Project and business management is like a deep-sea having no limits. There are plenty of processes that are essential for project and business management. Further, these processes require proper tracking and management to ensure the success of a project. Thus, the simple KPI template XLS template is very helpful in project phases from the definition, planning, execution, and closure.
As every process of a project or business has a certain value and impact on the project’s success. Thus, it’s important to understand project management KPI template excel sheets.
So, the project managers can perceive the discrete and consolidated impact of simple KPI template XLS on the project quality, schedule, performance, resources, and budget.
Therefore, it is important to understand what are the simple KPI of a project or any business and how to track, monitor, and control these key performance indicators using a simple KPI template XLS excel template.
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KPIs or key performance indicators are the measurable values of a process. These parameters are crucial to monitor and reflect the success event of a process.
Furthermore, the simple KPI template XLS excel helps to understand and track, how well the business or project processes are performing to achieve the set goals.
KPI dashboard template is used to display the project management KPI XLS information. So, these project management KPI dashboards provide a quick and summarized view of project management KPI metrics success.
Simple KPI template XLS helps the business experts and project team in the decision-making process. Also, it provides the required information in the presentable format of project management KPI XLS.
Thus, it is the best way of communicating information about project management office KPI success.
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Importance of Simple KPI Template XLS Excel
The simple KPI template XLS excel is very helpful in business and project management.
These templates are used by each function of the business and a project. Thus, the most common simple KPI template XLS is project management KPI template Excel.
Simple KPI Template XLS excel spreadsheet project in-depth understanding of the project processes. It answers all the critical functions of the process.
Thus, the main focus of the team is to defined process KPIs that help to define, plan, track, monitor, and control the process.


Project Management KPI Metrics
The project management metrics are the quantitative measuring value. These are used to assess, compare, and track the simple KPI template XLS.
Moreover, the project management KPI metrics help to understand how much value does the simple KPIs achievement has added to the project.
Thus, the following are the best project management KPI metrics for any project:
- Planned Value (PV)
- Actual Cost (AC)
- Earned Value (EV)
- Cost Variance (CV)
- Schedule Variance (SV)
- Cost Performance Indicator (CPI)
- Gross Contribution Margin
- Return on Investment
- Payback Period


Examples of Simple KPI Template XLS Excel
The use of simple KPI template XLS is very important for efficient and quick analysis of a business or project process health. Thus, a professional can easily identify any issue in the values of simple KPI template XLS and workout to reach the root cause.
Thus, the target of simple KPI template XLS excel sheet to monitor all major categories of KPIs.
The project management KPI examples are very common and easy to understand. Therefore, project management KPI template XLS has four major heads: timeline, budget, quality, and effectiveness.


Project timeline and quality KPIs sections are very important for investors. Because they are always looking for a timely return and high return on investment. Thus, the project management KPI template excel mainly focuses on simple KPIs of project timeline and quality.
So, the project timeline target focus on the key performance indicators of project scheduling, task management, resource management, and risk management sections.
Similarly, project quality targets are important for the process of project tracking and monitoring. Whereas, the project budge targets the KPIs relevant to the process of cost management, budget tracking, cost control, and funds management.
Moreover, the project management KPI templates are readily available for almost all the project processes. Typically, the professionals of project management develop these templates using MS Office Suite, or Google Sheets.
The simple KPI template XLS is also used for business functions. Thus, the most common use of business simple KPI template XLS excel is for following business processes:
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- Marketing KPI Template XLS
- Human Resource KPI Template Excel
- Manufacturing Simple KPI Excel Template
- SEO KPIs Template
- Construction Simple KPIs Spreadsheet
- Sales Simple KPIs XLS Excel
- Financial KPIs Template XLS


Related Article: KPI Templates
Project Management KPI Template Excel
The project managers always prefer to use simple KPI template XLS as project management Office KPI dashboard. Because it is the best KPI template excel that helps the project managers to monitor, track, and control the project management KPI metrics.
This simple KPI template excel has four major sections: a project schedule, project health, project issues, and project performance.
So, the health part of the display includes the key performance indicators in the form of consumed resources, elapsed time, potential risks, and open issues.


