Key Performance Indicators

Success in a business is judged according to a range of different factors – factors that vary from firm to firm. Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are an important way for businesses to keep track of these factors, and judge their progress.

What are key performance indicators ?

A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. An organization may use KPIs to evaluate its success, or to evaluate the success of a particular activity in which it is engaged. Sometimes success is defined in terms of making progress toward strategic goals, but often success is simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some level of operational goal (e.g. zero defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction, etc.)

A KPI can follow the SMART criteria. This means the measure has a Specific purpose for the business, it is Measurable to really get a value of the KPI, the defined norms have to be Achievable, the improvement of a KPI has to be Relevant to the success of the organization, and finally it must be Time phased, which means the value or outcomes are shown for a predefined and relevant period.


For exemple here below there are some marketing Key Performance Indicators in ecommerce:

• Site traffic
• Unique visitors versus returning visitors
• Time on site
• Page views per visit
• Traffic source
• Day part monitoring (when site visitors come)
• Newsletter subscribers
• Texting subscribers
• Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest followers or fans
• Pay-per-click traffic volume
• Blog traffic
• Number and quality of product reviews
• Brand or display advertising click-through rates
• Affiliate performance rate  

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The following video introduces key performance indicators in an easy way:

Doing business index

The World Bank has recently published a new repport of Doing Business project (http://www.doingbusiness.org/)

Doing Business 2014: Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises assesses regulations affecting domestic firms in 189 economies and ranks the economies in 10 areas of business regulation, such as starting a business, resolving insolvency and trading across borders. This year’s report data cover regulations measured from June 2012 through May 2013. The report is the 11th edition of the Doing Business series.

Ease of doing business ranks economies from 1 to 189, with first place being the best. A high ranking (a low numerical rank) means that the regulatory environment is conducive to business operation. The index averages the country's percentile rankings on 10 areas covered in the World Bank's Doing Business. 

There is below the world map indicating the index points per country

According to the survey first 5 countries are: Singapur, Hong Kong SAP (China), New Zeland, USA and Denmark.
The first African country is Rwanda in position 32 followed by South Africa position 41   and the first South American is Puerto Rico in position 40 followed by Peru in the position 42.