KPI dashboard examples

Five to ten. The constraint is the reader, not the data. Past about ten measures a scorecard stops being scanned and starts being searched, which is the point at which it fails, because the whole promise of the format is that the number you needed was the one you saw first. The six above carry four each.

Every KPI is a metric, but few metrics are KPIs. A metric is anything you can count. A KPI is one of the handful a decision hangs on, measured against a target, so the gap between plan and actual is the point. A dashboard of metrics reports activity; a KPI dashboard says whether you are on track.

Strategic, operational, tactical and analytical. A strategic one holds a few headline KPIs against plan for leadership, like the finance scorecard. An operational one tracks today's numbers so someone can act now, like a pipeline or a stock board. A tactical one follows a team toward a goal over weeks, like the project KPI dashboard. An analytical one is for working out why a KPI moved.

Start from the review it serves, then work through five steps.

1. List the decisions the review makes, and keep only the KPIs a decision hangs on: five to ten at most.
2. Give each KPI a target and a definition that everyone signs off before it goes on a screen.
3. Connect the systems the numbers live in and prepare each into its own dataset.
4. Put the KPIs on the strip with their direction and the target beside them, and the cut that explains each one underneath.
5. Schedule the refresh and share the link, so the review opens on this week's numbers.

It depends on the function, which is why the examples above are one board per team rather than one list. Finance usually opens on revenue, gross margin and operating income. Sales opens on deal size, days to close and weighted pipeline. People opens on tenure, engagement and salary cost. Marketing opens on spend, return on ad spend and cost per acquisition; a subscription business on MRR and net retention; a project office on budget, cost variance and percent complete. Pick the four or five that answer the question the review is for, and leave the rest to the department dashboards.

A KPI dashboard answers 'how are we doing' in one screen, and is built to be scanned. A report answers 'what happened and why' in a sequence, and is built to be read. Same dataset, different artifact. Confusing the two is how a scorecard ends up with forty measures on it.

Several places at once, usually: the ledger, the CRM, the HR system, whatever spreadsheets are still load-bearing. Joining them is the work. Mammoth has 100+ tested connectors, plus anything with a REST API, so a source that is not on the list is still reachable.

Put the preparation on a schedule rather than redoing it by hand. In Mammoth the steps that clean and join the data are recorded and re-run, so the scorecard reflects the source rather than the last time someone exported it. How often it refreshes depends on the plan, which /pricing sets out.

Yes, and it costs nothing. Dashboard viewers are unlimited and free on every Mammoth plan, including the free one. Only the people building count as platform users.