Awesome KPIs

A curated list of the best resources about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for business leaders, directors, and managers.

Inspired by awesome lists. Maintained by Rework.

Most companies track too many metrics and act on too few. The right KPIs tell you whether the business is healthy, where growth is stalling, and what decisions to make next. The resources below will help you pick the right indicators, build dashboards people actually use, and move from data collection to data-driven action.

Contents

Articles

Books

Videos & Talks

Tools & Software

  • Tableau - Industry-leading data visualization platform for building interactive KPI dashboards.
  • Microsoft Power BI - Enterprise BI tool that connects to hundreds of data sources for real-time reporting.
  • Klipfolio - Cloud-based dashboard tool that connects 130+ data sources for real-time KPI monitoring.
  • Databox - Pulls data from 100+ sources into one clean dashboard, ideal for marketing and sales teams.
  • Geckoboard - TV-first KPI dashboard designed for shared office displays and remote team visibility.
  • Google Looker Studio - Free data visualization tool with native Google integrations and 800+ connectors.
  • Domo - Enterprise business intelligence platform with strong data governance and sharing features.
  • SimpleKPI - Lightweight KPI tracking tool designed for small teams without a data analyst.

Templates & Frameworks

Case Studies & Real-World Examples

  • Amazon - Amazon's leadership team famously tracks six-page narrative memos rather than PowerPoint slides, but their underlying KPI discipline is exceptional. Jeff Bezos built the company's retail operation around a small set of obsessively tracked metrics: in-stock rate, customer experience scores, and delivery speed. Their "Flywheel" model — where each KPI feeds the next — is one of the most-studied examples of metric-driven compounding growth in business history. Source
  • General Electric (Jack Welch era) - Welch reduced GE's reporting to a handful of "vital few" KPIs, famously insisting every business unit be #1 or #2 in its market or face divestiture. This KPI discipline helped GE grow its market cap from $12 billion in 1981 to $410 billion by 2001. The Welch era remains a textbook case of how ruthless KPI focus at the executive level drives organizational clarity and performance. Source
  • Klarna - The Swedish fintech built its growth model around a single customer KPI: "Smoooth" checkout conversion rate. By obsessively tracking and improving this one number across merchant integrations, Klarna grew to 150 million users across 45 countries. Their internal dashboards are reportedly visible across every office, making KPI accountability a cultural norm rather than a quarterly reporting exercise. Source
  • Walmart - Walmart's supply chain dominance is built on real-time KPI visibility. Their Retail Link system, deployed in the 1990s, gave suppliers direct access to store-level sales data — a radical move that reduced out-of-stock rates and inventory waste simultaneously. This KPI-sharing approach with the supply chain was a decade ahead of industry practice and is credited with Walmart's ability to undercut competitors on both price and availability. Source
  • Monzo - The UK challenger bank made its core KPIs transparent to all employees from day one, publishing a weekly internal "Data Transparency" report covering new accounts, active users, and customer satisfaction. This open-metrics culture accelerated product decision-making and helped Monzo reach 9 million customers within six years without a traditional retail banking branch network. Source
  • Airbnb - During the COVID-19 crisis, Airbnb stripped its KPI dashboard from hundreds of metrics down to three: nights booked, gross booking value, and host supply. That radical simplification — imposed by crisis — helped the leadership team make faster decisions and ultimately allowed Airbnb to execute one of the most successful IPOs of 2020 despite a brutal year for travel. Source

Communities & Newsletters

  • Bernard Marr's Newsletter - Weekly insights on performance measurement, data strategy, and business intelligence.
  • Data + AI Summit Community - Annual conference and community for data leaders building analytics and measurement systems.
  • RevOps Co-op - Community for revenue operations leaders who live and breathe performance metrics.

Rework Resources

Explore more performance measurement content on the Rework blog:

Contributing

Know a great KPI resource that should be on this list? Let us know.