A Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is a measure of an organization's performance in a defined area of its business. It is a very general concept, with different KPIs being monitored depending on the type of business and goals of the organisation. Examples of KPIs may include such things as the percentage of deliveries made on time, total inventory at any given time, distribution costs as a percentage of total sales, accuracy of invoices sent to clients, or lead time for a product.

The purpose of KPIs is to give you a quantifiable measurement of things that are important to your success. Identifying the most important KPIs is the first step towards realising increased profitability and efficiency. For KPIs to be useful, they must be consistently quantifiable, have an established correlation to an area of your business in need of improvement, and not give false readings.

Here are suggestions of commonly used KPIs along with formulae for managing inventory, measuring inventory productivity, evaluating operational efficiencies, profits and growth. You may wish to adopt these and add them to your Ostendo Desktop or Workflow

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is an income statement figure which reflects the cost of obtaining raw materials and producing finished goods that are sold to consumers. It can be evaluated from

Beginning Inventory + Net Purchases - End Inventory

Average Inventory Cost per month is the cost average per month of your Inventory over that past 12 months. It can be evaluated from

(Beginning Inventory + End Inventory)/(2 * 12)

Inventory Turns is a ratio showing how many times a company's inventory is sold and replaced over a period. This is calculated from

Cost of Goods Sold during the past 12 months / (Average Inventory Cost per Month * 12 )

Gross Profit Margin (GM) reveals how much a company earns taking into consideration the costs incurred for producing products and/or services, and is expressed as a percentage. Gross margin is a good indication of how profitable your company is at the most fundamental level. Higher gross margins results in having more money left over to spend on other business operations, such as research and development or marketing. You can calculate this from

(Sales Revenue – Cost Of Goods Sold) / Sales Revenue

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO). You should attempt to shorten your cash conversion cycle by measuring DSO. It measures the average number of days taken to collect revenue after a sale has been made. A low DSO number means that it takes fewer days to collect accounts receivable. A high DSO number shows that you are selling your products to customers on credit and taking longer to collect money. Therefore a decrease in DSO represents an improvement whereas an increase indicates deterioration.

Account Receivable / (Net Sales / 365)

Displaying KPI's in Ostendo

Ostendo not only facilitates creating and maintaining Statistics and KPIs but also allows you to display these in Ostendo's Desktop. To see this in action we will create ongoing statistics of POS sales by doing the following

1. Go into File>Reporting Configuration>Report and View Developer and click the 'Add' button. In the presented panel 'check' the 'Chart' Radio Button and give a name of 'Daily POS Sales' then click the 'Create' button
2. In the Master Settings screen enter the following;
   • Include in Main menu – leave this 'unchecked'
   • Name: Daily POS Sales
   • Menu Order: 0
   • Category: POS
   • Title: Daily POS Sales
   • Master Query: Copy and Paste the following query;
     select COMPANYSITE "SiteName",STATIONID "StationID",OPERATORNAME "OperatorName", SALEDATE "SaleDate", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR0 as decimal(13,2)) "12pm", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR1 as decimal(13,2)) "1am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR2 as decimal(13,2)) "2am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR3 as decimal(13,2)) "3am",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR4 as decimal(13,2)) "4am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR5 as decimal(13,2)) "5am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR6 as decimal(13,2)) "6am",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR7 as decimal(13,2)) "7am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR8 as decimal(13,2)) "8am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR9 as decimal(13,2)) "9am",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR10 as decimal(13,2)) "10am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR11 as decimal(13,2)) "11am", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR12 as decimal(13,2)) "12am",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR13 as decimal(13,2)) "1pm",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR14 as decimal(13,2)) "2pm", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR15 as decimal(13,2)) "3pm",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR16 as decimal(13,2)) "4pm",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR17 as decimal(13,2)) "5pm", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR18 as decimal(13,2)) "6pm",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR19 as decimal(13,2)) "7pm",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR20 as decimal(13,2)) "8pm", cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR21 as decimal(13,2)) "9pm",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR22 as decimal(13,2)) "10pm",cast(VALUEOFSALESHOUR23 as decimal(13,2)) "11pm" from POSDAILYSTATISTICS
   • 'Save' the Chart View
3. Now go to File>System Configuration>User Security and Options and – against your User Sign-in – click on the 'Desktop Views' tab and enter the following
   • Enable Desktop Views: 'Check' this checkbox
   • View Type : Select 'Chart'
   • View: Select 'Daily POS Sales'
   • Auto Refresh: 'check' this checkbox
   • Refresh Interval: enter 5 minutes

Save the entry and exit out to the main Ostendo Screen. You will see the POS Statistics displayed on the Ostendo desktop. These will automatically be updated every 5 minutes.