However, the schedule section displays information about the tasks. Like how many tasks are completed? What tasks are in-progress and what is coming next?
Similarly, the project managers use project progress module for monitoring parameters like the achievement of milestones and goals.
Moreover, the issues section display and track the status of open issues of issue tracking spreadsheet. Therefore, the issues section of the project KPIs dashboard includes information about the resolved and open issues.
Also, it defines the priority of issues resolution based on their severity and impact.
Related Article: 12+ Free Project Tracking Templates for Excel | Project Trackers


Examples of Simple KPIs for Project Management
The importance and significance of simple KPIs in project management are pretty clear now. This approach looks a little vague and difficult without any examples.
Thus, lets’ discuss a few of the most common simple KPIs we readily use in our daily project management templates.
The project manager uses several templates during the project implementation phase to monitor and track project progress and performance.
Templates Free Download provides several free templates in this regard. However, project managers need to customize these templates a bit to best fit their project needs.
Thus, what factors to include and exclude depends on what exactly your purpose of using the template is.
The project budget control template includes several simple KPIs to monitor if the project is running on a budget or consuming more. The key performance indicators of this template are actual expenditures, budgeted amount, and under/over.
However, several other parameters such as labor, material, and fixed cost breakup will help to understand the more insight of any abnormality.
Similarly, there is another important template to ensure the success of the project. Project Issue management template is the project managers’ main focus point during implementation.
This spreadsheet helps project managers to keep an eye on encountered issues and set priorities for resolution.
Thus, simple KPIs for this template will include: issue description, date of reporting, responsible person, status, and priority. However, the project team can also include specific KPIs for better follow up and tracking.
How to create a Project Management KPI Template XLS
The project managers’ priority for any project process is to identify the simple KPIs of the process. Thus, designing simple KPIs for any process is very important for process success.
As KPIs importance of continuous monitoring keeps on changing as project progress. Thus, project managers have to recognize which simple KPIs are important at what stage.


Thus, the project managers prefer to use the project performance measurement strategy named “SMART”. The SMART term is an abbreviation of Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based.
Furthermore, the SMART approach provides the guidelines to identify simple KPIs to use for project management KPI XLS as project management office KPI sheet.
- Develop a clear understating of the project objective.
- Decide the metrics to define project success.
- Identify the project key stakeholders.
- Select a strategy to monitor the project earned value and performance.
- Set and agree on a reasonable schedule to determine the success or failure of a project.


Also, the objective of developing simple KPI template XLS excel is to ensure proper tracking, monitoring and controlling. So, the project management KPI template excel can be aligned with the project goals.
Related Article: 30+ Free Project Management Template Excel Spreadsheets (2020)
How to Use Simple KPIs to Make Project Template
The purpose of creating KPIs isn’t just to monitor that individual. Project managers need to club several KPIs to make a tracking template. So, they can inter-relate and efficiently monitor the performance of KPIs.
Now there are different approaches to use simple KPIs as templates. However, it depends on the personal choice of the project manager to go for any format.
Some project managers prefer to add a KPI dashboard for quick and real-time monitoring of KPIs. While others prefer to go for detailed tabular and graphical analysis.
Considering the example of project cost control and budget tracking template. The simple KPIs for this template is the breakup of activities in terms of labor, material, fixed costs, actual cost, budget, and under/over.


