Most businesses already have metrics they track, and they’re likely focused on the obvious ones. As we approach the end of the year and review our performance over the past 12 months, it’s worth asking: are we measuring the things that will give us the best insights for 2027?
Rather than simply adding more KPIs, it’s worth considering whether the metrics we already use are helping us understand the business, or whether they’ve become another set of figures on a dashboard. There may be other measures that offer a different perspective, helping us spot emerging risks, understand where capacity is under pressure, identify underlying issues or recognise opportunities we might otherwise overlook.
Ultimately, KPIs are most valuable when they do more than tell us whether we’ve hit a target. Used well, they can prompt better questions, inform more effective decisions and help us make meaningful improvements across the business.
The following examples illustrate how looking beyond the obvious metrics can reveal a more useful picture of business performance.
1. Revenue concentration
If 40% of your revenue comes from three customers, your main revenue figures don’t tell the whole story. Tracking revenue concentration helps you understand your customer dependency.
Could losing one customer massively affect the business?
2. Customer profitability
Measure the profit generated by customers, after removing discounts, delivery costs, account management, support, and the time required to serve them.
You might find that your highest-revenue customers aren't your most profitable.
3. Lead-to-sale time
You probably know your lead-to-sale conversion rate.
Track how much time it takes to turn an enquiry into a customer, and if that is that standard for your industry. This might reveal insights in your sales process
4. Quote-to-cash time
Measure the time between sending a quote and receiving that payment.
If that time is increasing, there may be an issue somewhere in the sales, delivery, invoicing, or credit-control process you need to address.
5. Lead response time
Measure how quickly new enquiries receive a response, and then compare conversion rates for fast versus slow responses. The response received needs to be meaningful; we don’t mean auto-responses.
You’ll likely find that the speed of your responses has a huge impact on conversion, while auto-responses and then nothing have an equally large impact.
6. Rework
How much work has to be done twice?
Track the time and effort spent on returns, corrections, errors, repeated jobs, incorrect orders, customer complaints requiring remedial work, or projects that need significant fixing.
Rework consumes capacity without creating additional value.
8. Customer retention by cohort
Look at customers who joined during a particular period and track how many remain 3, 6, or 12 months later. This can reveal whether newer customers are behaving differently from longer-standing customers and if they’re staying with you at all. It’s also important to note at what point they chose to leave so you can see where the problem lies.
9. Repeat purchase rate
If you want your customers to purchase repeatedly, measure how many actually do so, and how frequently. This is a lot more useful than simply looking at customer numbers overall.
10. Employee turnover
Tracking overall employee turnover is useful, but drilling down will offer more insight.
Separate those that you were sad or surprised to lose from the natural or planned turnover.
Look for patterns by department, manager, tenure, and role.
11. Time to competency
How long does it take a new team member to become productive?
Define what “competent” means within the role and track how long it takes people to get to that point. This can highlight weaknesses in recruitment, processes, onboarding, training or management.
12. Management dependency
Track how many decisions, approvals, or problems are still coming to the owner or senior leaders. If the number is rising as the business grows, that's very useful information.
13. Complaint recurrence
Track whether the same problems keep coming back.
Ten different complaints that lead to improvements are less concerning than three complaints about the same unresolved issue.
Every business has a story behind its numbers. The question is whether you’re looking closely enough to see it.
As you plan for 2027, take a fresh look at the numbers you rely on. Challenge the assumptions behind them. Look for the patterns, the exceptions and the things that don’t quite add up. Sometimes the most useful insight comes not from what is going well, but from understanding why something is taking more time, costing more money or relying on more people than it should.
You don’t need to measure everything. You need to measure the things that matter to the business you’re trying to build.
Here’s a question to take into your 2027 planning: what would you want to know about your business if you could see beneath the headline figures?
ActionCOACH Harrogate, Unit 1, The Innovation Centre, Hornbeam Park, Harrogate, HG2 8QT
01423 223 826 mikemoss@actioncoach.co.uk