KPIs are key performance indicators to measure progress, tracking business goals and objectives, through data analysis. Omega CRM can help you define them and perform reporting and dashboards.
Reports & KPIs
Data analysis
Data analysis is the study of a set of information whose purpose is to draw conclusions that allow a company or organization to make a decision.
There are different types of data analysis:
- Quantitative : as its name suggests, it is based on quantifiable, numerical information.
- Qualitative: includes non-quantifiable information, normally textual.
Data analysis can have many applications for all types of organizations and is a discipline of great relevance today given the increasing volume of information with which we work.
Next, we will see some of the tools with which you work in data analysis.
Dashboards: what they are and how they differ from reports
The dashboard is a business tool used to find out the status of a process or business area and make informed decisions. It includes objectives and KPIs and shows the evolution of each one in real time and graphically.
This offers several advantages, such as a greater ability to react to any problem, the possibility of anticipating possible market risks and being able to evaluate the success of the strategy in progress.
These are important differences from traditional reports, which are static, periodically updated (that is, they do not contain real-time information), and are more visually limited.
The reports, for their part, have a broader focus and offer the information already ordered and filtered, which is useful to offer a clearer vision at a high level of the organization. Both types of tools are supported.
Dashboards are most useful for day-to-day analytics and reporting, to get an overview at specific times.
Different types of dashboards can be created for each company area: HR, IT, Sales, etc. In this way, the managers of the different areas will be able to make better strategic decisions.
Balanced Score
Unlike dashboard, the Balanced Score is used to measure the evolution of the company at a general level and is aligned with the global mission and business objectives. It usually collects information of various types:
- Financial. This information helps to take strategic information at the purchasing level and to increase/reduce costs in certain processes.
- Business. From this perspective we can know the situation of the company within the sector, the profitability of customers, their degree of loyalty, etc.
- Internal processes. It helps us measure production costs, suppliers, operations, etc. Also include quality indicators.
- Employees. HR can provide information on employee retention, training plans, etc.
How to make a dashboard
Before designing a dashboard, it is important to know what objectives and KPIs will be part of it. It is very useful to add names and explanations of the different KPIs that are displayed to the dashboard to facilitate their understanding.
It is also very important to know what audience it is aimed at, because based on this it will be decided what is going to be communicated and how.
Another essential aspect is deciding how the information is going to be distributed and prioritized within the dashboard. The most important data should be at the top left of each page. You can also play with the size of the elements or the colors to highlight a specific graphic.
At a general level it is also important to take visual conventions into account. Some examples:
- The use of green to indicate positive data and red to indicate negative data.
- Consistent visual icons and in accordance with conventions. For example, if a triangle with an exclamation point is used on a page to indicate a possible risk, the same triangle should be used to indicate other risks later.
- Consistent date format and according to local custom.
Next, it is important to choose which tool we are going to create the dashboard with. It can even be done from Excel, but the key is choosing a data visualization software that allows you to collect data in real time, that is flexible (the more customization it allows, the better), interactive (options of filtering, sorting, or highlighting of specific data), easy to use, can work with multiple data sources, and offers powerful data visualization.
How to define KPIs
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are metrics that allow us to evaluate the success of our strategy in relation to the defined objectives.
It is important that they be associated with objectives SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and temporary ), since without this it is difficult for the KPIs to reflect the success of the strategy.
When selecting KPIs, the first point, therefore, is that they are key to our objectives, avoiding those that are less relevant, whose information is not so specific or can give rise to many interpretations. The KPIs must also be quantifiable, practical (that allow objective decisions to be made), understandable, reliable and controllable (the data must be controlled by the company).
Below, we can see an example of KPIs for the objective “increase sales by 30% in the current year from the email channel” that could be part of a digital marketing dashboard:
- Delivery rate: delivery rate. It is the first KPI that we must take into account, since we need to know in what percentage the users of our database are receiving the emails.
- Open rate: opening rate.
- CTOR: percentage of users who clicked compared to the number of users who opened the email.
- Conversion rate of the email channel as a whole and by campaign.
- Number of sales from the email channel and by campaign.
From what the KPIs reflect, valuable insights can be extracted for our marketing strategy. For example: “campaigns that use a shorter subject have a better open rate and get more sales”.
Data visualization tools
There are different data visualization tools on the market, some of the most popular being the following:
- Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio): free and easy-to-use tool that allows you to connect the different Google and other external services through connectors. It is a tool that more and more web analytics agencies are using, since it allows you to control web analytics and the results of the different marketing channels on the same site. It is ideal for those who do not require very advanced dashboards.
- Marketing Cloud Intelligence: previously known as Datorama, this data visualization tool is designed for marketers, as it comes with a large number of connectors to bring data from different marketing platforms (Google Ads, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon Ads, Tik Tok… and a long etcetera) without having to touch a single line of code.
- Tableau: allows you to connect a large number of files, databases, sources OLAP (such as Microsoft Analysis Services ), online sources (such as Google Analytics), CRMs, etc. It is a very complete tool, which can work in conjunction with the previous one, both being from Salesforce, and with great possibilities when it comes to representing the data. It can work with Big Data, which makes it ideal for large companies.
- Power BI: is the tool with the largest number of users. It is an integrated solution in Office 365 that, like Tableau, allows you to connect numerous data sources. Power BI is better suited to all types of businesses, is cheaper, and is a highly recommended option for businesses that already work with Office 365.
