d be financially irresponsible. That’s why project managers set an actual budget right when a project initiates. And they continuously monitor the cost variance vs. budget variance all the way through project completion.

You might need to raise or reduce your project’s budget because of expenditures or cancelled projects. Additionally, you might want to reallocate the entire project budget or just parts of it to other activities, work packages, or even across multiple projects.

Let’s look at a few project KPIs to manage your budget more effectively:

Formula: CPI = EV / AC, where

• EV (or earned value, which means the planned cost of the actual work completed) = % of work performed * budget to do 100% of the work
• AC (or actual cost) = money spent on the work performed

Result: If CPI < 1, then the project’s cost is currently above the expected.

Create a budget using budget proposal templates !

Formula: CV = EV – AC

Result: If CV < 0, then the project’s actual cost is currently above the expected.

Formula: PV = BAC * scheduled work, where

• BAC (budget at completion) = approved budget
• Scheduled work = work expected to be completed at a given point in time

Example: The PV is $23,000 if 100% of the work is expected to cost $100,000, and 77% of the work has been scheduled.

DIALING IN YOUR PLANNED BUDGET Pro Tip: Compare the PV against the AC and adjust your project’s budget accordingly for the best return on investment ROI . Use this information on future projects and continue to evaluate for more precise information.

This is the time spent budgeting the project. It includes all the activities—especially planning—involved in coming up with and agreeing on the most realistic budget.

WHAT IS THE PLANNED VALUE Pro Tip: Correlate this KPI with other KPIs to understand whether the time spent on a planned budget was enough to meet the project’s success or goals .

In a line-item budget, expenditures are grouped by categories, such as phases or work packages. A low number of line items in this type of budget will indicate that tracking budget spending will be harder.

This is the number of versions your project’s budget had before its final approval. Too many iterations indicate that your project managers likely spent enough time planning the budget, as expected.

IS THE BUDGETED COST LEADING TO SUCCESS Pro Tip: Compare this KPI with other indicators to unfold the relationship between budget planning time and project success. This will help you measure progress toward

Simply put, managing projects is about two things: money and time. And the goal is to reach all milestones on budget and on time.

But if your project has a lot of phases, work packages, and activities, that’s a challenge right there. Estimating how many tasks you’ll have, the duration toward completing those tasks, available resources, and your schedule variance becomes complex.

And as a result, project execution might fall behind schedule, and companies lose money. Here are a few project timeline KPIs to help you avoid missing your milestones so your entire team stays on schedule.

Formula: SPI = EV / PV

Example: If 53% of the planned work has been completed and the budget to do 100% of the work is $100,000, then the SPI is 0.53 (or 53%). The calculation is (53% * $100,000) / $100,000.

Result: If SPI < 1, then the project is currently behind schedule.

DOES THE PLANNED VALUE MAKE SENSE FOR YOUR SPI Pro Tip: Consider increasing the efficiency of your resources if your project’s SPI < 1.

Formula: SV = EV – PV

Result: If SV < 0, then the project is currently behind schedule.

Warning: SV is expressed in monetary units, such as dollars, not time units, such as days or months.

DOES THE PLANNED VALUE MAKE SENSE FOR YOUR SPI Pro Tip: Consider increasing the efficiency of your resources if your project’s schedule performance index < 1.

Formula: resource capacity = available work hours per day * number of workdays allocated to the project

RC BEST PRACTICES Pro Tip: Adjust the project’s schedule to match the capacity of your resources or bring in more team members to raise your RC. The amount of daily time available must exclude breaks. Because you’re calculating the RC for a specific project, you must exclude the time spent on other projects.

Formula: (number of projects completed on time / total number of projects) * 100%

Define performance levels, especially an underperformance level of, let’s say, 90%. Then consider any project manager with an on-time completion rate below that level as an underperformer and signal them for a performance improvement plan .

Formula: planned duration – actual duration, where planned duration is the time scheduled to execute the work, and it’s an estimate

Result: If < 0, then you underestimated the project schedule time.

The next KPIs evaluate how well the execution of your projects went. But they also determine whether the delivered outcomes met the stakeholders’ expectations beyond just the tasks completed.

Certain quality KPIs tell you if the quality of the work performed within your projects was positive. And other quality KPIs tell you if the environment in which your teams executed your projects was positive. In other words, quality KPIs are measures of either customer or employee happiness.

Formula: (number of employees who left your company / average number of employees) * 100%

Result: A high employee churn rate will likely originate project inefficiency, such as missed milestones, unanticipated expenses, and, down the line, low customer satisfaction.

This KPI assesses customer satisfaction and brand loyalty through a one-question survey. NPS is a number between -100 and 100, which you aim for the higher end.

If you own or manage projects for a single-product company or brand, the survey question would be, “How likely are you to recommend our product to your friends and colleagues?” And if you own or manage projects for a multiple-product brand, you’d tweak the question and mention “brand” instead of “product.”

NPS survey respondents rate the likelihood of recommending your product or brand on a scale of 0–10, with zero being highly unlikely and ten extremely likely. Then, depending on their answers, respondents fall into three categories.

• Promoters. With a score of nine or ten, promoters are loyal customers excited about your product or brand and will most likely refer your offer to others.
• Passives. Scoring seven or eight, passives are happy with your product or brand. Yet, they’re not satisfied enough to spread the word about it, which makes them vulnerable to competitive offers.
• Detractors. With a score of 0–6, detractors are unsatisfied with your product or brand and won’t likely buy from you ever again. In fact, they might even talk others into not buying from you.

Formula: % of promoters – % of detractors

Transform detractors into promoters to boost your customer loyalty levels. You can create custom forms to get critical feedback from your customers to help you drive up your NPS.

Effectiveness

The KPIs below measure your project’s cost-effectiveness. And that’s intimately related to how you utilize your resources.

Are they spending time on project work effectively? And are you spending money on your resources effectively?

In other words, are you spending more time and money on your project than the money you’ll bill your clients? Effectiveness KPIs are indicators to assist you in drawing conclusions about your cost variance across projects.

This is your go-to KPI to evaluate the performance of your team members while executing project work. It gives you insight into the time your team spent on generating revenue and the revenue you’ll actually get from your clients.

Formula: (number of billable hours/number of hours spent doing project work) * 100%

AVOID BURNING OUT YOUR TEAM Pro Tip: Refrain from aiming for maximum utilization. That’d maximize your revenue, but your workforce would be at risk of burnout, which comes at a price for you.

Sum all costs of giving your employees the conditions to execute your project successfully. Those might range from salaries and employee benefits to office equipment, to name a few.

Compare the average cost per hour with your project’s outcomes. If the latter outweighs the first, then your staff used their project time or planned hours effectively. As a result, you also spent your money effectively!

Businesses: Any business looking to continuously improve operations, monitor performance, and ensure overall project success will benefit from setting KPIs. They add a quantifiable measure to objectives, making it easier for businesses to track progress and make data-driven decisions. KPIs offer businesses the ability to have real-time insight into their operations and course correct if need be.

• Retail Business KPIs
• Manufacturing Business KPIs
• E-commerce Business KPIs
• Service-based Business KPIs

Project Managers: For project managers, setting KPIs is crucial for the seamless operation of tasks and achieving project objectives. KPIs offer a clear roadmap of expected results, diluting complex projects into manageable chunks. They provide project managers a way to measure if the team is on the right track or if adjustments are needed thereby minimizing risks involved.

• Construction Project Management KPIs
• IT Operations KPIs
• Digital Marketing KPIs
• Event Planner KPIs

After choosing your KPIs for project management, you or your project managers must monitor them.

You could start by creating an Excel KPI dashboard . But if your project is complex with large budgets, needs several stakeholders and resources, and involves numerous schedule restrictions and task dependencies, then you need a more robust project management approach!

That’s when we come into play with ClickUp. Our KPI software provides you with the KPI reporting you need, whatever that is. And ClickUp’s collection of project management templates gives you a head start. It streamlines setting up projects with the configuration your KPI reports feed on.

Additionally, ClickUp allows you to associate tasks from different teams with a single, measurable target. Together with clearly-set timelines, our software enables you to track goals automatically. But it doesn’t stop there! Use ClickUp to track phase completion and even OKRs.

Link tasks to goals. Then, organize related goals into folders for automatic, overall progress tracking in a single location. Give it a try to ClickUp Goals and discover what proper monitoring of KPIs for project management looks like!

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MARKET RESEARCH KPIs

Market research key performance indicators and metrics, ✔ see different templates & designs ✔ take your presentation of survey results to the next level.

A market research KPI is a performance measurement that is used to monitor, analyze and present survey results in an efficient way. These measurable values cover market research studies concerning product innovation, brand analysis and customer satisfaction etc.

Thanks to professional market research analytics tools and techniques, agencies and businesses can gather quantitative and qualitative data in real-time and visualize it all together in a modern market research report that can be easily automated. Like this, large quantities of consumer data can be summarized and presented in a clear and interactive way. To help you in this quest, we put together a list of critical metrics to help you maximize your research efforts. All these indicators can be carefully put together in an interactive market research dashboard that will help you finding new actionable insights.

Here is the complete list of the most important market research KPIs and metrics, that we will discuss in this article:

Unaided Brand Awareness : Measure the active brand recall

Aided Brand Awareness : Evaluate consumers’ ability to recognize a brand

Brand Image : Find out the impression consumers have of a brand

Celebrity Analysis : See which celebrity is associated with your image

Customer Age Groups : Understand your clients age distribution

Customers By Gender : Track your client’s gender share over time

Customers By Education Level : Learn your target customer’s education level

Customers By Technology Adoption : Discover your consumer’s innovativeness

Usage Intention : Get insights on a new product potential

Purchase Intention : Forecast future customer purchasing behavior

Willingness To Pay : Analyze the price range of a future product

Net Promoter Score : Evaluate customer loyalty and satisfaction

Customer Satisfaction Score : Measure the customer satisfaction

Customer Effort Score : Track the customer experience with a brand

Unaided Brand Awareness

To evaluate the degree of brand awareness of your company, you can perform surveys over a sample large enough. On our example, we have n=1333 people answering the question “what brands come to your mind when thinking about outdoor products?”. That is a direct, non-aided brand awareness survey that requires active thinking from the people interviewed, who will tell all the names that come to their minds without help. The advantage of open questions is that you don’t get biased answers by presenting specific names straight away. It gives an idea of where each label stands in the mind of people and how visible they are to the average consumer, passionate about the product category the brands stand in or not.

The most people naming your brand by themselves, the greater the awareness.

• Brand Analysis Dashboard

Aided Brand Awareness

After asking an open question to measure the number of people expressing knowledge of a brand by themselves, comes the aided brand recognition. It is important to ask this question afterwards so as to have the least biased answer on the first one. This KPI asks the surveyed sample if they have heard about well-known brands within a product category (bottled water, cleaning aids, outdoor accessorizes, etc). In this type of survey, the percentages of people knowing a certain label will always be higher than for the previous KPI, as it does not require active thinking from them but recognizing brands among others.

If people can recognize some brands more than others, it means that they have paid attention to their campaigns.

Brand Image

The brand image is the consumer’s perception of a brand, reflected by the adjectives and ideas he or she associates it with. It can be measured using Aaker’s brand dimensions framework. It describes the traits and profile of a brand using five core dimensions that each have several facets. This model is easy to understand and makes an analogy with humans’ personality traits. The five core dimensions that each have several facets are: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. To measure these traits, you can use a five-point Likert scale, from 'totally agree' to 'totally disagree'. On our example aside, we see that the biggest traits of this label are ‘outdoorsy’, ‘comfortable’, and ‘down-to-earth’, that are related to the facet’s ruggedness and sincerity.

Analyze and compare your brand image with your competitors and evaluate if consumers see your company like you try to present it with your marketing campaigns.

Celebrity Analysis

A pretty easy and straightforward market research KPI is the celebrity analysis. On the same sample of consumers, you only need to ask who, among a list of celebrities you have picked, do they associate with a brand’s name and image. You can also leave it as an open question so as to see who comes first to their mind. It provides you with valuable insights on what type of public figure and personality people affiliate with a company's work. You might have surprising answers, and that can also give food for thoughts on whether their campaigns were rightly made and had the results expected. As a brand, you may then consider partnering with one of the figures that got the higher percentage, if you believe they are in line with your brand image and ethics strategy.

Celebrity endorsement is one of the most popular and efficient tools for advertising when done correctly: it is a good opportunity to use these insights.

Customer Age Groups

Moving on into demographic metrics, we have the customer age groups. This straightforward indicator provides a percentage breakdown of your clients age ranges and it allows companies to segment them in order to provide targeted experiences that will boost loyalty and sales. Once you know your clients age range you can also classify them by generation and have a deeper understanding of their preferences. For instance, Baby Boomers might prefer to buy from physical stores while Millennials, the most targeted and largest demographic group, might prefer online shopping. The age of your target client is increasingly becoming one of the most important demographic metrics. The older your client base, the smaller it will get in time. Therefore, you should always aim at targeting new age ranges with interesting offers and products.

If you want to enter new markets in other countries or continents, looking at the age range of your client base will allow you to compare them to the ones from the markets you want to enter and define how viable it is.

• Customer Demographics Dashboard

Customers By Gender

Next, we have another demographic metric, this time tracking the share of customers by gender over the past 5 years. Just like with age groups, gender demographics is an important indicator to track as it allows you to understand your clients on a deeper level to provide them with a personalized experience and boost engagement. For instance, a retail store needs to clearly define the way they will market female and male clients. Both groups have different purchasing intentions and resonate to different messaging. In the image above, we can see that the rate of females for this brand grew exponentially in the past years reaching almost 50% in 2022. This means there is a growing interest in this product or service that needs to be looked into.

Take your gender monitoring a bit further and include other diverse groups that don’t fit into the male/female category. This way you ensure you are not leaving any of your clients behind.

Customers By Education Level

Next in our list of insightful market research metrics, we have the education level of your clients. Just like our two previous demographic examples, this indicator is very useful to segment your clientele. However, its calculation it’s a bit less straightforward than the others. The education level is a metric that is defined by specific criteria previously imposed by the business. Therefore, it can vary from company to company. The importance of this metric will also vary depending on the industry. While technology companies selling expensive products might need clients with the purchasing power to buy them, other companies selling cheaper products might be more interested in other demographic insights such as gender or age.

