3 Reasons Why it's Critical to Track KPIs in Real Time

Key Performance Indicators seem to be the center of attention in the SMB world, and for good reason. The idea is that by tracking the numbers that matter most to your business, you’ll be able to determine what’s working well for your operations and more importantly, fix those areas that are not working well.

It sounds easy enough in concept, but we hear regularly from people who tell us they are tracking KPIs but still haven’t seen much improvement to their business operations. To which our next question is “how often are you tracking your KPIs?” Plenty of SMB leaders today are still trying to run their business on the old, monthly P&L statements and struggling to make effective calls that will aid their business as needed.

When we get some of these leaders on a call to talk about how they can better manage their data to get the results that they want, our first order of business is to explain why it’s critical to constantly track KPIs. Sure, there are some that can be tracked daily or weekly, but if you can track KPIs throughout the day, it’s so much easier to see when a particular number starts to slip and that means you can get started immediately on a fix. No need to wait until days or weeks later when the issue has no doubt started to snowball into a fix that will take more time and effort to amend.

On a similar note, our friends at ChannelE2E recently shared some stats about best-performing SMBs and why they have made the decision to monitor KPIs in real time:

• 50% of companies that track metrics in real-time met all their goals in the last 12 months compared to only 24% of companies that did not track in real-time.
• 92% of companies that tracked their metrics in real-time met some or all their goals in the last 12 months – compared to 64% of companies that did not track in real-time.
• But here’s the most telling stat of all: Only 14 percent of SMBs are monitoring their KPIs in real-time.

Now here’s some food for thought: if you know where your business operations stand with your current method of checking KPIs sporadically, why not increase your tracking and monitor the results you see? In a worst-case scenario, you’ll see small improvements by keeping a more vigilant tab on your metrics, although we’re willing to bet that there are significant achievements waiting for you once you take the right steps!

Ready to learn more about the 6 key areas that all companies should track in order to monitor the health of their business? Download our free guide to KPI Best Practices: