What is a KPI Report? Examples & Best Practices Guide (2024)

An effective KPI report streamlines data and showcases only the KPIs organizations or teams need to measure performance over time for specific strategic objectives. The examples below should help you create a best-in-class KPI report of your own.

Types of KPI Reports

Executive Report

Operational Report

See Also

What are Key Metrics?The Importance of KPIs and Why You Need ThemHow to Develop Actionable KPIs and Harness Your Business MetricsDomo Resource - How KPI dashboards can benefit your business

Tactical Report

Analytical Report

A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) report shows performance across the entire marketing funnel to identify opportunities for improvement, featuring KPIs such as:

• Total visits

• Opportunities by quarter

• Net-new logos by quarter

KPI Report By Initiative

A workforce diversity report shows demographic data by country to optimize for inclusion, featuring KPIs such as:

• Employees by region

• Workers by ethnicity

• Salary by country

An interactive KPI report which allows for exploration and analysis is very similar to a modern KPI dashboard. But a traditional KPI report, produced as a static document that is distributed to stakeholders, is quite different from an interactive dashboard.

Creating a KPI report should be easier and more straightforward than it is. Because it’s not, these are some best practices:

• Strategic assessment ­– Create a direct link between your KPIs and your goals so audiences can evaluate the success of the current strategy at a glance.

• Glossary – Be sure to define all necessary terms in a glossary as well as KPI formulas in case external parties that may not understand the measures used will be consuming the report.

• KPI relevance ­– Include an explanation about why the performance indicators used are relevant or valid as a measure of success to help audiences better process the information.

• Future targets – Establish a forward-looking orientation that helps readers estimate the potential for success and provides a basis for assessing future performance.

• Trend data ­– Use historical trend graphs to establish context so audiences grasp how much performance has improved or gotten worse over time, and to evaluate the success of existing strategies.

• Benchmark – Provide a comparison of performance to set it in context and help readers understand positions.

Why is a KPI report important?

A KPI report is a critical business performance tool because they provide a clear and accurate picture of organizational performance, well-being, and potential for growth. These reports help authors communicate to specific audiences about how well parts of the business or initiatives are meeting objectives. They inspire action and investment. They enable management to identify potential opportunities and challenges early, evaluate the success of existing strategies, and fail fast, when necessary.

What are some different types of KPIs?

There are all kinds of KPIs, depending on business objectives. For example, financial KPIs such as revenue growth rate or net profit margin, sales KPIs such as net sales or sales by region, customer service KPIs such as Net Promoter Score or average resolution time, and marketing KPIs including traffic-to-lead ratio and cost per lead. There are also operational KPIs such as order fulfillment time and time to market. See all KPI examples.

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