Tracking this metric over time can tell you how the education level of your clientele has evolved and adapt your strategies accordingly.

Customers By Tech Adoption

Our next metric tracks the rate of clients by technology adoption group. The technology adoption cycle is a segmentation technique that groups users into different categories depending on their willingness to adopt innovative technologies. At the top of the list, we have the innovators, being the ones most eager to try new technologies. On the bottom we have the laggards, being the ones more reluctant to change. This indicator is especially useful for companies selling technological goods such as smartphones, computes, camaras, among others, as they need to rely in their client’s innovativeness to buy their products. That said, it is important to monitor this indicator over time as it can tell you if your strategies to attract innovative people have paid off.

The technology adoption KPI is also useful when it comes to evaluating new product launches. It provides insights into your client’s behaviors and allows you to provide them with a valuable experience while boosting your revenue streams.

Usage Intention

The usage intention is a market research KPI that focuses on a specific type of product and the relationship consumers have with it. It is a metric asking about their intention to use it in place of another similar product but with a different characteristic. On our example aside, the specific characteristic is the novelty of the product: 41% of the target group would rather use a new-generation item than an older one, or than a competitor’s one. Marketers use this metric to estimate potential future purchasing from consumers, but also to get a feedback on a new product or service and the enthusiasm it triggers. If people are eager to use a new product instead of an old or a competitor’s one, it means that it has an added value.

The more people willing to use it, the better. However, don’t base a whole product development solely on these results.

• Product Innovation Dashboard

Purchase Intention

This market research metric takes the consumer’s intent a step further, by positioning them in an active state of potentially acquiring a product. It is often used by marketers as an input to make decisions on already-existing and new products or services. They are used to predict future sales, but should not be relied on so much - it remains an intention and does not always translate into future sales. Sales rely on many other external factors you cannot control on the moment of purchase: time, money available, tiredness, product or advisers available in store, long queue at the cashier, etc. On our example aside, 47% of the target group are interested in buying the newest product; and the top new products are then ranked by purchase intention.

The higher the percentage, the better, as it means that the market responds positively to it. However, don’t take it at face value as many other factors are involved on the purchasing moment.

Willingness To Pay (WTP)

The willingness to pay (WTP) represents the higher and lower price limits a consumer would pay for a product. It gives you a range on which you can fix the price of a product, and more specifically, the costs that should not be exceeded if you want to make profit on it. It is important when it comes to pricing decisions or a new product development. The scale used for this KPI is inspired by Stoetzel, who would ask customers directly their maximum and minimum price for a product taking into account other aspects like the quality of the product. If it is too low, there might be distrust towards the quality and long-lasting potential of the product.

Push the analysis further by providing a price and evaluating the reaction towards it: is too high, too low, and in which proportions?

Become a data wizard in less than 1 hour!

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This is a trans-disciplinary metric that is used in many different departments – and especially important for the customer service. It measures the likelihood of customers to recommend a product or services to their friends and relatives. The question simply asks to grade, from 0 to 10, how likely they would recommend the brand. Their answers should then be classified as follows: 0-6 are detractors, 7-8 are passives, and 9-10 are promoters. You can then evaluate your score by subtracting the percentage of detractors to the percentage of promoters. Set yourself a target you want to reach and measures your NPS on a regular basis to be sure you are not falling back.

NPS highly depends on the industry. Find a benchmark of your competitors' scores and try to exceed them.

• Customer Satisfaction Dashboard

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

Studies show that over 90% of unhappy customers won’t do business with you again: that’s a figure you certainly don’t want to be applied to you. This is why surveying and asking regularly how your customers feel about your products and service is essential to get direct insights and not lose touch with reality. There are many ways to perform such survey, whether by email, live on the phone or at the store, within your company’s app, on your website, etc. Simply asking how satisfied they are, providing a 1-to-5 scale, will already give you a good idea of where you stand. Customers also feel their opinion is valued and taken into account, which plays in your favor.

The more satisfied, the better of course! This is a score you can show on your website, along client testimonies, as today everyone searches online reviews before engaging with a business.

Customer Effort Score (CES)

The customer effort score (CES) is measuring how fast and simple customers find their interaction with your business. It is very useful to spot any bottlenecks and frictions in the customer experience, and can predict future purchase behavior. You can measure the CES after a specific customer support interaction, after purchases, in meetings, live chats, etc. There are several ways to measure it: as a simple average of the grades given after answering “on a scale from 1 to 10, how much effort did you put to get the help you needed?”, or with a NPS-style approach like on our example aside.

The lower your score, the better. Reducing frictions and enhancing the customer experience is a must to see them coming back.

• KPIs by Function
• KPIs by Industry
• KPIs by Platform

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15 Essential Project KPIs That Benefit the Entire Team

Table of contents

Enjoy reading this blog post written by our experts or partners.

If you want to see what Databox can do for you, click here .

How do you ensure that your team’s projects are delivered on time, on budget, and at a high-quality level?

Too often, people are quick to dismiss project management as an important skill. 

However, if you remember back to any group projects from your high school or university days, you know how chaotic and stressful these projects could be. While projects in large organizations might be more organized than your high school group history project (Hopefully!), they are also far more complex behind corporate politics, scope creep, and gold plating. 

In this post, we’re taking a closer look at the project KPIs you should be tracking to help your team’s projects run smoother. 

• What are KPIs in project management?
• How do you set KPIs for project managers?
• What are the best tools for tracking project management KPIs?
• Best KPIs for project management

What Are KPIs in Project Management?

Project management KPIs allow you to monitor your team’s performance from kick-off to launch. This allows you to understand what’s working well and where you are falling behind. You can use this information to course-correct along the way.  

How Do You Set KPIs for Project Managers?

According to our recent survey of project managers, the average project team has between 3-6 people.

It’s worth noting that they are tracking anywhere from 4-6 primary project management KPIs.

These KPIs range from timeliness and effectiveness to quality and budget. 

Rely on this information when you are setting KPIs for your project management team.

What Are the Best Tools for Tracking Project Management KPIs? 

According to our research, the top 3 most popular tools for tracking project management KPIs are Asana , Trello, and Jira. Almost 60% of our survey respondents prefer to track their project management KPIs in Asana, around 30% uses Trello, and over 20% of our respondents rely on Jira and ClickUp. Other popular project management tools include Monday, centralized project management dashboard solutions like Databox, Basecamp, Teamwork, Wrike, and Harvest.

PRO TIP: Get a Live Overview of Your Most Important Projects In a Single Dashboard

Project management is all about juggling: resources, expectations, people, data, and much more. And as a project manager, you not only have to know where your projects are at any given moment, but you also have to be aware of where they’re going and where they need to be in the future. To do that using a project management system, you need an actionable dashboard that allows you to monitor metrics like:

• Number of tasks completed by project. Get a live update on the total number of tasks that have been completed in a particular project and track how many tasks actually get completed on a daily basis. 
• Total hours tracked. See how many hours are tracked on a monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. Split tracked time by project, client, tasks, and team.
• Tasks overdue by project. At any time, see how many project tasks are overdue, and take appropriate action to get them back on track.
• Tasks completed by project. At any time, see how many tasks have been completed in a project and how many tasks remain to be completed. 

