Measure a Business’ Success in UK with KPIs

A business should constantly look for improving its performance using new corporate strategies. Entrepreneurs employ KPI metrics to evaluate if these are effective or if they burden the enterprise. In this article, I analyse what are and how to measure a business’ success in the UK with KPIs.

What is a KPI? How to Measure a Business’ Success in the UK with them?

A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a metric that company directors use to evaluate the performance of a work team or to check if a certain business tactic is effective. Therefore, you should determine which KPIs you will use to measure a strategy before applying it, so you can calculate the results from start to finish.

They difference themselves from other metrics in several aspects. Firstly, the way both are used is not the same. KPIs measure the tactics mentioned in the previous paragraphs, while the other parameters weight numerical values. On the other side, the directors of a company employ KPIs because the results they offer are interpretable even if you do not understand the operational processes. However, only the leaders of an operation use the rest of the metrics, because, in this case, it is necessary to comprehend the production process to assimilate these data.

In conclusion, all KPIs are metrics, but every metric is not a KPI.

Criteria to select a KPI

Choosing a KPI or another will vary depending on the specific characteristics of a company, its business activity or the strategy directors want to evaluate. Nonetheless, there are some shared requisites that every KPI metric must comply with.

That it is connected with that which will be measured.
It must refer to specific aspects, not general ones.
Reliability and accessibility It must come from reliable and public sources, respectively.
It must include all required details for a correct evaluation of the subject of study.
That it allows to check its evolution with the time.
That it permits to set a specific evaluation point.
That they contribute a comparison with a previous subject of study.

How to Measure a Business’ Success in the UK with KPIs in Different Economic Sectors

Although there exist some generic KPI metrics for some economic sectors, most of the KPIs are specific to a service area. However, if a company operates in more than one job field, then each of its work teams will employ different KPIs. Here are some examples in different sectors.

Marketing KPIs for Online Shops

These types of measurements evaluate the performance of marketing campaigns that an e-commerce has carried out. These are some of the KPIs companies use in this activity:

Web traffic: it shows the number of visitors that have entered a website in a day.
New visits: it registers how many users have accessed the online shop for their first time.
Email open rate: it gathers data about the percentage of potential customers that have opened a company’s promotional email.

KPIs for Human Resources

These KPIs are essential for a company. Consequently, they collect information about the happiness of the employees about the work they do for the business.

Workers’ satisfaction: it measures the probability of an employee to recommend the corporation to family and friend for working in it.
Workers’ retention rate: it collects data, per year, about the employees that stay in the company.
Workers’ comments: these give feedback to the enterprise about things in which it can improve in order to become a better employer. For this reason, it helps to increase the workers’ retention rate.

Logistics KPIs

They measure errors in the product delivery process, the costs or the productivity of the employees. Therefore, they will be especially relevant for companies that ship assets or transport goods, such as Amazon. Hence, some of the KPIs used in this sector are:

Cost per employee.
Percentage of packages delivered on time.
Number of warehouses through which an asset rotates.

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