2022 SaaS Performance

Reporting Benchmarks
How companies are tracking and analyzing
the most important metrics

SaaS Performance Report 2022 @ Mosaic

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Survey Participant Profile 02

Introduction 04

1. Key Findings 05

2. The Metrics that Matter in SaaS 06

Company-Wide Metrics Could Go Deeper

Customer Acquisition Metrics Need More Context

Customer Retention Metrics Have a Segmentation Problem

Customer Expansion Should Grow Beyond Net Revenue Retention

Sales Metrics Have a Glaring Gap

3. The Metric Calculation Process 12

Who Calculates the Metrics?

How Well Is Finance Aligned with Business Partners?

What Tools Do Teams Use to Calculate Metrics?

What Challenges Slow Down Performance Reporting?

4.The Cadence of Metric Calculations 18

How Often Do Companies Measure Performance Metrics?

How Long Does It Take to Calculate Metrics?

5. Six Opportunities to Improve Reporting 20

Efficiency

6.Get Ahead of the Strategic Finance Wave 22

About Mosaic 23

SaaS Performance Report 2022 1

Survey
Participant Profile
Participant Profile

By Company Size (Revenue)

23%
21%

16%
14%
13%

6%
5%
3%

<$ $ $ $ $ $ $ >$
5M 5-10M 10-20M 20-50M 50-100M 100-250M 250M-1B 1B

Participant Profile

By ACV

20%
19%
16%
15%
14%

6%
4% 4%
3%

<$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ >$
1K 1-5K 5-10K 10-25K 25-50K 50-100K 100-250K 250K-1M 1M

SaaS Performance Report 2022 2

 SURVEY PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Participant Profile

By Solution Type
61%

28%

6%
3% 4%

B2B B2B B2B B2B Software B2B

Technology Cloud Services (On-Premises) SaaS

Participant Profile

By Financing Source
38%

14%
13%
11%
10%
9%

6%

Boot- Seed - Private Series D - Series C- Series B- Series A-

strapped Angel Equity Venture Venture Venture Venture
Capital Capital Capital Capital

SaaS Performance Report 2022 3

 SURVEY PARTICIPANT PROFILE

Participant Profile

By Title Level

29%

20%
19%

15%
13%

5%

Individual Manager Director Vice Senior Vice C-Level

Contributor President President

Participant Profile

By Department

35%

21%

16%

10%
8%

5%

Finance FP&A Financial Revenue G&A Sales

Operations Operations

SaaS Performance Report 2022 4

Introduction
The finance function is evolving from a primary role as backward-looking scorekeeper
to forward-looking strategic partner. That shift to strategic finance requires more
agile planning and forecasting processes. However, finance teams can’t help an
organization map out where it’s going without fully understanding where it’s been.

Real-time analytics and on-demand reporting have become prerequisites for finance
to earn a strategic seat at the table.

But how many organizations have really achieved the necessary level of efficiency in
metric calculations to meet those two prerequisites?

Throughout November and December 2021, we conducted research alongside The SaaS
CFO and RevOps Squared to answer that question.

Our survey aimed to reveal how subscription-based B2B tech companies capture,
calculate, and analyze their performance metrics. It included questions about the
speed and efficiency of metric calculation processes, the metrics that are most
important, the different technologies companies use, challenges of calculating metrics,
and more.

We believe finance’s position at the intersection of all business data can help un-
lock strategic growth opportunities for a company at large—but only if finance can
efficiently make sense of all that data and dig deep enough to identify the right
insights at the right time. The research here highlights opportunities for finance teams
to improve their processes to create competitive advantages in the ways they calculate,
track, and analyze their performance metrics.