Now you can benefit from the experience of our project managers, who have put together great plug-and-play Databox templates showing the most important KPIs for tracking your team’s performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in management reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your project management tool with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Best KPIs for Project Management

Here are some of the KPIs that teams are most likely to track within various project management software. 

• Resource capacity utilization
• Project cycle time
• On-time task completion rate
• Schedule performance index
• Project errors
• Time efficiency
• Planned hours of work vs. actual hours of work
• Task submission history
• Schedule variance
• Project velocity
• Actual vs. estimate costs
• Return on investment (ROI)
• 360 degree feedback
• Current development backlog
• Client satisfaction

1. Resource capacity utilization 

There is a good chance team members are working on more than one project at a time. This is where project capacity planning becomes vital. So, you can map how many hours they are spending across all of their projects. 

“One project management KPI that’s important for PMs is resource capacity utilization,” says Amanda Haynes of Ganttic . “This is the percentage of a resource’s work hours occupied by projects or tasks, and there are 2 different ways to find this number:

• Scheduled or Forecasted Utilization:

Scheduled Utilization = Scheduled time/ resource capacity

• Actual or Reported Utilization:

Actual Utilization = Reported time/ resource capacity

This KPI is important because it’s the foundation for other metrics. Add up the utilization of a specific team to get the group’s utilization. And analyzing it will show how effective the planning has been. Plus, this KPI prevents employee and team burnout – protecting the project from high turnover rates, productivity issues, and going over budget.” Stay on top this data with the help of a project overview dashboard .

2. Project cycle time

Whether you use waterfall, agile, or some other methodology, mapping out a big project in cycles or sprints is essential to keep your team motivated and on track. 

Chris Westmeyer of Caring Advisor explains, “One of the most important KPI that every project manager should track to see the performance of their team is as follows:

Project cycle time is the time needed to complete a certain task or activity. This key performance indicator evaluates team productivity by assessing the time and speed with which the project is completed. This is an important KPI because efficiency is an essential consideration for any organization as inefficient processes adversely affect the bottom line including goals and objectives. Therefore, managers should track cycle times to monitor the performance of the team and project simultaneously.” 

Leszek Dudkiewicz of Passport-Photo.Online adds, “The KPI that I track to monitor my team’s performance is the cycle timing. The timing of the tasks and business processes to be developed is a crucial factor in measuring productivity. Besides being simple to implement, it is a good KPI to know the actual effectiveness of a project or work process.

This KPI will show the differences between different work areas and the study of how to improve those that are not so profitable or effective. And if this indicator expands, the project will need more to determine bottlenecks.” 

3. On-time task completion rate

Monitoring the percentage of tasks in a project completed on time can help you get in front of potential issues. 

“As a business owner, I can say that one of the most important project management KPIs to consider is the On-time Completion Rate or Percentage which pertains to the rate over the total tasks that are done within the set time frame or schedule,” says Jacob Sapochnick of Sapochnick Law Firm . “This KPI assesses the productivity and efficiency of employees when doing their tasks. Moreover, it can also help the managers oversee the tasks that consume more time than expected as well as individuals that might need extra assistance to meet the deadline. I believe that this metric should be one of the top considerations given that schedule or time budget is one great factor that affects the whole project.” 

In addition, Yoann Bierling of YB Digitalt adds,”Tracking individual progress against the global project results is crucial to understanding where the pain points are, and be able to quickly act on them, by providing more support to overloaded resources, more training to underskilled ones, or any other corrective action that will get each single project member to give its best toward project completion.” 

4. Schedule performance index 

A KPI that is closely related to on-time task completion rate is schedule performance index (SPI). 

Michelle Symonds of Parallel Project Training explains, “The Schedule Performance Index (SPI), which is a measure of how actual progress compares to the planned progress of the project.” 

Grant Clleland of Infiniti Tracking adds, “Schedule Performance Index is a metric that managers use to measure how well their team executes the project on its schedule. It is important because it helps assess the accuracy of the planned schedule. Depending on the value of this metric, managers can determine how the baseline schedule was created or if there is any need for changes. The SPI is especially helpful in indicating if a project is behind schedule so managers can make timely adjustments. These adjustments can include redistributing workload or expanding teams. The SPI is also a measure of a team’s efficiency. It shows us how much work has been completed compared to how far along the project schedule is.” 

5. Project errors

Another KPI to keep an eye on is errors made. When the number of errors increases, this can be a signal that your team is overworked or undertrained. 

“The number of errors made while working on the project can have a huge impact on the timeliness and quality of the work,” says Aviad Faruzo of Faruzo . “A high number of errors means that a different approach must be taken towards the project. Because in the end it is the timeliness that gets affected because the tasks have to be done a second time. This makes it difficult to meet the project deadlines and timely deliver the work to clients. It also determines how many times you have to redo things during the project timeline, which is a key factor in time management. This is why the number of errors made are extremely important to track.” 

6. Time efficiency 

The time to complete tasks tends to expand or contract based on the amount of time allocated for it. Keeping an eye on how much time your team is spending in addition to quality metrics is vital.  

“Every project manager should be aware of the total time a team has been working divided by the number of tasks completed,” says Natasha Rei of Explainerd . “This makes it easy to see how efficient each team member is and how their efforts contribute to a larger whole. If you’re struggling with prioritizing tasks or making decisions about what’s taking up too much time, this metric will show you where adjustments need to be made to ensure your entire team can get everything done on schedule. It also means less confusion about what different people are doing or if teammates contribute equally across all stages from design and implementation until the final shipping of a product launch.” 

7. Planned hours of work vs. actual hours of work

How much time is your team actually working on the project compared to the hours allocated? 

“Planned hours of work vs actual hours of work,” says Andrew Fiebert of Lasso . “If there’s a big disparity between the two, it means that a few factors need to be evaluated – team/individual productivity, resource allocation, and scope creep. Sometimes it can indicate a need to move people around in a project, other times it can indicate a need for additional resources.” 

8. Task submission history 

You may find it helpful to monitor the total number of tasks submitted. 

“Tracking your team’s project submission history is a great way to monitor performance,” says Laura Gast of Truck Driver Institute . “If project deadlines are being met consistently with quality work on the other end, that is a clear indicator that your team is productive and cohesive. On the other hand, teams that struggle to meet project deadlines may indicate a need for a shift in workload, team size, or changes otherwise. Either way, tracking this KPI will help project managers obtain a clearer understanding of their team’s performance.” 

9. Schedule variance

Another crucial KPI to watch is schedule variance because this can tell you if your project is ahead or behind schedule. 

“One important KPI that Project Managers should set and keep track of is the Schedule Variance (SV).” says Kevin Miller . “This metric is an indicator of if the project is ahead or behind schedule. It gives the project manager an accurate picture of the progress which is a vital element of running a successful project. It helps to ensure that you stay on budget and have enough resources to complete the job.

Schedule Variance is also part of managing stakeholder expectations. It provides insight and figures to provide stakeholders to either assure them the project is running smoothly or give context as to why changes are needed to address a delay.” 

10. Project velocity 

This is particularly important if your team works in sprints. 

