Business Goals: Creation and Target Setting

Overview

The Goals feature in clariBI lets you define measurable business objectives and track them over time. Instead of maintaining goals in a separate spreadsheet, you can keep them alongside your dashboards and reports -- connected to the same data sources that power your analytics.

This guide covers creating goals, setting targets, and organizing them for your team.

Creating a Goal

1. Click Goals in the left sidebar.
2. Click + New Goal.
3. Fill in the goal details:
4. Goal Name -- A clear, specific name (e.g., "Increase Monthly Revenue to $500K").
5. Description -- Additional context about why this goal matters and how it will be measured.
6. Category -- Optional grouping such as Revenue, Growth, Engagement, or Efficiency. You can create custom categories.
7. Owner -- The team member responsible for this goal. They receive notifications about progress updates.
8. Priority -- Low, Medium, High, or Critical.
9. Click Continue to set your target.

Writing Good Goal Names

Effective goal names are specific and measurable. Compare these:

Setting Targets

After creating the goal, you configure the target -- the measurable outcome you are aiming for.

Target Configuration

• Metric Type -- Choose from:
• Numeric -- A specific number (e.g., 10,000 users, $500,000 revenue)
• Percentage -- A rate or proportion (e.g., 15% growth, 3% churn rate)
• Currency -- A monetary amount with currency symbol

• Custom -- Any unit you define (e.g., "support tickets resolved")

• Starting Value -- Where you are today. Enter your current metric value manually.

• Target Value -- Where you want to be.
• Direction -- Are you trying to increase or decrease this metric? This determines how progress is visualized.

Setting Deadlines

Every goal should have a deadline:

• Start Date -- When tracking begins. Defaults to today.
• Target Date -- When you plan to hit the target.
• Review Frequency -- How often progress is checked: daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

clariBI uses the start date, target date, and current progress to calculate whether you are on pace. A goal that is 50% complete at the halfway point shows as "On Track." A goal that is 30% complete at the halfway point shows as "Behind."

Organizing Goals

Categories

Group related goals into categories. Default categories include:

• Revenue
• Growth
• Engagement
• Efficiency
• Customer Satisfaction

To create a custom category, go to Goals > Settings > Categories and click Add Category.

Goal Dashboards

Pin your most important goals to a dashboard for at-a-glance tracking:

1. Open a dashboard in edit mode.
2. Click Add Widget > Goal Progress.
3. Select one or more goals.
4. Choose the display style: progress bar, gauge, or metric card.

Goal Statuses

Each goal has a status that updates automatically based on progress:

You can also manually update a goal's status if automatic tracking does not fit your workflow.

Notifications and Alerts

Goal owners and watchers receive notifications for:

• Weekly progress summaries (configurable frequency)
• Status changes (e.g., moving from On Track to Behind)
• Milestone completions (see Milestones and Progress Tracking)
• Goal completion or missed deadline

Configure notification preferences in Settings > Notifications > Goals.

Best Practices

• Limit active goals. Focus on 3-5 goals per team at a time. Too many goals dilute attention.
• Set realistic deadlines. Use your historical data to set achievable targets. clariBI can show trend lines to help you estimate.
• Assign clear owners. Every goal should have one accountable person, even if multiple people contribute.
• Review regularly. Use the review frequency setting to schedule check-ins and keep goals from going stale.
• Connect to data. Goals connected to live data sources update automatically. See Connecting Goals to Live Data for Automatic Updates for setup instructions.

Related Articles

• Milestones and Progress Tracking
• Connecting Goals to Live Data for Automatic Updates
• Dashboard Creation and Management