Dashboard Design Principles
- Relevant & Actionability
- Align KPIs with Business Goals: Ensure the KPIs chosen are directly tied to the strategic objectives of the business
- Provide Actionable Insights: Select KPIs that can guide decision-making and prompt actionable steps.
- Balance Leading and Lagging Indicators: Track both predictive (leading) and outcome (lagging) metrics.
- Clarity & Simplicity
- Focus on Key Metrics: Avoid information overload by selecting only the most critical KPIs that directly contribute to business goals.
- Use Clear and Concise Labels: Ensure everyone understands the data without ambiguity.
- Consistent Formatting: Maintain a clean and professional look for better readability and user experience.
- Visual Impact
- Choose Appropriate Chart Types: Use visuals like line graphs for trends and bar charts for comparisons to effectively represent data.
- Leverage Color Strategically: Use color to enhance readability, highlight trends, and indicate performance against benchmarks.
- Maintain Visual Hierarchy: Organize information so that the most important data is most prominent.
- Use White Space Effectively: Improve readability and reduce clutter by incorporating ample white space.
- Data Accuracy and Consistency
- Ensure Data Integrity: Verify data sources and calculations to maintain accuracy.
- Update Data Regularly: Provide real-time or near-real-time data for timely decision-making
- Maintain Consistent Definitions: Use standardized definitions and calculations for KPIs to avoid confusion and ensure consistency.
- User-Centric Design
- Enable Drill-Down Capabilities: Allow users to explore deeper layers of data for more detailed analysis.
- Understand Your Audience: Tailor the dashboard to meet the specific needs and preferences of its users.
- Provide Context: Include benchmarks, targets, and historical data to give context to the metrics
- Test and Iterate: Gather user feedback and continuously improve the dashboard design
- Consider the Dashboardโs Purpose: Identify who will use the dashboard and what they need to see
- Mobile Optimization: Ensure the dashboard is accessible and functional on various devices, including smartphones and tablets.
- Customizability: Allow users to personalize their view or create role-specific dashboard variants.
CRO Dashboard KPIs/Metrics (for Head of Sales)
Track the following metrics vs. target:
- ARR
- Bookings (ACV not TCV; overall; new/expansion)
- Recurring
- Non-recurring
- Win rate (overall; new/expansion)
- Sales cycle time (overall; new/expansion)
- Average deal size (overall; new/expansion)
- Forecast (triangulate across manually submitted roll-up; AI/ML algorithm; etc.)
- Pipeline generation
- $ and # of qualified opps created in the trailing X (7, 30, 90) days; track this at the company, team, and individual level; Note: When you set & monitor AE self-generated PG targets, you must also set & monitor win rates to avoid garbage in.
- Key activities:
- 1st meetings – disco/demo
- Any meetings
- PoCs
- emails sent and/or dials made
- Open pipeline (weighted/unweighted)
- Pipeline coverage
- Pipeline coverage is based on ‘left-to-get’ relative to the company target (as opposed to assigned quota or to the Board target)
- Critical conversion rates (ex: stage-to-stage; advancing from 1st new business meetings to 2nd technical deep dive discussions)
- Days in stage (median for won deals; median for lost deals; currently open)
- Top open deals (new; expansion; renewals)
- Top lost deals (optionally with loss analysis)
- Quota coverage (optional); aka “quota deployed”
- Quota attainment by rep (stack ranked); productivity per ramped rep (split ramping & ramped)
- At-risk customers (prioritized by size; based on health scores)
- Retention: (total and/or cohort based)
- Net dollar retention (NDR/NRR)
- Gross dollar retention (GDR/GRR)
- Logo churn rate (or logo retention rate)
- NPS (optional – nice to have)
- LTV/CAC (optional – nice to have; costs not usually in CRM so can be challenging; can also break into LTV and CAC; can also just look at sales expense/net new ARR)
- Push rate (optional) – Can be defined in two ways:
- (deals at start of Q with close dates in Q that pushed) / (all deals at start of Q)
- (deals that ever had close dates in Q that pushed) / (all deals that ever had close dates in Q that won, lost, or pushed)
- Conversion rate: (end of quarter bookings) / (unweighted pipeline at start of Q with close dates in Q)
Filter by the following:
- Time period: current/next month/quarter; YTD; rolling x days/weeks/quarters; custom
- Segment: size; geo; industry (aligned to your business)
- Source (inbound, AE, SDR, partner)
CMO Dashboard KPIs / Metrics
Track the following metrics vs. targets:
- Bookings (marketing-sourced/attributed)
- $; ACV; win rate; sales cycle
- Pipeline (marketing-sourced-attributed; $ & #)
- Funnel
- Website
(note: for each metric, can also look at time in funnel stage)- visitors (paid; organic; customers)
- Visitor-to-Lead conversion rate (or Lead volume)
- Lead response time
- Lead-to-MQL conversion rate (or MQL volume)
- MQL-to-SQL/SQO conversion rate (or SQL/SQO volume which is pipeline $ of # for the web channel)
- SQL/SQO-to-Closed Won win rate (which is bookings $ of # for the web channel)
- Other website metrics:
- Bounce rate (by page, esp. homepage, pricing page, and landing pages)
- Pages per session
- Average time on site
- Email
- Open rate
- Click-through-rate (CTR)
- Paid Search
- Click through rate (CTR)
- Cost per click (CPC)