‘‘
We have to think about how it positively affects decisions made by
team leads if they have access to on-demand financial information.
What it means is that they’ll have the data to make better, more
informed decisions. It will save them time and change their view
of finance’s role. ”

Temi Vasco Controller, Gem

SaaS Performance Report 2022 5

1. Key Findings

Spreadsheets remain the dominant tool for metric calculations

Even as new tools emerge, 75% of companies report using Excel to calculate their performance
metrics while 44% use Google Sheets. Specialized FP&A tools (20%) and BI platforms (31%) also
show adoption, but to a much lesser degree.

Metrics are not available quick enough for strategic planning processes
Only 6% of companies report having performance metrics available in less than one day
while 54% don’t have metrics available for six or more days after request. This leads companies
to plan around stale numbers, especially for the 38% that have a monthly metric reporting
cadence.

Manual processes remain the top metric calculation challenge

69% of companies say manual calculation of SaaS performance metrics is a top challenge.
This, combined with source data in multiple platforms (68%), prevents real-time analytics
and on-demand reporting.

Financial close processes can delay performance reporting by weeks

For more than 50% of companies, closing the books on a monthly and quarterly basis takes
over two full weeks. The longer it takes to close the books, the harder it is to release proactive
performance reports.

Finance and revenue teams aren’t as aligned as they’d like to be

While 91% of companies acknowledge the importance of strong alignment between finance
and revenue departments, 41% say finance is not well-aligned with marketing and 21% say
finance is not well-aligned with sales.

Cohort analysis is a blind spot for customer retention and expansion

Only 14% of companies calculate gross dollar retention rates by customer cohort and just
15% calculate net dollar retention by customer cohort. This presents an opportunity to create
competitive advantages through better data segmentation.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 6

2. The Metrics that
Matter in SaaS
Consistent reporting is the first step to planning the growth of your business. But if
you don’t know which metrics are most relevant for your business, you could end up
sinking countless hours into data collection and analysis without impacting growth.

Narrowing the focus of your performance reporting to the metrics that matter will
streamline reporting and keep your business aligned on growth goals.

The specific metrics you choose to report on will depend on your business model,
funding needs/investor expectations, and your growth stage. However, there are
certain SaaS metrics that are nearly universally valuable.

Our survey looked to reveal the metrics that matter across five main categories—
company-wide performance metrics, customer acquisition metrics, customer retention
metrics, customer expansion metrics, and sales metrics.

‘‘
Where finance teams go wrong is when they build reports to answer
anything and everything about the business. Effective reports focus
on the three to five KPIs that matter most to your organization. From
there, you can start digging into analyses that reveal deeper insights.”

Aaron Spool Managing Director, Eventus Advisory Group

SaaS Performance Report 2022 7

Company-Wide Metrics
THE METRICS THAT MATTER IN SAAS

Could Go Deeper
The company-wide metrics you track should give executives and investors a high-level view of your growth
trajectory and the overall health of your organization. At the most basic level, this comes down to revenue
growth, cash flow, and profitability.

That’s why it’s no surprise that ARR growth (89%), gross margin (89%), and revenue growth (88%) are the most
common company-wide performance metrics. However, it’s somewhat surprising that 11-12% of respondents
aren’t capturing these core financial metrics.

Top Company-Level Metrics

67% 74% 88% 89%

Cash Runway Net Cash Burn Revenue Growth Gross Margin

11%-12%
Respondents
don’t capture
26% 65% 89% these metrics
Rule of 40 Department Expense ARR Growth
as % of Revenue

Cash runway (67%) and net cash burn (74%) are also critical metrics to track for companies growing through
external investment.

These two metrics are especially important for earlier-stage startups that might be pre-revenue or are
prioritizing hypergrowth over profitability (less so as your company matures and free cash flow becomes the
priority).

The fact that 35% of respondents don’t track department expenses as a percentage of revenue could mean
that company-wide metrics are too broad. Presenting department-level composition data can uncover sus-
tainability issues as your company grows. And the sooner you provide visibility into those issues, the sooner
board members can advise on a fix and executives can investigate resource allocation issues.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 8

Customer Acquisition
THE METRICS THAT MATTER IN SAAS

Metrics Need More

Context
It makes sense that basic customer acquisition cost (CAC) stands alone as the primary metric for the
acquisition category (85%)—it’s among the most fundamental performance indicators for venture-backed
companies (which make up about 75% of survey respondents).

