Success metrics examples: How to choose KPIs by team
Summary
When you implement a new business strategy, how do you know whether or not your strategy is working? The most common way to ensure that your strategy is working is to identify success metrics before implementing your initiative.
Success metrics give your team a quantifiable way to measure your progress. By setting metric-based goals, you can gauge whether your strategy is successful. While there are many different goal-setting methods to choose from, measuring your progress with success metrics is a commonality among them.
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What is a business success metric?
A business success metric is a quantifiable measurement that tracks whether your strategies are working effectively. Success metrics, also known as key performance indicators (KPIs), help teams gauge progress toward specific goals. Most organisations track several metrics to get a complete picture of performance.
When the right metrics are properly tracked, leaders can use these metrics as a benchmark for how well the business is performing. It's important to set metrics before initiatives start to see progress from the beginning to the end.
Why are business success metrics important to track?
Tracking business success metrics helps you connect daily work to strategic goals, evaluate whether initiatives are working, and make smarter decisions. Here's why they matter.
Connect work to goals
One benefit of using success metrics is connecting the work your team is doing to the goals you want to achieve as a company. If your team aligns its work with specific business goals, it can better prioritize the tasks they need to get done.
Assess strategy efficacy
If you're implementing a new strategy or tactic with your team, use success metrics to gauge whether or not it's working. If you measured your team's metrics before you implemented a new strategy, you can use those metrics as a benchmark. As you implement the new strategy, you can compare those new metrics to your benchmark and see how they stack up.
Make data-driven decisions
You can use historical data to help your team make smart business decisions. Look at the metrics for a specific year and ask which strategies drove those results. Use these insights to make more informed decisions moving forward.
Read: How to capture lessons learned in project managementIdentify weak points in your strategy
If you're measuring many metrics and notice a dip in one, you can easily pinpoint which part of your strategy is lagging. This can give your team the opportunity to adjust their strategy for the next initiative.
How to choose the right success metrics for your team
With hundreds of potential metrics to track, selecting the right ones can feel overwhelming. Focus on metrics that align with your strategic goals, reflect your critical success factors, and provide actionable insights.
Align metrics with business goals: Each metric you track should directly connect to a larger goal. If it doesn't measure progress toward a goal, it's likely not worth tracking.
Use the SMART criteria: Choose metrics that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Balance leading and lagging indicators: Leading indicators predict future performance (like pipeline volume), while lagging indicators measure past results (like quarterly revenue).
Keep it focused: Aim for 5–10 key metrics per team. Too many metrics dilute focus and make it harder to identify what's driving results.
Revisit and refine: Schedule regular reviews to ensure your metrics still align with your priorities as your business evolves.
Example business success metrics by team
Each team in your business has a different goal, so it only makes sense for each team to have its own success metrics. Here are a few examples of success metrics by team.
General business metrics
Gross profit margin: Gross profit margin is calculated by subtracting the cost of goods sold from net sales.
Return on investment (ROI): The ratio between the income and investment. ROI is commonly used in a cost-benefit analysis to decide whether or not an initiative is worth investing time or money into. When used as a business metric, it often tracks how well an investment is performing.
Productivity: This is the measurement of your company's operational efficiency in producing goods or services. You can calculate this by dividing the total output by the total input.
Total number of customers: A simple but effective metric to track. The more paid customers, the more money the business earns.
Recurring revenue: Commonly used by SaaS companies, this is the amount of revenue generated by all of your current active subscribers during a specific period. It's commonly measured either monthly or annually.
Marketing metrics
Daily web traffic: This is the number of users who visit your website each day.
New web traffic users: This is the number of users who visit your website for the first time.
Email open rates: This metric is particularly important for email marketing teams. Email open rates measure the percentage of your audience who have opened your marketing email.
Number of leads generated: Particularly useful for cross-functional marketing teams that work closely with sales, this metric counts the qualified leads the marketing team generated and passed to sales. Note that the definition of a qualified lead can vary depending on your team's goals.
