CPIs and KPIs
Critical performance indicators are the critical few, tied to your points of difference. KPIs are the important many. If everything is critical, nothing is.
A customer’s business runs on dozens of KPIs, the important many. Your proposition should move two or three of them, and those are the critical performance indicators: the critical few, mapped directly to your points of difference, the outcomes the customer chose you for and would not get from the alternative. The rest of the KPIs map to your points of parity, the things you have to do as well as anyone else to stay in the room.
The critical few carry the value. The rest keep you honest. If everything is critical, nothing is, and a scorecard with twenty measures on it is a scorecard nobody reads. The CPIs are the same measures that appear in the assurance corner of the proposition, which is the point: the promise and the proof use one set of numbers, agreed once, measured from one baseline.
Set out in full in: Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI (Kogan Page, 2027), chapters 8 and 9.
Related terms
Assurance
The corner of the proposition that answers why should I believe you: credibility, return on investment, and the measures both sides will use.
Value capture
Proving the value landed, in both directions: in the customer's KPIs and in your own board's numbers.
The baseline
The measure agreed before delivery starts. Value measured against a remembered past is value the customer will dispute.
The value ledger
The running record of value delivered: the evidence file every renewal needs and almost no account team can produce on demand.
See the method run on one real account in three days: the One Page Proposition.