But CAC isn’t such a valuable metric on its own. Finance leaders, executives, and go-to-market partners
need additional context to make strategic decisions about acquisition.

One way to add more context is to break CAC calculations out by channel to get a better understanding of
which specific activities are most efficient. Teams also add context by tracking supplemental metrics like cus-
tomer lifetime value (72%) and CAC payback period (69%). But there’s an opportunity to go a step further by
focusing more on efficiency metrics.

Customer Acquisition Metrics Calculated

52% 72% 47% 31%

LTV:CAC Customer Lifetime Sales SaaS Magic
Ratio Value (LTV) Efficiency Number

42% 69% 85%

CAC Ratio CAC Payback Customer Acquisition
(New) Period Cost (CAC)

Our survey found that efficiency metrics like the magic number (42%), CAC ratio (42%), and sales efficiency
(47%) see low adoption. These types of metrics are critical for understanding the true effectiveness of sales
and marketing activities, which helps your teams make better strategic decisions during planning cycles.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 9

Customer Retention
THE METRICS THAT MATTER IN SAAS

Metrics Have a
Segmentation Problem
There’s a critical turning point in the early years of any company—that first year where you come up against
meaningful customer renewal dates. Mastering the go-to-market motion and driving customer acquisition
means very little to a SaaS company if it can’t retain the accounts.

This is why gross dollar retention (73%), gross dollar churn (70%), customer logo churn (74%), and customer
logo retention (65%) have high adoption.

Customer Retention Metrics Calculated

14% 46% 65%

Customer Cohort Customer Cohort Customer Logo
(by GDR%) (by ARR) Retention (%)

74% 73% 70%

Customer Logo Churn Gross Dollar Gross Dollar Churn
(% or #) Retention ($) (% or $)

The lack of adoption for customer cohort analysis (particularly by gross dollar retention) could be an issue.
Segmenting the data by cohorts helps you and your business partners understand more about which
customers have churned in the past and which ones are mostly likely to churn in the future. That information
helps the company proactively address product- and service-related issues to increase retention and overall
business performance.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 10

Customer Expansion
THE METRICS THAT MATTER IN SAAS

Should Grow Beyond Net

Revenue Retention
Customer expansion is just as important for SaaS companies as retention. Net revenue retention (or, net
dollar retention) has become the barometer for SaaS company valuations, which is why 89% of survey
respondents prioritize that particular expansion metric. Hitting the gold standard 120% net revenue
retention has become even more critical than massive ARR growth rates in the eyes of many investors.

Company Expansion Metrics Captured

15% 44% 32% 89%

Customer Cohort Customer Cohort Expansion CAC Net Dollar/Revenue
(By NDR%) (By ARR) Ratio Retention (%)

The survey results show that there’s room to go beyond net revenue retention for more context about
customer expansion.

Like with customer retention, adoption of customer cohort analysis for expansion is low and presents an
opportunity to go deeper with customer data. But expansion CAC ratio (35%) is an opportunity to look at
performance in this category differently. Seeing whether or not your upsell activities are efficient can give
you insights into ways both sales and customer success can unlock new levels of business growth.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 11

Sales Metrics
THE METRICS THAT MATTER IN SAAS

Have a Glaring Gap

Sales performance tracking may be the most mature reporting function in SaaS, which is why there’s such
consistency in the results from our survey. But there’s a critical gap among the most important sales metrics—
AE ramp time.

