Sep 1, 2026 1 min read
Most retailers track far more metrics than their teams can act on. The following ten tend to matter most: like-for-like sales growth, gross margin percentage by category, on-shelf availability, stock cover in days, fresh waste as a percentage of fresh sales, sales per square meter, basket size and units per transaction, supplier OTIF, labor cost as a percentage of sales, and conversion rate where footfall data is available.
The common thread across these ten is that each one maps directly to a decision someone in the business can make this week. A KPI that does not change anyone behavior is a reporting exercise, not a management tool.
The practical starting point is not more dashboards, but agreeing which five or six of these matter most for a given format and building the discipline to review them weekly at store and category level.