A dashboard with fifty metrics tells you nothing. These ten, watched consistently, tell you almost everything about the health of a business.
| KPI | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Revenue | Total income from sales. The top line — track it monthly and against last year, not in isolation. |
| Gross Margin | What's left after the direct cost of what you sell. Shows whether your core product actually makes money. |
| Net Profit | What remains after all costs. The number that decides if the business is sustainable. |
| Cash Flow | Money actually moving in and out. Profitable companies still fail when cash runs dry — watch this closely. |
| Sales Growth | The rate of change in revenue. Direction and momentum matter more than the absolute figure. |
| Customer Acquisition Cost | What it costs to win one customer. Rising CAC is an early warning sign. |
| Customer Lifetime Value | Total profit from a customer over the whole relationship. CLV should comfortably exceed CAC. |
| Churn Rate | The share of customers you lose in a period. Small changes here compound enormously over time. |
| Inventory Turnover | How fast stock sells and is replaced. Low turnover means cash is sitting on shelves. |
| Forecast Accuracy | How close your predictions land to reality. It's the KPI that tells you whether to trust the others. |
How to actually use them
Three rules turn this list from a poster into a tool:
- Always show context. A number alone is meaningless. Compare to last month, last year, and target.
- Pair the metrics. Revenue without margin can mislead. CLV without CAC can mislead. They tell the truth in pairs.
- One definition, agreed once. If sales and finance calculate "revenue" differently, no dashboard will save you. Lock the definitions first.
The real goal
You shouldn't need to ask anyone how the business is doing. A good executive dashboard answers that in ten seconds, every morning, before your coffee's cold.
Start small
Don't try to track all ten on day one. Pick the three that map to your biggest current question — usually Revenue, Gross Margin and Cash Flow — get them clean and trusted, then expand.