“Velocity measures the quantity of work completed in a sprint and gives teams an idea about how much work can be done in the next sprint,” says Sergei Moskvin of Orangesoft . “A flat velocity is better than one trending down, but unless there’s nothing to improve in the teamwork, the velocity trend should be up over time.” 

Jake Carroll of Create Kaizen adds, “Velocity is not to be used to performance manage people/teams but to understand how fast we can run. If we know that then we can aim to get complex problems finished within our cone of confidence. Velocity is very important because scrum teams are usually working on complex software that is sometimes hard to predict, and are often heads down solving problems right here and now. Having a strong grasp on velocity will enable the Product Manager to interface with non-technical partners easier and bring them into your world.” 

11. Actual vs. estimate costs

What’s the actual cost of this project compared to what you estimated at kickoff? 

Max Benz of remote-job.net says, “Knowing how much the project is expected to cost and when it will be completed is a good indicator of whether or not the project will be successful. It also helps with budgeting for future projects as well as meeting overall financial goals in a business.” 

You can compare these estimates to the actual project cost. 

12. Return on investment (ROI)

When you know your costs, this makes it easier to evaluate if the project had a positive or negative ROI. 

“One absolutely essential KPI to track is Return On Investment (ROI) ,” says Marcin Stoll of Tidio . “It is the crown of all other metrics, measuring the overall financial worth of a particular project related to its cost. ROI calculations can help the company to understand if a project will result in a positive payback for the company, estimate financial value, and compare to the other planned projects. Figuring out whether to start a project should go hand in hand with continuously measuring ROI to avoid making decisions that will result in losses.” 

Tim Sutton of CoffeeGeek TV agrees, “The one KPI every project manager should track to monitor the performance of their team is the Return on Investment (ROI) = Net Profits/Costs * 100.

It shows how well the project is generating profits from the cost of input that’s invested. The costs can include labor costs, physical resources, and overhead.

Managers should monitor and analyze this figure throughout the whole project to note the effects of changes in input investments.” 

13. 360 degree feedback 

360 degree feedback can help you determine if the team is working well together and respects one another. 

“360-degree feedback is essential in measuring and understanding how effectively your team reaches its individual and group goals,” says Harris Rabin of R3SET . “This anonymous feedback comes from those working around the employee. Typically, they’re managers, teammates, and direct reports. The data you collect should be both quantitative and qualitative. This means the questions can range from how well the team member prioritizes their workload and meets deadlines to whether they embody the company values. 360-degree feedback also offers employees the opportunity to evaluate themselves.

While it’s not always easy to trust in this process, its goal is to solicit constructive feedback and actionable insights. A well-structured 360-degree review helps team members know what actions to take to improve their performance and ensures that each employee’s daily activities align with the team’s overall goals.” 

14. Current development backlog

This admittedly only applies to software engineers , but it is a key KPI for technical project managers to keep track of.  

“For me, the number one KPI that every project manager should mind is the current development backlog,” says Heather Reid of Ukelele Tabs . “This will not only show how efficient and productive your team has been but will also show how effective you are as the project manager. Are you getting the tasks done on time? Are there any tasks which you’ve left behind and now needs to be looked after to get yourselves back on track? These are important metrics that need to be observed so you can really know if you’re actually making progress and hitting your goals or you’re just wasting your time while pretending to work.” 

15. Client satisfaction

If the project is public-facing, then measuring client or customer satisfaction is important. The most common way to do this is through a survey like NPS or CSAT.  

“The most important KPI to track is customer satisfaction,” says Elizabeth Harrin of GirlsGuideToPM . “Success is determined by the client and the perception of success is shaped by their experiences throughout the project. In other words, they don’t decide on whether the project is a success at the end, their opinion is formed throughout the life cycle, whether you are using predictive, hybrid or iterative approaches. I think it’s important to track measures that are important to the customer/client. They typically don’t care, in my experience, about whether you have completed all the project management documentation or filed everything correctly, or ticked the box for lessons learned. They judge projects completely differently: by the experience of being part of the delivery team and how they feel they were treated, and by the value of the outcome.” 

In sum, monitoring project performance can help you stay on track and avoid unnecessary delays. While you don’t need to track all 15 KPIs, tracking 4-6 of them can help align your team and give you the best chance at success. 

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Leading With Next-Generation Key Performance Indicators

June 26, 2018, by: michael schrage and david kiron.

Accelerating technological innovation, intensifying competitive pressure, and increasing customer expectations are forcing business leaders to rethink how they use key performance indicators (KPIs) to lead and manage the enterprise.

Based on a global survey of more than 3,200 senior executives and interviews with 18 executives and thought leaders, we find business leaders worldwide are struggling to strike a workable balance between tactical and strategic KPIs; operational and financial KPIs; and KPIs that effectively capture the moment while anticipating the future. This imbalance is a source of measurable dissatisfaction and concern as data for KPI improvements continues to increase. Executives also appear torn between adding more detailed KPIs or lasering in on a smaller, simplified set. While no consensus KPI best practice emerged from the survey, we did find a small slice of companies are exhibiting sophisticated data-driven and analytically innovative approaches to maximizing the impact of their KPIs.

Overall, however, most companies do not deploy KPIs rigorously for review or as drivers of change. In practice, KPIs are regarded as “key” in name only; the most prevalent attitude toward them seems to be one of compliance, not commitment. The responses suggest this perfunctory treatment reflects cultural and organizational inertia, not technical or operational limitations. In terms of perceived effect and influence, our survey finds that, ironically, most organizations are KPI underachievers. They get less value than they say they want.

Rapid advances in machine learning (ML) — that is, a machine’s ability to improve its performance based on previous results 1 — are poised to radically influence how executives use KPIs to monitor and spur growth. As next-generation predictive algorithms are incorporated into business process planning and design, they seem destined to inspire next-generation digital dashboards. KPIs will consequently offer predictive and prescriptive indicators, not just rearview-mirror reviews. Data-driven companies that leverage these advances by reconceiving their KPIs will enjoy distinct competitive advantages.

About the Authors

Michael Schrage is a research fellow at the MIT Sloan School’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, where he does research and advisory work on how digital media transforms agency, human capital, and innovation.

David Kiron is the executive editor of MIT Sloan Management Review, which brings ideas from the world of thinkers to the executives and managers who use them.

Contributors

Carrie Crimins, Masha Fisch, Lauren Rosano, Allison Ryder, Deborah Soule, and Barbara Spindel

Acknowledgments

Simon Atkins, brand director, North America, Adidas America

Laura Beaudin, partner and global marketing lead, Bain & Co.

Mukul Deoras, chief marketing officer, Colgate-Palmolive

John Doerr, chairman, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Hannah Grove, chief marketing officer, State Street

Robert S. Kaplan, senior fellow and Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Silvia Lagnado, global chief marketing officer, McDonald’s

Andrew Low Ah Kee, chief revenue officer, GoDaddy

Jonathan Mildenhall, cofounder and CEO, TwentyFirstCenturyBrand

Anand Narasimhan, head of controlling, Asia-Pacific, China, and Japan, Merck

Christa Quarles, CEO, OpenTable

Amit Shah, chief marketing officer, 1-800-Flowers.com

Marty St. George, executive vice president, commercial and planning, JetBlue Airways

Glenn Thomas, chief marketing officer, GE Healthcare

Kelly Watkins, vice president, global marketing, Slack

Roddy Young, chief marketing officer, Boston Children’s Hospital

Jane Yu, senior director, digital analytics and ad operations, Experian Consumer Services

1. “Machine Learning,” www.webster-dictionary.org.

