pivotronics

If you have been doing any kind of reporting or analytics in any domain starting from more generic project management or team management to any specialised management reporting, etc., you most probably may have had challenge in clearly seeing that blurring line of distinction among the concepts of Goals Vs Targets Vs Thresholds Vs Baselines Vs Benchmarks

Baseline: A baseline is simply an initial reference point used for comparisons. A baseline for your performance measure is the average level of performance that you are currently at, and that you will compare future performance levels with it to test if the performance is really changing.

Benchmarks: A benchmark is an assessment of an industry-standard, best practice, or competitor that can be used to set targets for KPIs

Goals: Every KPI must be accompanied with a goal to be tracked for measuring performance. Goals can be of two types:

1. Targets: Goals that move in positive direction are Targets. e.g. Accuracy% to be at 99% (i.e., not less than that)

2. Thresholds: Goals that move in negative direction are Thresholds. e.g. Maintain Errors% at 5% (i.e., not more than that)

An essential pre-requisite understanding you should be having for this is about Metrics and KPIs which you can learn from this article: Data Vs Data Points Vs Metrics Vs KPIs

Hope that’s a useful learning!