So, a better approach for this type of simple KPIs to club tabular and graphical format for analysis. In tabular format, color coding is useful to quickly analyze which activities are exceeding the budget.
While a small bar graph will help to see the overall actual cost in comparison to the total budget.
In short, it is individuals’ choice to go for any approach which can help in better tracking of the KPIs for project success.
How to Select the Right KPIs
It’s not enough to simply define a KPI dashboard; you also need to know what kind of dashboard you’re making. Is it meant to be a dashboard for displaying data or influencing action?
- By disseminating data, KPIs can help workers become more knowledgeable in their field. Most of the metrics (safety, strategy, etc.) should be under your control, but there will be dashboards that display data you can’t change. It may be a map displaying your customers the miles of pipe across a city, or it could be a dashboard of the financial markets showing the Dow, S&P, Nasdaq, bond prices, mortgage rates, the price of oil, etc.
- You can facilitate positively motivating people toward an end goal by using key performance indicators. If an employee’s quarterly bonus is directly tied to dashboard performance, they may alter their driving habits in response to a safety briefing.
The dashboard’s intended users are the second thing to consider. Your key performance indicators should reflect the needs of that group precisely.
- Key performance indicators (KPIs) for team leaders and middle managers center on the team and the business. Key performance indicators (KPIs) related to worker and team performance levels and how those performance metrics affect costs are likely to be included in a safety dashboard for factory managers. The dashboard might track the number of accidents at work, project turnaround times, and key performance indicators (KPIs) that affect team bonuses. The averages of managers’ key performance indicators (KPIs) will also be displayed, making it simple to evaluate the relative performance of different groups against benchmarks.
- Key performance indicators (KPIs) give upper management a bird’s-eye view of the company’s financial health in terms of sales, expenses, and profit. Rather than being tactical, “boots on the ground” indicators, these KPIs should help leaders make judgments regarding the business’s strategic future. To continue with our safety example, a plant’s executive team may have KPIs for accidents, high-risk tasks, inspection failures, and similar issues set to appear on a red-alert dashboard. This helps bring to light potential revenue-impacting concerns for a swift resolution.
Keep in mind that dashboards can provide significant value to your company. Decide on the key performance indicators (KPIs) and narrative that will help you achieve your business goals within your budget constraints by defining your dashboard’s purpose and audience.
Drawbacks of KPI Dashboard Development in Excel
It’s a fact that not everyone has Excel. It’s counterproductive since it prevents people from working together, and it’s also a huge pain to create Excel charts from scratch by hand. Furthermore, static spreadsheets can quickly become outdated, and Excel is essentially useless without any connectors. This is an obvious indicator that Excel dashboards are not optimal for BI needs. Indeed, this sentiment is shared by many.
We advocate utilizing Excel for stand-alone projects or as a testing ground for developing your organization’s strategy reports, as it is a powerful and flexible tool. Yet, Excel can present some serious challenges if you have a sound management reporting process in place and know what you want to measure on a regular (monthly or quarterly) basis.
When problems like this plague your Excel spreadsheets, you know it’s time to upgrade.
- Mistakes occur when data is copied and pasted from one worksheet to another. The typical business uses numerous worksheets, each of which has multiple tabs. More documents and invoices will be inside those documents as time passes and more key performance indicators (KPIs) are added. Inaccuracies and misinterpretations are inevitable when dealing with so much information.
- It takes too much time to make all of the necessary updates manually. This may involve adding new data, remaking charts, including further analysis, and removing older data, all within a single month. In addition, these responsibilities might become very time-consuming as your reporting increases.
- It’s not easy to change how reports are laid out. Microsoft Excel is not designed to handle images and graphics. You can create custom charts, but any changes you make would necessitate refreshing every chart individually. That is to say, Excel lacks easily modifiable, repeatable templates.
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Top 10 Frequently Asked Questions about Simple KPI Excel
There are many questions in the FAQ list of simple KPI template XLS. However, the top 10 and the basic ones are:
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator.
KPIs are the process metrics to monitor the achievement of a set goal. Also, these are used for business functions at different levels.
The SMART performance measurement.
KPIs are identified by the leaders and top-level managers. A brainstorming session with subordinates and stakeholders is also important.
The use of SMART strategy integration with 7W’s is very helpful in the definition process of KPIs.
There is no term as general or best KPI. KPIs are linked with the goals. Thus, the same simple KPIs can be used for common goals for the same nature business.
KPI should be used to monitor, track, and control the progress toward a goal.
KPIs should be kept to the minimum number. Thus, it is important to identify the most critical ones.
Any individual, business, or project team who wants to achieve a set goal.
KPI dashboard is a visual representation of KPIs to assist in quick and easy tracking.
Finally, it was all about the “Best Simple KPI Template XLS Excel”. So, please do share your feedback in the comments section and SUBSCRIBE us to learn more about Project Management KPIs.
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