What is a KPI tracking report?
A KPI tracking report is a document that consolidates data from multiple sources (e.g., CRM systems, financial software, project management tools) to track and display key performance indicators (KPIs) (e.g., revenue growth, customer satisfaction, project completion rates), enabling teams and organizations to monitor performance and create presentations for stakeholders and executives.
KPI tracking reports are typically created using flexible tools like Google Looker Studio, Power BI, Google Sheets, or platform-specific solutions to enable high customization and integration of multiple data sources.
What to include in a KPI tracking report?
An actionable KPI tracking report balances context and specificity based on the audience (executives, managers, and analysts) and their use cases.
Executive KPI reports
Executive reports for CEOs, CFOs, and board members show the organization's bottom-line impact. Reviewed weekly, monthly, or quarterly, they include:
- Financial performance analysis: revenue, profit margins, and cost analysis.
- Customer metrics: customer satisfaction, retention rates, and net promoter scores.
- Operational efficiency: productivity metrics, project completion rates, and resource utilization.
- Add text for additional context to translate metrics for non-technical audiences. Present in slide decks and simplified Looker Studio reports.
Manager KPI reports
Manager reports have cross-departmental views with drill-downs to see performance by team, project, region, and time period. They help align teams, define strategies, and include:
- Performance reporting: overall performance, department, or region reporting across metrics.
- Goal tracking: compare current performance vs objectives.
- Audits for prioritization and spotting issues
- Benchmarking for performance comparison.
- Resource allocation and utilization analysis
Operational KPI Reports
Operational reports for analysts and team leaders have granular, customizable KPIs to solve technical issues. Monitored hourly, daily, or weekly, they cover:
- Project management: task completion, deadlines, and resource allocation.
- Customer service: response times, resolution rates, and customer feedback.
- Sales: lead conversion rates, sales cycle length, and pipeline health.
- Production: output rates, quality control metrics, and downtime analysis.
Operational KPI reports are highly customized, built in flexible tools like Google Sheets or Looker Studio to enable data cleaning, blending, annotations, and integrating multiple sources.
How to build a KPI tracking report?
To build a KPI tracking report, connect your data sources, choose a template on Looker Studio or Sheets, build your queries by selecting metrics and dimensions, choose charts to visualize your data, customize the report, design and share via link, PDF or email.
Here’s the breakdown:
Connect data sources
Define and connect the data sources to bring to your report. Common sources are CRM systems for customer data, financial software for revenue and cost data, and project management tools for operational metrics.
To connect your data sources, go to portermetrics.com, choose the data sources to bring to your report.
You can follow these tutorials on connecting your data:
Choose a template
Choose from dozens of KPI tracking report templates in Google Sheets or Looker Studio, designed for use cases like financial analysis, customer satisfaction tracking, and operational efficiency monitoring.
Learn to copy Looker Studio templates.
While templates are the starting point. Make them specific for your business or organization. Map your specific metrics, especially custom KPIs, CRM data, financial metrics, and all the fields and metrics that you define as "performance indicators" and "goals".
Depending on your reporting tool—Google Sheets or Google Looker Studio, pick any of the dozens of templates created by our team and customers to solve your KPI tracking use cases, such as financial analysis, customer satisfaction tracking, and operational efficiency monitoring.
Select metrics, dimensions, and charts
Once your report template is downloaded, you may 1)modify it or 2) create a blank page to build it from scratch. Whatever the case, setting up a query always follows these steps:
- Select the data source and the account connected to it
- Choose metrics (e.g. Revenue, customer satisfaction, project completion rates, etc.).
- Choose breakdowns to segment your data (e.g. by date, department, project, etc.)
You can follow these tutorials on adding data to your reports
Design
To make your KPI tracking reports truly white-label you can add logos, colors, fonts, and styling to mirror your brand.
Follow these tutorials to design your KPI tracking reports:
Share
Share your KPI tracking reports via links, PDF, schedule emails, and control permissions.
KPIs to include in a KPI tracking report?
KPI tracking reports should include a mix of financial, customer, operational, and strategic metrics to fully understand the performance of the organization towards business goals. They include:
Financial KPIs measure the financial health and performance of the organization:
- Revenue metrics: total revenue, revenue growth, recurring revenue
- Cost metrics: operational costs, cost of goods sold, overhead expenses
- Profitability metrics: gross profit, net profit, EBITDA
Customer KPIs measure customer satisfaction and engagement, including:
- Satisfaction: customer satisfaction score (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS)
- Retention: customer retention rate, churn rate
- Engagement: customer lifetime value (CLV), average order value (AOV)
Operational KPIs measure the efficiency and effectiveness of operations:
- Productivity: output per hour, task completion rate
- Quality: defect rates, error rates
- Efficiency: resource utilization, cycle time
Strategic KPIs show the alignment with long-term goals:
- Growth: market share, new customer acquisition
- Innovation: number of new products, R&D investment
- Employee: employee satisfaction, turnover rate
To analyze these KPIs, segment them by:
- Department: sales, marketing, operations, finance
- Time: Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly
- Project: phase, milestone
- Customer: demographics, behavior, segment
- Product: category, lifecycle stage
