Ask HN: What would you use to track and update a small companies KPIs?

5 pointsTarks2y ago8 comments

I'm looking to track some company KPIs, we've been using excel which has all the drawbacks you'd expect.

I thought there'd be some tool which for example stores the data in a SQL db, has a secruity model like RBAC, provides both a frontend and APIs so that data can be updated both manually and programmatically, along with being able to be queried by reporting endpoints etc

I'm guessing this is a common "We've outgrown the simplest thing that just works" solution and my google fu is failing me

8 comments

anotherhue2y ago

sounds like a standard BI platform. I'd reach for Google Data Studio, others like PowerBI.

No need to re-invent the wheel with your own DB.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/comments/s3o6hi/the_most_in...

TarksOP2y ago

ty, not reinventing is the purpose of my post :) I've explored using PowerBI a bit, it doesn't seem to be geared towards extracting the data once it's in PowerBI. I'd want to be able to query the data from other services, for example grafana so that we could set up alerting. There doesn't seem to be a clean way to do this, all I could find was https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/datasets...

moooo992y ago

You could just out an SQL server somewhere and connect it as a datasource to Power BI. If you’d prefer a more standalone and SQL oriented Open Source solution, go ahead an checkout metabase as a BI platform.

However, I’m not aware of any BI platform providing APIs for data manipulation because displaying said data is usually the exclusive responsibility of a BI platform.

anotherhue2y ago

BigQuery might be a reasonable hosted DB here - they have proper postgres, etc. but it's a lower level than you may want.

Irongirl12y ago

I'm not techie by any means so I read the question as an "ease of access for multiple parties without vendor lock-in" issue. I would want the front-end views to customizable based on roles, access levels or whatever and it seems to me (I plan on using this myself) that the best answer is Cube.

See HN post:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31493118

mejutoco2y ago

What is the input data of these kpis?

If it is people entering data then excel or gsheets.

If it is a database then a few sql queries and data studio or even a custom dashboard with plotly or so would work (if you have developers on the team and protected pages slready).

markus_zhang2y ago

If it's a small company I still feel Excel/Google sheet is OKish. How many KPIs and how many teams are we talking here?

TarksOP2y ago

About 10 teams, some horizontals like Ops, commercial, design, tech, finance, some product specific KPIs & 2-3 project based teams.

I'm going to need to push to keep the number of KPIs down but 5 per horizontal is reasonable.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

Ask HN: What would you use to track and update a small companies KPIs?

5 pointsTarks2y ago8 comments

I'm looking to track some company KPIs, we've been using excel which has all the drawbacks you'd expect.

I'm guessing this is a common "We've outgrown the simplest thing that just works" solution and my google fu is failing me

8 comments

anotherhue2y ago

sounds like a standard BI platform. I'd reach for Google Data Studio, others like PowerBI.

No need to re-invent the wheel with your own DB.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerBI/comments/s3o6hi/the_most_in...

TarksOP2y ago

moooo992y ago

However, I’m not aware of any BI platform providing APIs for data manipulation because displaying said data is usually the exclusive responsibility of a BI platform.

anotherhue2y ago

BigQuery might be a reasonable hosted DB here - they have proper postgres, etc. but it's a lower level than you may want.

Irongirl12y ago

See HN post:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31493118

mejutoco2y ago

What is the input data of these kpis?

If it is people entering data then excel or gsheets.

If it is a database then a few sql queries and data studio or even a custom dashboard with plotly or so would work (if you have developers on the team and protected pages slready).

markus_zhang2y ago

If it's a small company I still feel Excel/Google sheet is OKish. How many KPIs and how many teams are we talking here?

TarksOP2y ago

About 10 teams, some horizontals like Ops, commercial, design, tech, finance, some product specific KPIs & 2-3 project based teams.

I'm going to need to push to keep the number of KPIs down but 5 per horizontal is reasonable.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse