Executive dashboard: the KPIs that matter to SMEs

An executive dashboard has only one job: to help you make better decisions, sooner. Yet it often overflows: dozens of metrics, charts everywhere, and when the time comes to decide, people still reopen the spreadsheet.

The problem rarely lies with the tool, but with the choice of metrics and how much people trust them. Here is our method: start from your decisions, keep a few KPIs per function, make the data reliable, then automate updates and alerts.

A good executive dashboard starts from your decisions

The starting question is not “what data do we have?”, but “what decisions do we make, and what do we need to know to make them well?”

List your recurring decisions: following up with a customer, adjusting a price, hiring, ordering stock, postponing an expense. For each one, note:

• the metric that informs it;
• how often the decision is made: daily, weekly, monthly;
• the owner who acts when the figure moves, and the threshold that triggers action.

Then apply the test: if this figure changes, who does what? If the answer is “nobody”, it isn’t a management metric, and it has no place on the executive page.

The metrics that steer an SME, function by function

There is no universal list: your KPIs depend on your business. Here are five families that are useful to almost every SME, with two or three metrics each.

Sales

• signed revenue, compared with the target;
• the sales pipeline: open quotes, and their chances of closing;
• the conversion rate from quotes to orders.

If these figures are still sitting in spreadsheets, it may be a sign that you need a CRM.

Margin

• gross margin, by business line, by product or by customer;
• discounts granted, which quietly eat into the margin.

Revenue tells you whether you are selling. Margin tells you whether you make money when you sell.

Cash flow

• available cash, and its forecast for the weeks ahead;
• late payments: overdue amounts, and the customers concerned;
• payments due: suppliers, salaries, taxes and duties.

It’s often the most urgent thing to monitor: a profitable business can still run short of cash.

Operations

• lead times: from order to delivery, or from opening a case to closing it;
• delays: orders or cases still waiting beyond the planned time;
• quality: errors, returns, rework.

If you hold stock, also track stock-outs and overstock.

A figure tracked over time also lets you measure progress. At Innova Home, in Morocco, the custom software designed by our founder replaced paper and spreadsheets with a single tool: more than 50% of time saved on handling each order.

Customers

• complaints: how many, why, and how long they take to resolve;
• loyalty: active customers, repeat orders, or cancellations if you sell subscriptions;
• dependency: the share of revenue that comes from your largest customers.

All in all, the executive page should fit on a single screen.

Reliable KPIs: data quality first

A dashboard people doubt is useless: everyone goes back to their own spreadsheet “to check”. Trust is built upstream:

• A written definition for each metric. Does “revenue” mean signed, invoiced or collected? Without a shared answer, meetings turn into debates about the figures. Write one sheet per metric: definition, calculation, source, update frequency, owner and alert threshold.
• One source for each piece of data. The pipeline comes from the CRM, orders from the ERP, cash from the accounting system. When the same data exists in two places, decide which of the two sources is authoritative.
• Clean, dated data. Duplicates, the same customer entered three different ways, missing dates: cleaning is part of the job. Also show the date of the last update: a dated figure inspires confidence.

When orders are still tracked by hand, the first project may lie elsewhere: implementing an ERP.

Automating updates and alerts

Up-to-date figures, with no re-entry

A dashboard filled in by hand falls behind, then ends up abandoned. Once your sources are connected (ERP, CRM, accounting, spreadsheets), the figures update themselves. Real time is only justified for a few metrics, often operational ones; for the rest, a nightly update is usually enough. Then review each family at the pace of the decisions it informs:

• daily for operations;
• weekly for sales and cash flow;
• monthly for margin and long-term trends.

The data is brought together in a data warehouse: a single database that keeps the history, so that you can compare, for example, each month with the same month of the previous year.

For display, an off-the-shelf business intelligence (BI) tool such as Power BI or Looker Studio suits many SMEs; a dashboard built into your business software is another option. Either way, plan role-based access: not everyone needs to see the margins.

This is the heart of our Data & BI projects: connecting your sources, making the data reliable and automating your dashboards.

Alerts that trigger action

Nobody watches a dashboard all day. Alerts take over: when a metric crosses its threshold, the right person is notified, with the context needed to act. For example:

• forecast cash falls below the set threshold;
• a major customer stops ordering at their usual pace;
• an order goes past the promised delivery date.

Keep them few: with too many alerts, nobody reads them any more. Add a short weekly summary: the key figures, and what has changed.

The mistakes that make a dashboard useless

• Too many metrics. When everything is tracked, nothing stands out. A figure that hasn’t triggered a single decision in months can leave the page.
• Vanity metrics. Social media followers, page views, total accounts created since launch: these figures flatter, but don’t tell you what to do. Prefer what measures an outcome, such as quote requests or active customers.
• Figures without a benchmark. An amount on its own says nothing. Compare it with a target or a previous period.
• Only backward-looking metrics. Last month’s revenue records what happened; the pipeline and new enquiries signal what comes next. You need both.
• A frozen dashboard. Your business changes: review your dashboard every quarter, and remove what no longer serves a purpose.

Checklist: is your executive dashboard useful?

1. Each metric informs a specific decision.
2. Each metric has a written definition, a source and an owner.
3. Each figure is compared with a target or a previous period.
4. The data updates itself, and its date is shown.
5. Alert thresholds are set, and each alert reaches the right person.
6. The dashboard is reviewed every quarter.

Frequently asked questions

How many KPIs should an executive dashboard have?

As few as possible. Aim for two or three per function, on a page that fits on a single screen.

What is the difference between a KPI and a metric?

A KPI (key performance indicator) is a metric tied to an important objective. All KPIs are metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs: the number of calls made describes activity; the quote conversion rate measures performance.

Is a spreadsheet enough to start with?

Yes, to test your metrics and check that they are useful. Its limits soon show: manual updates, multiple versions, copy-and-paste errors. As soon as your sources multiply, a dashboard fed automatically becomes more reliable.

In short

A useful executive dashboard doesn’t show everything. It shows the figures that inform your decisions, clearly defined, automatically updated, with an alert when action is needed: few figures, but the right ones.

Are your figures scattered across several tools? Book a free 30-minute discovery call: together, we’ll start from the decisions you make, to identify the metrics that would help you make them.