Beyond revenue: Essential metrics organizations must prioritize

To measure success and plot future courses for organizations, board meetings often center on market share, EBITDA and quarterly revenue. But the world is changing — hurried by AI, digital transformation and insatiable consumers. And because of that, the boardroom must advance. This means CEOs and business leaders should reassess what metrics they are prioritizing to shed light on missed opportunities and to spotlight unseen risks that are not the normal, rank-and-file measures of financial success.

1. Technological Agility

For starters, let’s consider technological agility as a boardroom metric — the ability of the organization and its employees to adapt quickly to changes in the technology landscape before it’s too late and before your competition has passed you by.

Technological agility as a boardroom metric includes proactive funding and pivoting instead of knee-jerk reactions. Your tech stack should adapt to emerging technologies, as should your employees. Prioritize this, and don’t assume it will just happen.

I’ve never seen the technological landscape change so quickly, meaning even the best and most well-intentioned employees caring for your infrastructure, product, marketing and security might get left behind. That’s a scary proposition when the competition and bad actors are knocking on the door.

So furnish more than sexual harassment training. It’s imperative to not only provide but to require measurable training, resources and time for employees to upgrade their tech knowledge and skillsets. Board members might not smile at you for this forward-thinking vision, but they’ll certainly frown on you if your company is left behind.

2. Cybersecurity Preparedness

Speaking of technological prowess, cybersecurity preparedness is another key consideration often swept under the rug in strategic meetings until, well, it's too late. With increasing cyber threats from AI, black hats and other tools, robust security must become a routine boardroom agenda item.

So evaluate metrics beyond breach counts and consider response times to threats, new investments in threat-detection tech and, again, effective employee training — in this instance, security training. Stress to board members that this proactive approach protects brand reputation and prevents company-ending breaches while simultaneously providing assurance to investors and customers alike. It’s better to explain to board members the importance of security metrics and their associated costs than having to spell out for them a reputation-ending or quarter-busting breach.

3. Operational Resilience

What’s more, as global trade wars heat up, it’s never been a better time to address operational resilience — your company’s deftness at keeping the business operating and withstanding disruption. Include resilience metrics in the boardroom conversation.

To ensure long-term viability and shareholder value, boards should assess the effectiveness of scenario planning, the robustness of business continuity planning and the flexibility of supply chains and operational processes. While this is not as exciting as chasing the latest tech trends, these insights and metrics, driven by the CEO and top executives, will enable agile responses to unforeseen events, help safeguard shareholder value and keep the business running.

4. Customer Input

Finally, CEOs should position robust customer feedback as a top priority. Once seen merely as a customer service concern, customer input now plays a pivotal role in driving product innovation, shaping market strategy and sustaining a competitive edge.

Leaders must closely monitor key feedback metrics — like sentiment analysis, real-time feedback loops, churn predictions and frontline insights — and integrate them into major decision-making processes. Just as important, these metrics should feature prominently in board presentations to underscore how critical customer experience is to overall business performance.

Smarter Metrics

By widening the lens of what success looks like, CEOs and boards can uncover the gaps that traditional metrics might miss. Metrics like technological agility, cybersecurity readiness, operational resilience and customer feedback are essential to staying relevant, competitive and prepared. These indicators reflect how well a business can evolve, respond and lead.

Successful companies won’t be the ones chasing the same old metrics. They’ll be the ones using smarter, more comprehensive metrics to make better decisions. CEOs and top executives who bring these insights to the boardroom are setting the agenda, not just reporting progress.

(This column originally appeared in Forbes.)

Christian Wiklund is unitQ CEO and Co-Founder.