KPI Examples: Setup Examples by Department and Role
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Category: Marketing Budget & KPI
Published:
Last Updated:
Category: Marketing Budget & KPI
Authors: Shusaku Yosa
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are the numbers that define "what to measure in order to reach a goal," but the moment you try to apply them to your own department or role, it is easy to get stuck on "which metrics should I actually set." Because the optimal metrics differ completely by department and role, simply copying another company's examples rarely works. This article reviews the basics of KPIs and then presents concrete KPI examples in a list format, organized by department (sales, marketing, customer support, and more) and by role (back-office functions, individual goals, and so on).
KPI stands for "Key Performance Indicator." It refers to the numbers you track as "intermediate targets" along the way to reaching your ultimate goal, the KGI (Key Goal Indicator).
For example, suppose you have an ultimate goal (KGI) of "100 million yen in annual revenue." When you break this revenue down, it can be divided into elements such as "number of deals x close rate x average order value." Of these, the ones you can control day to day, such as "100 monthly deals" or "a 30% close rate," are examples of KPIs that drive revenue. It helps to understand that while a KGI represents the result, a KPI quantifies the process that produces that result.
Before looking at concrete examples, there is a principle worth keeping in mind when setting KPIs: "SMART." Metrics that satisfy the following five conditions are considered KPIs that work in practice.
When adopting the examples below, it is a good idea to check them against this SMART perspective, asking "can it be measured?" and "does it connect to the KGI?"
Let's start by looking at KPI examples for each department. Even with the same goal of "contributing to revenue," the numbers you should track vary greatly depending on the department's role.
A sales department's KGI is often "booking amount" or "revenue target," and the metrics that break down the process leading to it become KPIs. The key is to make visible not just results but also the activity volume that produces them.
The marketing department's main mission is "generating leads (prospects)." Through the website, advertising, and content, it measures how many high-quality prospects it could hand over to sales.
Rather than directly generating revenue, customer-facing departments contribute to "maintaining customer satisfaction" and "preventing churn." In recent years, as departments responsible for maximizing LTV (lifetime value), the importance of their KPI design has grown.
HR KPIs center on measuring recruiting efficiency and organizational health. Because there is no easy-to-read outcome like revenue, the crux of the design is how you define "results."
Next, rather than by department, let's look at KPI examples by role or by purpose-driven theme. Especially in areas often said to be "hard to put into numbers," such as back-office functions and individual goals, how you set KPIs determines the outcome.
Because back-office functions such as accounting, general affairs, and IT do not tie directly to revenue, they define "operational efficiency," "accuracy," and "speed" as their results.
In system or product development, the metrics that measure the balance between development speed and quality become KPIs. What matters is the perspective of visualizing a healthy team-wide development process, not individual effort.
KPIs can be applied not only at the department level but also to individual goal management (such as MBOs). When setting them for an individual, the trick is to choose "leading indicators" that the person can control through their own actions.
If you set only results (such as booking amounts) as an individual's KPI, performance becomes subject to luck and economic conditions. By anchoring KPIs to "activity volume you can move through your own effort," you build both buy-in for evaluations and daily improvement behavior.
The examples introduced so far are only "templates." To make them KPIs that truly work, you need to design them to fit your own situation using the following steps.
The second step, "breaking down," is especially important. The technique of breaking a KGI into a tree to organize the relationships between metrics is called a "KPI tree," and it helps you logically grasp which numbers to improve to get closer to the goal.
Finally, let's note the mistakes people tend to fall into when adopting these examples for their own company.
If you set too many KPIs because you "want to measure everything," the team no longer knows what to prioritize. The operational trick is to narrow them to roughly three to five per department and keep only the metrics that truly tie directly to the KGI.
With only "results" such as revenue or booking amounts, you notice problems only after the numbers worsen. By combining "leading indicators" such as deal counts and call counts, you can course-correct at an early stage.
KPIs only have meaning when you review them after setting them and keep improving. It is essential to build a mechanism that monitors them weekly and monthly, analyzes the causes of hits and misses, and connects them to the next action.
Concrete KPI examples differ by the role of the department or function: close rate and deal count for sales, lead acquisition and CPA for marketing, churn rate and customer satisfaction for customer support. Use the lists in this article as a starting point only, and in the end, break down your own company's KGI and choose the metrics your department can move through its actions.
Start by writing out "what is our goal" and "what multiplication produces it." By working backward from there, you should see KPIs that fit your own company rather than another company's examples.
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