2. J.R. Raphael, “30 Incredibly Useful Things You Didn’t Know Slack Could Do,” Fast Company, Feb. 20, 2018, www.fastcompany.com.

3. R.S. Kaplan and D.P. Norton, “The Balanced Scorecard — Measures That Drive Performance,” Harvard Business Review 70, no. 1 (January-February 1992).

4. T. Levitt, “Marketing Myopia,” Harvard Business Review 82, no. 7 (July-August 2004).

5. M. Strathern, “‘Improving Ratings’: Audit in the British University System,” European Review 5, no. 3 (July 1997).

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Market Research Core 7 KPI Metrics to Track and How to Calculate

By henry sheykin, resources on market research.

• Financial Model
• Business Plan
• Value Proposition
• One-Page Business Plan
• SWOT Analysis
• Business Model
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Customer acquisition cost

Customer retention rate.

• Market share
• Customer satisfaction score

Net promoter score

Response rate, research project completion rate.

Welcome to our blog post on the 7 industry-specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Market Research. In today's competitive business landscape, it is crucial for organizations to gauge their performance accurately. By closely monitoring these KPIs, organizations can make informed decisions that drive growth, enhance customer satisfaction, and boost their market presence. In this article, we will explore these KPIs in detail, highlighting their significance and providing actionable insights for businesses looking to optimize their market research strategies.

Customer acquisition cost: This KPI allows organizations to evaluate the cost incurred to acquire a new customer. By identifying the sources of high acquisition costs, businesses can refine their marketing efforts to maximize returns on investment.

• Customer retention rate: This KPI measures the ability of a business to retain its existing customers over a specific period. A higher retention rate indicates customer loyalty and satisfaction, contributing to long-term business success.
• Market share: Market share quantifies a company's portion of the total industry sales within a specific market. Tracking market share helps businesses understand their competitive position and identify growth opportunities.
• Customer satisfaction score: This KPI assesses the satisfaction levels of customers with a company's products or services. Monitoring customer satisfaction enables organizations to enhance their offerings and provide a superior customer experience.
• Net promoter score: The Net Promoter Score (NPS) gauges customers' willingness to recommend a company's products or services to others. It helps businesses measure and improve customer loyalty, ultimately driving organic growth and word-of-mouth referrals.
• Response rate: This KPI measures the proportion of individuals who respond to a specific marketing campaign or survey. Analyzing response rates provides insights into the effectiveness of communication strategies and campaign targeting.
• Research project completion rate: Monitoring the completion rate of research projects enables businesses to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of their market research initiatives. This KPI aids in optimizing resources and ensuring timely delivery of valuable research insights.

Understanding and monitoring these industry-specific KPIs empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions, adapt their strategies, and stay ahead in today's dynamic marketplace. Stay tuned for our upcoming articles as we explore each KPI in-depth, providing practical tips and best practices to maximize the impact of your market research efforts.

Definition:

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is a key performance indicator that measures the average cost of acquiring a new customer for a company. It is calculated by dividing the total marketing and sales costs by the number of new customers acquired within a specific time period.

Advantages of Tracking:

Tracking CAC helps businesses understand the effectiveness of their marketing and sales strategies in acquiring new customers. By monitoring this KPI, companies can evaluate the cost-effectiveness of their acquisition efforts and make informed decisions to optimize their marketing budget.

Industry Benchmarks:

Benchmarking CAC can provide companies with insights into how their acquisition costs compare to others in the industry. This allows them to identify areas where they are over or under-performing and make necessary adjustments to improve their cost-efficiency.

How To Calculate:

To calculate CAC, divide the total marketing and sales costs (including salaries, advertising expenses, and other related expenses) by the number of new customers acquired within a specific time period. The formula for CAC is:

Example of Calculation:

Let's say a company spent $10,000 on marketing and sales efforts in a month, and during that same period, they acquired 100 new customers. The CAC for that month would be:

Tips and Tricks of the KPI:

• Track CAC regularly to identify trends and patterns over time.
• Consider segmenting CAC by different marketing channels to pinpoint the most cost-effective acquisition strategies.
• Combine CAC with other KPIs, such as customer lifetime value (CLV), to gain a comprehensive understanding of your customer acquisition efforts.
• Optimize your marketing and sales processes to reduce CAC while maintaining customer acquisition volume.

Customer retention rate is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that measures the percentage of customers a company is able to retain over a given period of time. It is an important metric for businesses to assess customer loyalty and the effectiveness of their retention strategies.

Advantages of Tracking

Tracking customer retention rate provides valuable insights into customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the overall health of the business. By monitoring this KPI, companies can identify areas for improvement, implement targeted retention strategies, and increase customer lifetime value.

Industry Benchmarks

Industry benchmarks for customer retention rate vary across different sectors. It is important for businesses to compare their customer retention rate against industry standards to determine their performance relative to competitors. This benchmarking helps identify potential areas for improvement.

How To Calculate

The formula to calculate customer retention rate is:

• CE represents the number of customers at the end of a given period
• CN represents the number of new customers acquired during that period
• CS represents the number of customers at the start of the period

Example of Calculation

Suppose a company starts the year with 500 customers, acquires 100 new customers during the year, and ends the year with 450 customers. The customer retention rate can be calculated as:

Tips and Tricks of the KPI

To improve customer retention rate, businesses can:

• Enhance customer experience through personalized interactions
• Implement loyalty programs or exclusive offers for loyal customers
• Provide exceptional customer service and promptly address concerns
• Regularly measure customer satisfaction to identify areas of improvement

Market Share

Market share is a key performance indicator (KPI) used in market research to measure a company's sales or revenue compared to the total market sales or revenue. It represents the company's portion of the overall market and is usually expressed as a percentage.

Tracking market share allows companies to assess their competitive position and evaluate their performance in relation to their industry peers. It provides insights into market trends, customer preferences, and the effectiveness of marketing and sales strategies. By monitoring changes in market share over time, businesses can identify opportunities for growth or areas that require improvement.

Industry benchmarks for market share vary depending on the sector and competitive landscape. It is essential to compare market share performance with competitors in the same market to gain meaningful insights. Industry associations, market research firms, and publicly available reports often provide benchmark data for different industries.

To calculate market share, you need to know your company's sales or revenue for a specific period and the total market sales or revenue for the same period. The formula for calculating market share is:

Market Share = (Company Sales / Total Market Sales) x 100

Let's say your company generated $2 million in sales last year, and the total market sales for the same period were $10 million. To calculate your market share:

Market Share = ($2,000,000 / $10,000,000) x 100 = 20%

• Regularly track and analyze your market share to identify trends and make informed business decisions.
• Consider both volume-based market share (units sold) and value-based market share (revenue generated) to gain a comprehensive understanding of your market position.
• Segment your market share data to identify specific growth opportunities within different customer segments or geographic regions.
• Monitor your competitors' market share to assess their strategies and identify potential threats or areas for collaboration.
• Combine market share with other KPIs, such as customer satisfaction or brand awareness, to gain a holistic view of your business's performance.