The Sales Metrics That Matter Most

89% 63% 60%

Annual Contract Total Contract Opportunity Conversion
Value (ACV) Value (TCV) Rates (by Stage)

62% 67% 69%

Qualified Opportunity Quota Pipeline by
Created ($ or #) Performance Sales Representative

64%
of companies aren’t
tracking their sales
rep ramp time

68% 68% 36%

Sales Cycle Time Win Rate AE Ramp Time

Without an ability to normalize AE start dates to time zero and evaluate ramp times, you may struggle to
accurately build headcount plans and plan your top-line revenue. Individual performance metrics like annu-
al contract value, pipeline by sales rep, and sales cycle time are crucial, but sales-led companies need the
big-picture perspective that AE ramp time offers.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 12

3. The Metric
Calculation Process
Whether a company is privately held or publicly traded, there are always external requirements and requests
for what you should report on. Those requests may or may not always align with the metrics you choose to
focus on internally. But just as important (and perhaps more important for the sake of your business) is how
you measure your performance metrics.

The “how” of calculating performance metrics comes down to four key questions that we asked in our survey:

ONE TWO

Who is primarily responsible How well is finance aligned

for calculating metrics? with business partners?

THREE FOUR

What tools do teams use to track, What challenges slow down

calculate, and analyze the metrics? performance reporting?

‘‘
Simply put, without alignment, a company will miss its numbers…
The best finance teams are viewed as thought partners for other
departments that help them build conviction to make better
decisions. I used to say my job as CFO is not to say ‘no,’ but to have
us both feel good about our decision, whether it’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

Howard Katzenberg Founder and CEO, Glean

SaaS Performance Report 2022 13

Who Calculates the Metrics?
Customer Acquisition Metric Calculation
Who is responsible?

34% 43% 34% 58%

Revenue Operations Sales Marketing Finance

Customer Retention Metric Calculation

Who is responsible?

31% 28% 46% 59%

Revenue Operations Sales Customer Success Finance

Customer Expansion Metric Calculation

Who is responsible?

35% 38% 34% 61%

Revenue Operations Sales Customer Success Finance

Sales Metric Calculation

Who is responsible?

33% 49% 40% 53%

Revenue Operations Sales Sales Operations Finance
 THE METRICS CALCUL ATION PROCESS

Our survey found that finance teams are the primary owners of metric calculations across all key categories—
company-wide metrics (61%), acquisition metrics (58%), retention metrics (59%), expansion metrics (61%),
and sales metrics (53%).

The takeaway here isn’t that one team should necessarily own metrics over another.

Instead, it’s that the finance team, which sits at the intersection of all necessary data to calculate the metrics,
has to stay aligned with each functional department.

There needs to be joint tooling that works cross-functionally to support that alignment. It’s not good enough
for finance to have walled-off systems that prevent departmental leaders from understanding the full story
behind the numbers. For example, how can marketing know its true customer acquisition cost without rolling
salary data into the equation?

Leaning on new tools to create a single source of truth makes the metric calculation process more collabora-
tive and empowers departmental leaders to engage with real-time data and analytics on their own.

How Well Is Finance Aligned

with Business Partners?
The vast majority of our survey respondents said that finance alignment with marketing, sales, and customer
success is important to revenue growth. That shows a positive trend toward finance as the connective tissue
within an organization. However, there’s room to improve alignment across teams.

Finance Alignment to Revenue Team

51%

40%

7%
2%
0%

Very Somewhat Neutral Somewhat Not

Important Important Unimportant Important

SaaS Performance Report 2022 15

 THE METRICS CALCUL ATION PROCESS

Even in sales where metric accountability is fundamental to the overall success of a business, just 28% of
respondents say finance is very well aligned with the team. The results are even lower for marketing (15%)
and customer success (21%).

The gap between alignment expectations and reality shows that there’s room for improvement when it
comes to collaboration between finance and the rest of the business.

What Tools Do Teams

Use to Calculate Metrics?
The finance space is (finally) experiencing a renaissance of technology amidst demands for greater agility,
transparency, and strategic value. And yet, spreadsheets remain the predominant tool for metric calculations
with Excel outpacing Google Sheets (75% and 44%, respectively).