Customer success metrics
Net promoter score (NPS): This metric is one of the most common measurements of customer loyalty and satisfaction and is sometimes referred to as a customer satisfaction score. It's a numerical value in response to the question, "How likely is it that you would recommend [your product or service]?" You can calculate NPS by subtracting the percentage of individuals who voted 0-6 from the percentage who voted 9-10.
Customer retention rate: This metric measures how many of your customers remain customers over a set period of time, which can help evaluate whether your CRM strategy is working. It's up to your team to determine what timeframe makes sense for your business and industry.
Customer churn rate: the inverse of the retention rate. Customer churn rate measures how often your customers stop doing business with your company. It's up to your team to determine the period that makes the most sense for your business and industry.
Customer feedback: While not a quantitative measure, anecdotal customer feedback can be extremely valuable to your company and can be used for testimonials and marketing strategy. Your customer experience is something your team can curate, and the better the experience, the longer they stay customers.
Average customer lifetime: The average length of time a customer stays with your company. This metric is used to calculate customer lifetime value.
Customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV): The profit a company expects to earn from a customer over the average lifetime of a customer relationship.
Sales metrics
Qualified leads: A qualified lead is an individual who exhibits all of the characteristics that your team identifies as the ideal individual to sell to. This could include demographics, roles, company size, or other important qualities.
Lead-to-customer conversion rates: This is a good metric to track because it can give both your sales and marketing teams insight into the audience you're targeting. If the conversion rate is high, you're targeting the right audience and your team is focusing on the right priorities. Low conversion rates indicate that potential customers are leaving somewhere in the pipeline.
Customer acquisition cost: The cost your team incurs through marketing and sales efforts to convert a lead into a customer. Ideally, you want this number to be as close to zero as possible.
Total new customers: Tracking this metric can give you an indicator of how quickly your customer base is growing.
Developer metrics
Product uptime: This metric measures the time your software is operational over a given period.
Bug response time: This is how quickly your team identifies a bug, finds a solution, and pushes the fix into production. Issues can range from quick, five-minute fixes to full-fledged projects.
Daily active users: The number of users who use your software daily. This can help you understand how many of your customers actually use and value your software. If there is a large gap between the number of customers and the number of daily active users, your customers may not find value in your product.
Cycle time: The time it takes for a specific project to go from the very beginning to implementing the strategy into production. This is a good measure because it can help project managers gauge how long certain projects will take.
Throughput: The measure of total work output a specific team develops. This includes anything that is ready for QA and to be pushed into production.
Human resource metrics
Employee satisfaction: Similar to a net promoter score, an employee satisfaction score indicates how likely your employees would recommend your company as an employer to a friend or colleague. This is an important metric for HR teams because it can surface issues with company culture and policies that can be resolved.
Employee retention rate: Similar to a customer retention rate, it measures how many of your employees stay with your company over a given period of time. This is often measured annually.
Employee feedback: Anecdotal employee feedback is just as valuable as customer feedback, if not more so. Employee feedback gives your team the opportunity to offer suggestions to help your company become a better employer and, in turn, increase employee retention.
Common mistakes to avoid when tracking success metrics
How you track metrics matters just as much as which ones you choose. Avoid these common pitfalls.
Focusing on vanity metrics: Metrics like social media followers look impressive, but don't drive meaningful outcomes. Track metrics tied to conversions or engagement instead.
Tracking too many metrics: When you measure everything, you prioritise nothing. Stick to what matters most.
Failing to align metrics with goals: Metrics without context are just numbers. Always tie them back to specific business goals.
Inconsistent measurement: Changing how you calculate a metric makes it impossible to compare performance over time. Define your methodology upfront.
Neglecting to act on insights: Data is only valuable if you use it. Build regular reviews into your workflow.
Forgetting to update metrics: What mattered last year may not be relevant today. Review your metrics quarterly.
Track your team's metrics in one place with Asana
Your team's work directly contributes to one or more key success metrics. Without a clear way to connect daily tasks to larger goals, team members can lack clarity on what to prioritise.
Asana helps you track work and measure metrics in one place, so your team can see how their efforts connect to the goals you've set. Get started today and give your team the visibility they need to stay focused on what matters most.
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