What is KPI (Key Performance Indicator)?
Turkish: KPI
A KPI is a critical performance indicator used in decision-making that evaluates how well a business is achieving its strategic goals.
What is a KPI?
A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a measurable signal chosen to track whether a goal is being achieved. Not every metric is a KPI; a KPI is tied to a decision, a target, and an accountable owner.
A useful KPI has a clear formula, data source, measurement cadence, target value, and responsible team. “Monthly sales” may be a metric; “increase enterprise opportunity-to-contract conversion to 18%” is a more actionable KPI. KPIs can measure outcomes, but they can also track process quality: delivery time, issue resolution time, active usage, or customer satisfaction.
Business Use
- Sales teams tracking conversion rate, average deal size, and pipeline health
- SaaS products monitoring churn, MRR, active usage, and onboarding completion
- Operations teams watching on-time delivery, SLA breaches, and work backlog
- Marketing teams measuring acquisition cost, organic traffic, and campaign conversion
KPI design should avoid vanity metrics: numbers that look impressive but do not change decisions. KPIs are commonly presented on a dashboard, analyzed through BI, and supplemented with customer-experience signals such as NPS.