Metric Calculation Platforms

BI Platform 31%

Specialized
20%
FP&A Tool

Core Financial
26%
Platform

Google
44%
Sheets

Excel 75%

Among the non-spreadsheet options, business intelligence platforms see the most adoption for calculating
metrics. But the amount of money, effort, and technical expertise required to implement and configure BI
(even to calculate simple metrics) may limit adoption.

Specialized FP&A tools (aside from Anaplan or Adaptive) offer more accessibility than BI platforms. But
because this is more of an emerging market, many of these tools are still in early adoption.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 16

What Challenges Slow
THE METRICS CALCUL ATION PROCESS

Down Performance
Reporting?
Improving the speed and efficiency of metric reporting isn’t as simple as making one
new hire, implementing one new tool, or revamping one broken workflow. There could
be any number of challenges preventing teams from streamlining the process. But
our survey found that there are three main issues that stand out.

Metric Calculation Challenges

No common
definition of 16%
formula(s)

No common
definition of 34%
metrics

Misalignment of
35%
stakeholders

Quality of
63%
source data

Source data in
68%
multiple places

No single resource
36%
responsible

Manual
69%
process

For 69% of respondents, manual processes are the main road- Data quality issues (63%) and multiple source systems (68%)
block to greater efficiency. Given the predominance of spread- make it more difficult to calculate metrics in spreadsheets. As
sheets, this outcome may be predictable. But the other two companies scale, data complexity and volume grow, which in
primary challenges offer more context. turn make each of these obstacles more problematic.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 17

4. The Cadence of
Metric Calculations
In an absolute perfect world of strategic finance, everyone Unless you’re a public company facing regulatory compliance
across an organization has access to the numbers they need requirements, it’s easy to deprioritize putting financial rigor into
exactly when they need them (without having to worry about your performance reporting processes. That’s one reason why
accuracy or data integrity issues). That ideal state is possible, there’s room for improvement in the frequency and efficiency
but it’s not easy to get to and it’s far from the norm. of metric calculations.

Rather, every organization’s unique mix of people, process- But the sooner you put a framework for financial rigor in place,
es, and technology results in a particular cadence for metric the better off your company will be.
calculations.

How Often Do Companies

Measure Performance Metrics?
Finance has a traditional reputation as backward-looking scorekeeper partly because of its long reporting cycles. Our survey found
that even though times are changing, there’s always room for improvement. Five or ten years ago, quarterly metric calculations may
have been much more common survey responses. But there are positive trends among weekly and daily metric availability that are
encouraging to see.

Metrics Calculation Frequency

38%

30%

20%

11%

1%

Daily Weekly Monthly Quarterly Annually

SaaS Performance Report 2022 18

How Long
THE CADENCE OF METRIC CALCUL ATIONS

Does It Take to
Calculate Metrics?
As finance teams face more pressure to keep pace with rapid
business change, stakeholders expect faster access to key
performance metrics.

Metric Calculation Availability

(Days to complete)

40%

20% 20%

9%

6%
5%

< 1 Day 1-5 Days 6-10 Days 11-15 Days 15-20 Days 21-30 Days

Our survey found that 46% of businesses are able to report on The companies that take two weeks or more to calculate per-
performance metrics less than a week after a period closes. formance metrics face a significant disadvantage. If teams don’t
The ideal scenario would be for everyone to have visibility in get visibility into what happened last month until 10, 15, or 20+
less than a day like 6% of respondents. But getting to the point days into the next month, course correcting becomes an uphill
where you have visibility into performance metrics in less than battle. And it only gets harder the longer it takes to calculate
a week is a good goal. your metrics. This is why it’s so important to capitalize on any
opportunity to automate processes and make metrics available
as quickly as possible.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 19

5. Six Opportunities
to Improve Reporting
Efficiency
Finance teams can’t be complacent with the status quo of per- But where do you go with the insights from these industry
formance reporting. The traditional processes and tools that benchmarks? The research results show six opportunities to
result in statistics highlighted throughout this report prevent improve performance reporting and set finance up to be more
finance from becoming true strategic partners in their businesses. proactive with strategic guidance.

