Articles

SaaS Conversations: Building a Culture of Metrics

March 13, 2020

Last week, Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com, and I had a terrific, hour-long discussion on the value of a metrics-driven culture at every stage of growth, from early stage to large enterprise.

As Hubspot’s CMO, where Mike was part of the founding team through a successful IPO leading to a $2B valuation, to CMO at Cybereason, an enterprise cybersecurity company, and now CEO at the SaaS travel management vendor, Lola.com, we looked at how KPIs have evolved from SaaS 2.0 through today’s SaaS 4.0.Mike shared how the metrics for a fast paced, monthly rhythm of an SMB SaaS company, like Hubspot, had a different rhythm at a cybersecurity enterprise sales company with longer sales cycles.

And now, as CEO of Lola.com, Mike explained how he’s working to build a culture of metrics throughout the company by actively teaching the metrics to every employee.  Mike believes that being as transparent as possible - even sharing most board reports with all employees – helps get everyone on the same page and makes the company agile and better able to succeed.

Building a Culture of Metrics

In the early days of SaaS (SaaS 2.0), companies and investors focused on retention and unit economics through metrics like Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Customer Lifetime Value, as well as the Magic Number.  As the SaaS industry has evolved, so too have the metrics and company management structures.  Today (SaaS 4.0), companies are looking at metrics and management structures to track Customer Lifecycles and Product Lifecycles, all the way from prospects, to renewals to customer satisfaction, and customer engagement indicators to new product features.

SaaS 4.0

Key Take-Away

Extensive use of consistent metrics and definitions, plus transparency with employees, contribute to driving high stakeholder value at SaaS companies like Hubspot and Cybereason.

For more information about the metrics that matter to SaaS companies, and how to benchmark them against peers, please contact us at info@opexengine.com.