The subject of KPIs for print shops is receiving renewed attention as more printing businesses automate more of their administrative, marketing, and production processes. A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measurement that demonstrates how effectively your company is achieving its primary business objectives. With each KPI, your shop can track how much progress you are making toward a stated goal.
There are literally hundreds of activities you could measure and analyze with today’s print shop management, marketing, workflow, and accounting software..No two shops use the same set of KPIs for functions such as sales, marketing, operations, sustainability, and financial results.
Choosing which KPIs are best for your print shop can help your team stay focused on the metrics that will have the greatest effect on your business. Your KPIs can also help you determine the reports you need to generate with your software.
Over time, your KPIs can help you identify bottlenecks in your operation and prioritize areas for improvement. If your shop is achieving exceptional results (such as a 98% on-time delivery rate), you could highlight some of those statistics in your marketing materials.
Here are a few KPIs to consider tracking in each area of your business.
Sales
Monthly sales growth
New customers each month
Customer turnover rate
Sales cycle time,
Average number of activities (calls, meetings, emails) to close a sale
Revenue per salesperson
Time required to process estimates
Average value of invoices
Number of inbound calls handled by sale reps
Number of outbound calls made by sales reps
Percentage of total sales from reps vs.web to print sites
Marketing
Total leads generated each month
Qualified leads per month
Cost per lead
Cost of customer acquisition
Website leads generated
Cost per converted lead
Number of online sales
Number of abandoned shopping carts in your online store
Click-through rate on PPC advertising
Number of leads from social media
Number of conversions from social media
Customer Retention and Service
Total number of customer complaints
Number of customers making complaints
Results of customer satisfaction surveys (percentage of satisfied and very satisfied responses)
Percentage of customers with repeat orders
Number of customer support requests via phone
Number of customer support requests via email
Production
Percentage of defective prints compared to total number of units produced
Percentage of on-time deliveries
Average administrative costs per order
Equipment utilization ratio
Value of work in progress (work that’s started but not yet finished)
Value of work in process (amount of work being performed at any given time)
Percentage of orders outsourced to other vendors
Cost of work outsourced to other vendors
Average time per order in prepress
Average time per order in production
Average time per order in finishing
Average time per order in shipping
Financial
Net profit margin for your shop as a whole
Average profit margin for each type of product
Net profit growth
New business profit
Profit diversification
Spending on innovation and new product development
Average annual expenses to serve one customer
Lifetime customer value (expected lifetime profit) compared to the cost to acquire that customer
Sustainable Operations
Reductions in energy usage
Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
Reductions in resource usage
Reductions in waste generated
Hiring and Training
Internal promotions vs. external hires
Employee turnover rate
Employee satisfaction
Number of qualified applicants for open positions
Training completion percentage rate
Average training hours per employee
Total cost of training as percentage of payroll
The right combination of KPIs can help you create a culture of employee engagement, customer responsiveness, and agility in adopting change. It’s also a way to take the pulse of your organization. Are you healthy, fit, and ready for growth? Or is your shop showing signs of weakness?
When determining your KPIs, make sure each one is well-defined and quantifiable. And don’t dilute the effectiveness of KPIs by using too many. Determine three or four KPIs for each department in your shop. And communicate the KPIs throughout the organization so everyone knows how success is measured.
As you review the KPIs each quarter or at the end of the year, it should be clear which metrics deserve closer scrutiny. But numbers can’t always tell the whole story. In some cases, there may be some extenuating circumstances (e.g. a big snowstorm) that caused some numbers to fall.
As you implement new types of software— including print-shop management software — learn more about the types of data that can be tracked and reports that can be generated. Take advantage of features in the software that allow you to keep notes about circumstances that might impact the numbers.
Ordant’s print-shop management software and web-to-print module can help you achieve measurable improvements in the time and costs required to create estimates, purchase orders, schedules, invoices, and shipping labels.It can also help you track customer relationships and shorten the amount of staff time involved in obtaining proof approvals or answering customer questions about the status of their jobs. To see the types of tasks that can be streamlined and the types of information that can be tracked and reported by Ordant software, visit www.ordant.com to schedule a demonstration.