Customer Satisfaction Score

The customer satisfaction score (CSAT) is a metric that measures how satisfied customers are with a product or service. It can be measured through surveys, feedback forms, or other customer satisfaction measurement tools. CSAT scores are usually based on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents low satisfaction and 5 represents high satisfaction.

Tracking customer satisfaction scores provides valuable insights into how well a company is meeting customer needs and expectations. It helps identify areas for improvement and guides decision-making processes to enhance customer experience and loyalty. By consistently monitoring CSAT scores, companies can identify trends or issues and take proactive measures to address them.

Industry benchmarks for customer satisfaction scores vary across different sectors. It is essential to compare CSAT scores against competitors and industry standards to understand how well a company is performing relative to its peers and identify areas that need improvement.

To calculate the customer satisfaction score, use the following formula:

Let's say a company conducted a customer satisfaction survey and received 200 responses. Out of these, 150 customers reported being satisfied with the product or service. Using the CSAT formula:

• Regularly measure customer satisfaction to identify trends and make informed business decisions.
• Use a consistent measurement scale and methodology to ensure accurate and comparable results.
• Collect qualitative feedback in addition to CSAT scores to gain deeper insights into customer satisfaction drivers.
• Act upon customer feedback and communicate improvements to customers to foster trust and loyalty.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a metric used to measure customer loyalty and satisfaction towards a brand or company. It provides insights into how likely customers are to recommend the company to others.

By tracking the Net Promoter Score, businesses can gauge customer satisfaction levels, identify areas for improvement, and assess the success of their customer experience initiatives. It helps in understanding customer loyalty and retention rates, ultimately impacting business growth.

The Net Promoter Score can vary across industries, but it generally ranges from -100 to +100. Highly regarded companies often have scores above 70, while average companies usually range between 0 and 30. These benchmarks provide a basis for comparison within specific industries.

To calculate the Net Promoter Score, you need to conduct a customer survey, typically using a scale from 0 to 10. Customers are categorized into three groups:

• Promoters (score 9-10): Customers who are highly satisfied and likely to recommend the company.
• Passives (score 7-8): Customers who are satisfied but not enthusiastic enough to promote the company.
• Detractors (score 0-6): Customers who are dissatisfied and may actively discourage others from using the company.

The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.

Net Promoter Score = % Promoters - % Detractors

Let's say you conducted a customer survey, and out of 100 respondents, 60 were promoters, 20 were passives, and 20 were detractors. The calculation would be as follows:

Net Promoter Score = (60/100 * 100) - (20/100 * 100) = 40

In this example, the Net Promoter Score would be 40.

• Regularly track and monitor your Net Promoter Score to identify trends and changes in customer satisfaction.
• Use open-ended survey questions to gather qualitative feedback that complements the quantitative NPS metric.
• Segment your customer base to uncover variations in satisfaction levels and target specific improvements.
• Compare your Net Promoter Score against industry benchmarks to assess your standing and set realistic goals.
• Utilize the Net Promoter Score as a starting point for actionable insights that drive customer-centric strategies.

The response rate KPI measures the percentage of people who responded to a market research survey or study out of the total number of people invited to participate.

Tracking the response rate allows market researchers to assess the effectiveness and representativeness of their surveys. A high response rate indicates a more accurate representation of the target population, while a low response rate may introduce bias and potentially affect the reliability of the findings.

Industry benchmarks for response rates vary depending on the market, target audience, and research method. However, a response rate above 20% is generally considered acceptable, with rates above 30% indicating a very good response rate.

To calculate the response rate, divide the number of completed responses by the total number of invitations sent and multiply by 100:

Response Rate = (Number of Completed Responses / Number of Invitations Sent) * 100

Let's say you sent out 500 invitations to participate in a market research survey and received 150 completed responses. The response rate would be:

Response Rate = (150 / 500) * 100 = 30%

Tips and Tricks

• Target the right audience: Ensure that the invitations are sent to the appropriate target audience to increase the likelihood of response.
• Provide incentives: Consider offering incentives to encourage participation and increase the response rate.
• Keep surveys short and engaging: Design surveys that are concise, easy to understand, and engaging to encourage higher response rates.
• Use multiple channels: Send invitations through various channels, such as email, social media, or direct mail, to reach a wider audience.

Research project completion rate = (Number of completed projects / Total number of projects) * 100

In conclusion, the identification and measurement of industry-specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial for the success of a Market Research business. These KPIs serve as a quantitative benchmark against which the company's performance can be evaluated, enabling effective decision-making and strategic planning.

By considering factors such as customer satisfaction, project completion rate, data accuracy, client retention, profitability, and market share, a Market Research business can effectively assess its performance and make necessary adjustments to drive growth and maintain a competitive edge.

Implementing a set of well-defined industry-specific KPIs can help align the organization's goals with its day-to-day operations, enhance operational efficiency, and ultimately contribute to long-term success. Regular monitoring and analysis of these KPIs are essential for continuous improvement and staying ahead in the rapidly evolving market research industry.

• Capture customer satisfaction metrics to gauge overall service quality and identify areas for improvement.
• Track project completion rate to ensure efficient project management and meet client deadlines.
• Measure data accuracy to maintain a high level of reliability in research findings.
• Monitor client retention rates as an indicator of customer loyalty and satisfaction.
• Analyze profitability to assess the financial health of the business and optimize resource allocation.
• Evaluate market share to understand the company's position relative to competitors and market trends.
• Monitor employee productivity to ensure optimal utilization of resources and efficiency in operations.

By focusing on these seven industry-specific KPIs, a Market Research business can drive performance, deliver exceptional value to clients, and stay ahead in the dynamic and competitive market landscape.

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12 Essential Construction KPIs for Construction Project

• May 27, 2024

In the complex world of construction, effectively managing large-scale projects requires a deep understanding of multiple variables and factors. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are invaluable tools in this process, offering a streamlined approach to monitor and evaluate the critical aspects of a project’s health and progress. By focusing on a select set of meaningful metrics, construction managers can gain a clearer perspective on overall performance and business health.

In this blog, we will delve into 12 essential construction KPIs that provide a more comprehensive and effective way to gauge success for construction businesses. These KPIs will help you identify strengths, pinpoint areas requiring development, and make informed decisions to enhance the efficiency and outcome of your construction projects.

Table of Contents

What are construction KPIs?

Construction Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of various aspects of a construction project or business operations. They enable companies to measure performance against their objectives and make data-driven decisions to optimise processes. 

Common KPIs in construction include financial metrics like profit, gross profit margin and net profit margins, and cash flow measures such as net cash flow and projected cash flow. Additionally, project management KPIs like milestone achievement and issue tracking are crucial for ensuring timely project completion and addressing potential problems. Other important KPIs involve labour productivity, equipment utilisation, and safety metrics like incident rates, which contribute to maintaining a safe and effective work environment​.

Why are Construction KPIs important?

Construction Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are crucial because they provide a measurable way to assess the effectiveness, efficiency, and progress of a construction project. They enable managers to identify areas needing improvement, optimise resource allocation, and ensure project completion on time and within budget. 