- Return on ad spend (ROAS)
- PLG
- visitor-to-free trial
- free trail-to-activated user
- free-trail-to-paid conversion (and/or activated user-to-paid)
- Partner (TBD)
- Events (TBD)
- Website
- ROI (by marketing channel or source)
- Marketing Customer Acquisition Cost (MCAC) = (marketing expense) / (new + expansion ARR booked)
- Cost per Lead (CPL)
- Cost per MQL = (program spend) / (MQLs generated); this can be overall or by program
- Cost per marketing-sourced opportunity = (program spend) / (new pipeline $ generated); this can be overall or by program
- Cost per Activation(CPA) = cost to acquire a new customer
- Brand / Social / SEO
- Share of Voice (esp. with target media outlets)
- Organic keywork ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs)
- Brand awareness metrics (TBD)
- Influencer marketing metrics (TBD)
- Social media engagement (followers; mentions; sentiment)
- Content engagement (blogs; webinars; whitepapers; etc.)
- Customer
- NPS
- Customer Engagement Score
- New feature adoption rate
Filter by the following:
- Marketing program / channel / source
- Target accounts (for ABM/ABX purposes)
- Time period: current/next month/quarter; YTD; rolling x days/weeks/quarters; custom
- Segment: size; geo; industry (aligned to your business)
CCO / Customer Success Dashboard KPIs / Metrics
Track the following metrics vs. targets:
Financials & Operational Efficiency
- ARR per CSM (or accounts per CSM)
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- Customer lifetime value (CLTV)
- Customer retention cost (CRC)
- Customer support
- Customer success
- Account management (includes dedicated renewal managers if applicable; hard to split out the costs into those from renewal & expansion)
- Customer Marketing (hard to split out the costs into those from renewal & expansion)
- Product & Engineering (hard to split out the costs into those from new, renewal, & expansion)
Customer Health
- Active users (DAU / WAU / MAU)
- Customer engagement score (CES)
- Customer Health Score (overall % at risk)
- Customer Success CSAT
- Feature adoption
- Net promoter score (NPS)
- Product usage (ex: activation rate = seat utilization = seats assigned / seats purchased)
- QBR completion rate (note: could also do QBR CSAT)
Onboarding
- Onboarding completion rate
- Onboarding CSAT
- Time to onboard (often defined as time to first value – TTFV)
Retention & Expansion
- ACV increase at first expansion (% or $)
- Churn rate = customers churned / all customers at a base date (can be # or $ based)
- Gross revenue retention (GRR)
- Net revenue retention (NRR)
- Reactivation rate
- Renewal rate = customers renewed / customers up for renewal in period (can be # or $ based)
- Time to first expansion
Customer Support
- First contact resolution rate
- Mean time to first response (TTFR)
- Mean time to resolution (MTTR)
- Support CSAT
- Ticket backlog = # tickets unresolved for x days
- High priority tickets: > 2 to 4 hours
- Med priority tickets: > 1 to 2 days
- Low priority tickets: > 3 to 5 days
- Ticket deflection (%)
- Ticket escalation rate
Specific Accounts
- At-risk accounts
- Renewals in the next x (~90) days
Customer Education
- Certification program participation
- Knowledge base usage
- Webinar attendance (by customers)
Team
- CSM attrition
- CSM quota achievement
- CSM training completion rate (and/or training hours per CSM)
Other
- Good CS metrics guide: https://www.userlane.com/blog/epic-guide-to-saas-metrics-for-customer-success-and-product-management/
‘Clean Your Room’ Dashboard
Here are the types of analyses to include on a ‘clean your room’ dashboard:
- Opportunities with close dates in the next 30 days that have had no activity in the last 7 days
- Opportunities with no activities in the last n days (esp. with no meetings or inbound emails)
- Opportunities with no upcoming meetings scheduled
- Opportunities with days in stage >2x the median the opps that have previously progressed from that stage
- Opportunities that have pushed more than x times
- Opportunities with close dates in the past
- Opportunities with close dates in the week after quarter end
- Opportunities with no next steps
- Opportunities with zero or one contacts attached (i.e. not multi-threaded)
- Opportunities past stage x that do not have a champion identified
In addition, here are several more general metrics for pipeline health assessment:
- Net Pipeline Created = new opps + increases in existing opps + pull forward opps – decreases in existing opps – pushed opps
Excludes closed won & closed lost opps since this is a flow not a balance. Total ending pipeline = starting pipeline + net pipeline created – closed won – closed lost. Credit: Bill Binch (source) - Coverage ratio = (total value of unweighted pipeline)/(left to get for the period)
- Weighted coverage ratio = (total value of probability weighted pipeline)/(left to get for the period)
For higher accuracy, include an estimate of the amount of business to be created & closed in the remainder of the period. - Conversion rate = % of open pipeline dollars on Day 1 that were closed won in the quarter
Note: This is not bookings for the period divided by starting pipeline since bookings also includes pull-forwards an create & close. - Modified conversion rate = (closed won bookings for the period) / (Day 1 pipeline)
- Push rate = % of open pipeline dollars on Day 1 with close dates in quarter that get pushed to subsequent quarters
- Pull rate = % of quarterly bookings resulting for deals pulled in from future quarters.
