A key performance indicator, usually shortened to KPI, is a number chosen in advance because it tells you something you would act on.
The definition matters because the word gets attached to any number that appears on a dashboard, and that is most of the problem with it. A number you look at and do nothing about is a statistic. It becomes a KPI when a change in it changes what you do.
What makes one worth tracking
It moves before the outcome does. Revenue tells you what already happened. Close rate and pipeline volume tell you what is about to.
You can influence it. The weather affects a roofing business and is not a KPI.
It has a threshold. "Cash runway" is a number. "Cash runway below three months" is a KPI, because it names the point at which you would act.
How many
Fewer than feels responsible. Five numbers checked weekly beat thirty reviewed quarterly, because thirty numbers is a report and nobody acts on a report.
The right five differ by trade and by what is currently fragile. A business with plenty of work and thin margins watches different numbers from one with good margins and an empty calendar.
In Omnyra
Omnyra calculates a set of KPIs from your connected data and groups them by what they are protecting against — survival first, then stability, efficiency and growth. The ordering is deliberate: a business with two months of runway does not have an efficiency problem, and showing it efficiency metrics first would be answering a question nobody asked.
They roll up into the health score.