Follow the flow of the work
Requests become quotes, quotes become jobs, jobs become invoices and invoices become payments. Pick one or two numbers at each step. That keeps the list short and makes it obvious where work is stalling.
A starter list
Requests: calls and messages answered versus missed. Quotes: how long quotes wait before going out, and how many are still open after your follow up rule. Jobs: jobs rescheduled and why. Billing: how long finished jobs wait before an invoice goes out, and how long invoices stay unpaid.
None of these needs new software to start. Most come straight from the systems you already run.
Watch the trend, not the single week
One week is noise. Look at the same numbers the same way every week and watch which way they move. A number that drifts the wrong way for several weeks is a decision waiting to be made.
Turn each number into a decision
A number on its own is a chart. The useful step is to ask what decision it points to, write that decision down, rate it and give it an owner and a date. Then check the same number on the due date.
The following is a generic illustration, not a client. An electrical contractor sees finished jobs waiting several days for an invoice. The decision becomes invoice every job the day it closes, owned by the office manager, checked in two weeks against the same number.
Where North Star fits
North Star Vision reads signals from the systems a business already runs, lists the decisions they point to, ranks them with a published formula and keeps each one open until the result is checked.