- Stage-to-stage advancement rate = (# of opps that advance) / (# of opps that advance or were closed lost)
ARR
Usage-Based Pricing and ARR
Based on analysis of 10 publicly traded SaaS companies by Ordway (here), the most popular approaches are:
- 4 x Trailing 3 months (or 90 days) revenue
- 12 x Trailing month (or 30 days) revenue
Revenue Intelligence & Planning Tools – SaaS KPIs and Analytics
(*) = recommended
- Anaplan (general purpose planning tool)
- Board (general purpose planning tool)
- (*) Clari
- Clevenue
- (*) Discern.io1
- Drivetrain
- (*) FullCast
- FunnelSource
GrowBlocks(CLOSED – GTM modeling)- Inselligence
- InsightSquared, A MediaFly Company
- Lative (SPM & planning)
- Levers Labs
- Lative
- Oracle SPM
- ORM Technologies
- Outset
- Pigment
- Planr
- Reactual
- Revcast
- Revlitix
- Revsure
- SaasGrid (spinout from Craft Ventures)
- Sightfull
- SkyGeni
- Subscript
- TigerEye
- Varicent
- Vasco (analytics & planning)
- Vena (general purpose planning tool)
- Workday (general purpose planning tool)
- Xactly
- Zetta
SaaS Benchmarks
- Battery Ventures (State of the Open Cloud)
- BenchmarkIt (Ray Rike)
- Benchsights (David Spitz)
- Bessemer (State of the Cloud)
- Bridge Group
- Clouded Judgement (substack newsletter)
- Ebsta
- Emergence Capital
- ICONIQ
- Index Ventures (people analytics)
- Insight Partners
- KeyBanc (with Sapphire Ventures)
- Meritech Benchmarking (free)
- OpenView
- Pavilion (compensation benchmarks)
- Serena Capital (article; European SaaS benchmarks)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
(work in progress)
- Duration: 5 yr
- Terminal value: no
- Present value: no
- Margin adjust: yes
- Cohorted: yes
Optimizing CAC Payback
Rule of 40 Decomposition
SaaS KPIs
Note: Partially completed for CCO, CMO, and CSO (thus for CRO). Other roles TBD.
Metric | CEO | CFO | CCO | CMO | CSO | CPO | CHRO |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ARR | x | ||||||
Avg. Deal Size (ACV) | x | ||||||
Bookings (new / expansion; by segment; etc.) | x | ||||||
Customer Retention Cost (CRC) | x | x | |||||
Customers – At Risk | x | ||||||
Customers – Health Score | x | ||||||
Forecast (incl. accuracy) | x | ||||||
Leads – Funnel Conversion Rates (incl. landing page conversion) | x | ||||||
Leads – Time in each funnel stage | x | ||||||
LTV/CAC | x | ||||||
NPS | x | ||||||
Opps – Push Rate | x | ||||||
Opps – Top Lost Deals | x | ||||||
Opps – Top Open Deals | x | ||||||
Pipeline – Conversion Rate | x | ||||||
Pipeline – Coverage | x | ||||||
Pipeline – Generation | x | x | |||||
Pipeline – Open (weighted & unweighted) | x | ||||||
Quota – Attainment (overall & by rep) | x | ||||||
Quota Coverage | x | ||||||
Retention – Logo Churn | x | ||||||
Retention – GRR | x | ||||||
Retention – NRR | x | x | |||||
Sales Cycle | x | ||||||
Website Traffic (paid; organic; referral) | x | ||||||
Win Rate | x |
Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)
In 3Q23, the public SaaS DSO benchmark was: (percentiles)
- 25th: 38.6 days
- 50th: 56.4 days
- 75th; 68.9 days
Footnotes
1 The author of this blog is employed by Insight Partners who has invested in Discern.io