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Excel is like the McDonalds of the corporate world. That’s to say, every corporate professional knows what it is, how to use it, and probably has some strong opinions. So, it makes sense that many are creating simple Excel KPI dashboards in addition to all those spreadsheets.
To get the inside scoop, we talked to 9 companies in B2B Services or Products, and 12 companies in B2C Services or Products to find out what kinds of dashboards they are creating and how satisfied they are with the results.
In this post, we’re sharing our findings along with how to create a kpi dashboard in Excel, as well as 7 examples.
Let’s dive in!
According to the respondents we surveyed, a business dashboard is the most valuable one. That’s because you can use it to see your most important company KPIs in one place.
“Our strategic Excel dashboard is essential to our business,” says Isaiah Henry of Seabreeze Management Company. “We view it every day to stay on top of our goals and objectives. The KPIs outlined in our strategic dashboard dictate our overall strategy. If something isn’t performing well, we know we need to change course. We can look at our fiscal performance on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis, as well as our MRR growth rate, and our overall earnings. It highlights both our weaknesses and opportunities where we can make a difference if we tweak our strategy.
Chris Walker of Legiit adds, As a CEO of a successful business, I have extensive knowledge of using an Excel KPI dashboard to further improve your business. I prefer to use the different templates of Excel, as they allow me to include the growth, revenue, number of orders, and many other indicators.
Here is just one example of what your business dashboard can look like. This dashboard is very important for a business as it shows the traffic driven towards your website from different social media platforms and it tracks new customers and the conversion rate of customers. Other companies should consider using this dashboard as it will allow them to reach their monthly targets in revenue or order numbers. The dashboard is easily set up and provides insight into your customers; interactions with your website, therefore, helping you implement suitable marketing strategies and tactics.
For example, if you have a SaaS or subscription business, you can use this Stripe MRR + Churn Dashboard to monitor monthly recurring revenue (MRR) and churn in real time. You can visualize all of your most important metrics and KPIs in Databox from any data source and spreadsheet, including Excel.
A lead generation dashboard, such as this HubSpot Marketing Lead Generation Dashboard, allows you to measure the quality and quantity of leads generated by your marketing team.
This is just one example of what your lead generation dashboard can look like. In Databox, your dashboard is 100% customizable, so you can pull in data from Excel, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Salesforce, Drip, etc.
For example, Matt Miller of Embroker says, “Our business is heavily focused on networking, and because of this focus, we need to manage our contacts and sales funnels, which is why our lead generation Excel KPI dashboard is essential. Getting a lead is much more than initial introductions, it is maintaining the relationship through a series of stages that can be measured on their way to conversion.
Therefore, our Excel KPI dashboard track leads generated, leads per source, non-target leads, and percentage of lead advancement, to give us an accurate reading of where we stand with each contact, and how much further down the funnel we need them to go. Having this data is by far, our most valuable resource, and keeps our business from operating blindly.”
Kenzo Kishita of Blades Power agrees, “For my business, the Excel dashboard that I chose is a lead generation dashboard. The most important KPI to track is the number of leads generated by our company. We have included metrics such as the number of website visitors, how many were from organic search results, how many were from paid advertising, and how many were from social media. This particular dashboard is important because it helps us see where people are finding our website and what keywords they are using to find us. It also allows us to see what types of advertisements are most effective in generating new leads for our company.”
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Here is an example of what your dashboard can look like… (just imagine your data populating here)
And here’s another one…
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A marketing dashboard, like this Monthly Marketing Performance dashboard template, allows you to monitor all of your key marketing KPIs in one place.
“The most important marketing dashboard for your business is the one that provides the most relevant and actionable data,” says Lewis Banks of LegalDrop. “This data can help you make informed decisions about your marketing campaigns, track your progress, and optimize your strategies.
The right marketing dashboard will give you the insights you need to improve your marketing ROI and grow your business.
Some of the most important metrics to include on your marketing dashboard are:
Wes Marsh of Aqfer says, “As the marketing director, our marketing dashboard is critical for our success – both in managing up and down the organization. Having our KPIs succinctly presented for our C-Suite help them to see the positive impacts we’re having on the rest of the company. This also gives us a standard set of metrics for objectivity and accountability.
We track a handful of metrics, but the most important ones are total leads created by source, average lead cycle length, event results, and campaign metrics such as CPL and spend.
One very helpful component of our dashboards is the comparisons to previous periods (M/M and Q/Q) as these help us evaluate our trends over time, and with the right formulas in place, we can simply paste in new data and constantly have up to date information.
Finally, we also track our content and PR efforts, however evaluating these metrics is far more qualitative than quantitative. I would recommend any marketer to ensure they have a data dashboard to showcase their results, regardless of their level of seniority. Not only does it build good habits, but it helps you better communicate with other members of your team outside the marketing org who may not always understand the various nuances of marketing.”
Rajat Chauhan of Ace Infoway adds, “We were using an Excel dashboard within our marketing teams to make them align with the tasks and KPIs. This helped us with task distribution especially when teams were working remotely in different locations and helped us keep a track of activities, resources, and priorities. However, I would suggest using a single dashboard tool within your marketing and sales teams so that you can keep track of it and both the teams can align in parallel. It will help you nurture your prospect or user journey and turn them into your customers by taking better decisions when it matters the most.”
