Approximately 7 percent of men suffer from some form of color blindness and, in its
most common form, may be unable to distinguish between red and green. Therefore, indicators
should not only have colors but also shapes or positions which identify them.
KPIs have an indicator of their relative health against a target, but this target may
be set in several different ways. It may simply be a hard-coded value, decided on
ahead of time. Many companies set a revenue goal before each fiscal year and that
number can be typed in as part of the KPI. Other times, the target may come from a
data source such as an Analysis Services cube or Excel spreadsheet. The target may
be an actual value from that data source or a calculation based on the value. For
example, if a company is projecting sales for 2009, they may simply apply a formula
that calculates a 10 percent increase over sales for the same time period in 2008.
Imagine that a company has set a target of having an employee turnover rate of
no more than 15 percent. Each month this number is examined and for each month
the value is less than 15 percent. This means that the indicator would show a good or
healthy symbol. However, what if the actual values for the past three months were
7 percent, 12 percent, and 14 percent? While the number is still good, there seems
to be a trend going on, and trends may be important to the business. This is another
component that separates KPIs from measures: KPIs can include trends, and the
calculations for determining trends can be simple or complex.
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