A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a quantifiable measure that evaluates the extent to which an organization, a process or a team is meeting a given objective. Unlike a plain metric, a KPI is always tied to an explicit objective and a target value: it does not just describe a situation, it serves to decide and to act.
A good KPI is generally SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) and comes with a target, alert thresholds and a measurement frequency. A frequent distinction is drawn between leading indicators (predictive of a future outcome, such as the number of quotes sent) and lagging indicators (which record the effect once it has occurred, such as collected revenue).
In a business management context, KPIs span every function: revenue and margin rate in finance, days sales outstanding (DSO), service level or inventory turnover in logistics, MTBF and MTTR in maintenance, conversion rate in sales. They make the most sense brought together in a dashboard, where Business Intelligence puts them in perspective and lets you explore them.
In an ERP, KPIs have the advantage of being computed directly on real business data, rather than on an export reworked by hand. At eyeot, the dashboards and the Intelligence module surface indicators drawn from the business modules; counters shared between a summary view and a detailed list rely on a single definition, in order to avoid discrepancies from one screen to another.