PRO TIP: With Databox, your marketing dashboard is 100% customizable, so you can pull in source data for things like traffic from different channels, visits to leads conversion rate, email subscribers, etc.
With a sales management dashboard, you can get a pulse on the health of your sales pipeline at any given time, as seen in this sales manager KPIs dashboard template.
“This dashboard can help you make important choices whether you run a small business or sell products on the internet; in either case, you’ll benefit from using it,” says Dean Lee of Sealions. “It monitors key parameters of your company, such as sales and earnings, keeping you abreast of developments at all times. This dashboard offers a very straightforward perspective of your company, despite the fact that it is packed with a lot of useful information.”
David Reid of VEM Group adds, “Ever since the pandemic, we have operated more online than offline networks. Hence, to track how well we are doing with online sales, we are using the online sales tracking option in the dashboard. We have blent Excel with Microsoft to achieve the results. One can view the metrics like profits, sales count, cost per lead, goal completion rate, MRR, marketing ROI, sales, and financial dashboards are some of the metrics that I include here to make it more meaningful. Because all of these metrics play a very crucial role when it comes to managing the activities of a firm.”
When you have a large team, a project management dashboard, like this Jira software dashboard template, makes it easy to manage your team’s efficiency and task completion rate.
However, you don’t have to use Jira to reap the benefits of this dashboard. You can also plug in data from Excel, Google Sheets, Asana, and 100s of other sources.
For example, David Lee of Neutypechic says, “A Project Management Dashboard has proved most valuable for my business so far. This particular KPI dashboard is the most important for my business because it organizes all data using charts and graphs. This allows me to visualize all profits and losses that each project brings. It highlights a project’s overall performance and progress and allows me to monitor tasks accordingly.
As a result, improving collaboration, effectively managing workload and prioritizing tasks and keeping track of key metrics. Some of these metrics include gross profit margin, ROI, and customer satisfaction and retention, to name a few. These metrics allow me to see how well my company is performing. So, I can develop targeted strategies to improve in areas where we lack.
As a result, I am able to lead my team towards successfully completing projects and producing high-quality work. Other companies should consider adopting this dashboard because it allows them to monitor their team’s performance and see whether they’re on track to meet the project deadline. As a result, companies can rack up their productivity rates and improve their efficiency.”
A social media dashboard, like this inbound social media performance dashboard template, is an excellent way to track how effective your social media marketing efforts are. This allows you to bring in data from every relevant source and monitor follower growth, referral traffic from different social media channels, engagement rates, and more.
“Our social media dashboard is one of the most significant Excel dashboards that we’re using right now,” says Jessica Kats of Soxy. “This is because our marketing relies heavily on our social media presence. Most of our marketing campaigns are based on our social media channels, and so our social media dashboard has become the most important dashboard.
The metrics we’ve included in this dashboard are: Impressions, Follower Count, Reach, Share of Voice, Click-Through Rate & Conversion. Other businesses should also adopt this dashboard because it is a clear indicator of the results of their digital marketing efforts. Such a dashboard can help them assess their strategies and make adjustments to improve them in real-time.”
Werner Jorgensen of Heatxperts agrees, “The social media dashboard is one of the best investments for our business since we heavily rely on online statistics for our business. It helps us get on board with customers and we can also interact with them throughout a purchasing cycle. The advantage this gives us over competitors is too good to ignore. These metrics are included to make the investment more meaningful: Customer Lifetime Value, Average Sales Cycle, & Sales Forecasting.”
“We’re a new business, and SEO is fundamental to our organic growth,” says Marc Bromhall of Surf’s Up Magazine. “The SEO metrics we use are:
Daniel Foley of Scooter.guide adds, “An SEO dashboard is the most important for my businesses because it provides me with a comprehensive analysis of my firm’s SEO efforts. The dashboard contains many dynamic widgets that show me which metrics I’m ranking high on and which ones I need to improve to take my SEO game to the next level.
Some metrics I include in it are as follows:
Other companies should consider adopting this dashboard because it will provide them with a bird’s-eye view of their SEO efforts and show them where to start in terms of improving their overall SEO profile.”
However, the best SEO dashboards, like this SEMrush organic keywords dashboard template, pull in data from many different sources, including SEMrush, Google Analytics, Excel, and more. So, you can get a view of how organic search impacts all sales and marketing efforts in your business.
If you are tired of building and looking at boring Excel spreadsheets, you should consider using dashboard software like Databox. It is 100% customizable, so you can pull in and display data from hundreds of sources including Excel.
Not to mention, there are dozens upon dozens of ready-made templates that you can use as-is or customize. So, you don’t have to build a dashboard from scratch. Once your dashboard is built, it auto-updates.
Ready to build your Excel KPIs dashboards? Get started with a 15-day Excel trial.
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Jessica Malnik is a content strategist and copywriter for SaaS and productized service businesses. Her writing has appeared on The Next Web, Social Media Examiner, SEMRush, CMX, Help Scout, Convince & Convert, and many other sites.
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