5 Indicators Every SME Should Have on Its Dashboard

Most SMEs have data. Invoices, orders, work hours, stock: it's all somewhere. The problem isn't a lack of information: it's a lack of visibility into what really matters, at the right moment.

A good dashboard isn't a report with 40 charts. It's a single page that answers the 5 questions any manager asks every morning. Here are the ones that come up in almost every project we do with SMEs.

1. Real margin per product or service

Not the theoretical margin from the price list. The real margin, after deducting materials, labor time, logistics and errors. Most managers know their revenue volume: few know exactly where they make money and where they lose it.

What to show on the dashboard: gross margin (%) by product family or service type, compared to the previous month and the defined target.

2. Days of stock or available capacity

How long until stock runs out? How many hours of production capacity are still available this week? This indicator avoids two costly problems: buying too late (line stoppage) or buying too early (capital tied up).

What to show on the dashboard: days of coverage per critical reference, with visual red alerts below the threshold defined by the company.

3. Average collection period (DSO)

How many days on average pass between issuing an invoice and getting paid? A high DSO is a silent sign of cash flow stress. A profitable company can have serious cash flow problems simply because customers pay late.

What to show on the dashboard: current DSO vs. target vs. the same period last year. With a filter by customer or segment to identify those who systematically pay late.

4. On-time delivery rate (OTD)

On-Time Delivery: what percentage of orders or projects were delivered by the promised deadline? This number directly affects customer satisfaction and operating costs (overtime, rush jobs, penalties).

What to show on the dashboard: weekly and monthly OTD, broken down by team, line or customer. Delays cost more than they seem to.

5. Cost per hour produced (or per unit)

The real cost of doing what the company does. Not the budgeted cost: the actual cost, which includes downtime, rework and inefficiencies. When this number rises without production falling, there's a problem worth investigating.

What to show on the dashboard: cost/hour or cost/unit per week, with variation vs. the average of the last 3 months.

How to build this dashboard

These 5 indicators are available in most SMEs: the data exists, usually scattered across Excel, an ERP or manual tracking sheets. The work is connecting the sources, cleaning the data and building a visualization any manager can understand with no technical training.

In Power BI, building this dashboard typically takes 2 to 4 days of actual work, depending on the quality of the data sources. The result is a dashboard that updates automatically and can be viewed on any device.