The phrase "a key step on" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to indicate an important stage or action in a process or journey.
Example: "Implementing this new software is a key step on our path to improving efficiency."
Alternatives: "a crucial step in" or "an essential part of".
Understanding key routines is a key step on the way to greatness.
Taking ideas and products from niche to mainstream is a key step on Forum's Six Steps to Significant Change.
"Les Misérables, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbookbook" shared in the bounty today at the Screen Actors Guild nominations, a key step on the path to awards season.
In a paper recently published in ACS Central Science, the researchers showed that a key step on the way to viruses infecting cells, called membrane fusion, is significantly more complicated in Zika compared to other related viruses.
For one example, formal rotations in sales or operations have traditionally been a key step on the path to senior leadership, and men are more likely than women to have held such jobs.
In an article for the Atlantic Council, he says: A provisional government led by the Syrian Opposition Coalition would be a key step on the way to a national unity transition government that could and should include serving, non-criminal officials of the current and previous SARGs [Syrian Arab Republic Government].
Now a team has come up with a new way to sculpt photonic materials in three dimensions--a key step on the way to ultrasmall lasers and computer chips that calculate with photons.
We studied the effects of the widely used herbicide atrazine (ATZ) on meiosis, a key step of gametogenesis, in male mice.
In budding yeast, Tanaka and colleagues have found that the Dam1 complex and the Ndc80 loop interact, albeit probably not directly, which is a key step to establish end-on attachment in this yeast ([ 31], this issue).
Taking on that big data power is therefore a key step in taking on the broader economic stagnation and inequality that has left the middle class behind in the current recovery.
A key step toward settling on a nominee will be Saturday's meeting of the Democratic Party's rules committee, which will consider what to do with the delegates from Florida and Michigan.