By monitoring KPIs, businesses can enhance safety, and cost management improve quality, and increase productivity. Additionally, KPIs help in making informed decisions, improving stakeholder communication, and maintaining competitiveness in the industry by aligning project outcomes with business objectives.

Construction KPI assessment 

Assessing Construction KPIs involves a systematic approach to ensure that the performance metrics accurately reflect the efficiency and success of construction projects. Here’s an outline of the process:

• Identify Relevant KPIs: Determine which KPIs are most important for the project or company goals. These could include metrics related to safety, quality, performance, employees, and cash flow.
• Set Baselines and Targets: Establish baselines for each KPI based on historical data or industry standards. Then, set realistic targets for improvement.
• Data Collection: Collect data systematically to measure each KPI. This might involve using software tools, manual tracking, or automated sensors.
• Analysis: Analyse the data to determine how well the project or company is performing against the set targets. Look for trends, patterns, and deviations.
• Actionable Insights: Use the analysis to identify areas for improvement. Develop action plans to solve any issues and optimise processes.
• Continuous Monitoring: Regularly monitor KPIs to track progress over time. Adjust targets and strategies as required based on ongoing assessments.
• Reporting and Communication: Share the results with stakeholders to ensure transparency and foster a culture of continuous improvement.

Essential construction KPIs to track

When it comes to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the construction industry, the focus varies depending on the specific objectives and priorities of each construction company. Here, we explore several essential categories of KPIs that are pivotal for monitoring and enhancing various aspects of construction operations:

This KPI focuses on the type, severity, and frequency of injuries at the construction job site. It includes metrics related to safety management practices like staff training, safety huddles, and the overall impact of safety incidents on the project schedule​.

Quality KPIs help ensure that construction projects meet the required standards and minimise later changes or corrections. This involves tracking issues in the quality checklist, the number of site inspections, and the rates of passed and failed inspections​​.

Performance: 

Performance KPIs measure the effectiveness and productivity of construction operations. This can include metrics like cost variance, which compares the projected cost with the actual cost, and labour downtime, which measures unproductive time​.

Employees: 

KPIs related to employees focus on aspects like labor downtime, which reflects the productivity of workers, and other key metrics, that gauge employee engagement and performance throughout the project​.

Cash Flow: 

This involves tracking the efficiency of collecting payments (accounts receivable turnover) and the promptness in settling debts (accounts payable turnover). These KPIs help in understanding how well the business manages its finances during construction projects​.

This KPI measures the adherence of the construction project to its planned timeline. Using project progress and comparing planned completion dates with actual dates helps identify delays and their causes. Effective schedule management ensures projects stay on track, reduces cost overruns, and maintains stakeholder satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction: 

This KPI assesses the level of satisfaction among clients with the quality and delivery of the construction project. High customer satisfaction can lead to repeated business and positive referrals, making it essential for long-term success. This client satisfaction metric can be evaluated through surveys, feedback forms, and direct client interactions.

Cost Variance: 

This KPI compares the budgeted cost of work performed with the actual cost incurred. A positive variance indicates the project is under budget, while a negative variance suggests overruns. Managing cost variance effectively helps in maintaining financial health and profitability of the project.

Quick Ratio: 

Also known as the acid-test ratio, this financial KPI measures a company’s ability to pay its short-term liabilities with its most liquid assets. A higher quick ratio indicates better liquidity and financial stability, which is crucial for managing unexpected costs or delays in construction.

Percentage of Labor Downtime: 

This KPI tracks the proportion of time that labour is not productive due to delays, equipment failure, or other inefficiencies. Minimising labour downtime is key to maximising productivity and keeping the project on plan and within budget.

Profitability: 

This KPI measures the overall financial success of a construction project by comparing the revenue it generates to the costs incurred. High profitability indicates efficient management and execution of project costs, while low profitability suggests areas for improvement in cost control and operational efficiency.

Equipment Downtime: 

This KPI measures the time that equipment is not operational due to maintenance, breaks, or other issues. Reducing equipment downtime is essential for maintaining project momentum and avoiding costly delays.

Leading vs Lagging: moving to predictive KPIs

Understanding the difference between leading and lagging KPIs is crucial for moving towards predictive analytics and proactive decision-making in construction management.

Lagging KPI

Lagging KPIs are retrospective; they measure outcomes after they have occurred. Examples include total project cost, completed work quality, and accident rates. While they provide valuable insights into past performance, they don’t allow for immediate corrective actions.

Leading KPIs

Leading KPIs, on the other hand, are predictive and focus on future outcomes. They measure activities that influence future projects’ performance, such as employee training hours, equipment maintenance schedules, and the frequency of safety inspections. These KPIs can signal potential issues before they impact the project, allowing for preemptive adjustments.

To move towards predictive KPIs, the construction firms and managers should:

• Identify key leading indicators relevant to their specific project goals.
• Collect real-time data to monitor these indicators continuously.
• Use analytics to correlate leading indicators with lagging outcomes, refining predictions over time.
• Implement feedback loops to adjust operations based on predictive insights.

How to implement better KPIs

Implementing better KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in any industry, including the construction business, involves a systematic approach to ensure they effectively guide and improve business performance. Here are the steps to enhance KPI implementation:

Standardising Reporting and Measurement: 

To ensure consistency and accuracy in KPIs, it’s vital to standardise the reporting and measurement processes. This can be facilitated by adopting digital technologies and cloud-based systems that allow for real-time data sharing and standard workflow processes across the organisation​​.

Gaining Support: 

For successful KPI implementation, securing buy-in from all stakeholders, including management and field workers, is crucial. This involves explaining the benefits of KPIs and providing training to key personnel who can advocate for their use​​.

Incentivising Participation:

Encouraging participation through mentorship and incentives such as rewards for meeting KPI targets can foster a culture where employees are motivated to engage with KPIs. This can lead to better data collection and adherence to performance standards​​.

Measuring Progress: 

Assigning designated staff to track and report on KPI progress ensures that everyone is informed about how the company’s financial health is performing. Training on the use of performance software is also essential to maintain transparency and accountability​​.

Evaluating and Adapting: 

Continually reviewing and refining KPIs is necessary to keep them relevant and effective. This involves setting aside time for discussion and embracing digital changes to adapt to evolving project dynamics.

How does Powerplay help to track construction KPLs?

Powerplay, a construction management software , assists in tracking construction KPIs by providing real-time data analytics and dashboard visualisations. It enables project managers to monitor key performance indicators such as project progress reports , material utilisation, labour productivity and budget adherence. 

Powerplay integrates various project dimensions, allowing for a holistic view and facilitating decision-making. This ensures that teams can quickly identify deviations from planned metrics and take corrective actions, enhancing overall project efficiency and effectiveness.

In summary, the effective use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is vital for the successful management of construction projects. By focusing on 12 essential KPIs, project managers can gain a complete view of their project’s performance, identify areas for development, and make informed decisions that enhance efficiency and outcomes. 

These KPIs, ranging from safety and quality to profitability and equipment downtime, provide a balanced approach to evaluating the multifaceted aspects of construction operations. Adopting a proactive stance in keeping projects with leading KPIs and continually refining practices ensures that projects not only meet but exceed expectations, fostering a culture of excellence and sustained growth in the construction industry.

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