ONE
Segment Data for
Deeper Insight
Cohort analysis is surprisingly But segmenting your data is critical for understanding the
uncommon. “why” behind your numbers and running root cause analyses.
For example, if you segment blended CAC data, you can see the
behavior of cohorts on one pricing plan versus another and gain
insight into why certain groups underperform or churn. Having
the flexibility to see how specific customer cohorts perform can
reveal insights that inform the product roadmap, sales strategy,
marketing activities, customer success investments, and more.

TWO
Automate the
Low-Hanging Fruit
Manual processes remain the primary This isn’t a new problem, which is why automation has been a
roadblock for finance teams. priority for finance and accounting teams for years. Heading into
2022, now is the time to commit to new tools and process au-
tomation to improve low-hanging fruit like data collection and
certain aspects of the month-end close.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 20

THREE
Create More
Collaborative Reporting
and Planning Processes
There’s a gap between how important This is one of the best reasons to become less reliant on
respondents say alignment between spreadsheets. Throwing spreadsheets at non-finance business
finance and business partners is and partners hurts the relationship between your department and
how well aligned teams actually are. theirs. Improve collaboration and alignment by getting out from
behind the spreadsheets more often.

FOUR
Track More Advanced
Efficiency Metrics
Efficiency ratios are some of the least This may be because they’re more complicated to calculate
common according to the report. due to source data existing in disconnected systems. There’s an
opportunity to focus more on efficiency metrics like CAC ratio
and sales efficiency to better understand performance across
departments.

FIVE
Make Metrics More
Transparent to the Org
Transparency in financial metrics can But just 26% of respondents share performance metrics with
help increase employee engagement. the entire company, instead just focusing on executives and the
board. Being more transparent with the numbers can lead to
more collaborative planning processes that improve the overall
health of an organization.

SIX
Improve Data Integrity
for a Strong Foundation
Quality of source data is a problem for Finance is in the perfect position to spearhead the creation of
63% of survey respondents. an intentional data architecture that fixes this issue. Data integ-
rity issues can compound and silently crush any business, which
is why this opportunity should be a priority.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 21

6. Get Ahead of
the Strategic
Finance Wave
We’re seeing massive transformation across the finance space. And even though our survey results highlight
plenty of challenges and areas that need improvement, it seems clear that finance as a whole is trending in
the right direction.

Efficient reporting is one aspect of a modern strategic finance function. It’s the foundation for real-time ana-
lytics and agile planning, which are essential to finance’s success as a true strategic partner.

Mosaic is the first Strategic Finance Platform that creates a connective tissue between
Get in touch
disparate source systems, automates even the most complex performance metrics, and
provides flexible tools for financial forecasting.

Want to learn how Mosaic can help you embrace strategic finance?
Visit www.mosaic.tech for more information, or send a note to [email protected].

SaaS Performance Report 2022 22

About Mosaic
Mosaic was founded in 2019 by three finance leaders who knew the office of the CFO needed an
overhaul. Tasked with supporting business decisions for several companies in hyper-growth, they
were frustrated by the slow speed, high complexity and inefficiencies existing tools in the market
offered. With this challenge in mind, they set out to build a platform that would address the tech-
nical challenges modern day finance and business teams face.

Today Mosaic is deployed by some of the fastest growing companies, helping them align, collabo-
rate and plan for the future.

About RevOps Squared

RevOps Squared enables companies, especially SaaS and subscription-based companies, to
exponentially increase customer acquisition, customer expansion, and customer retention ef-
ficacy. This is accomplished through an enhanced alignment of marketing, sales and customer
success processes, success metrics and shared performance goals resulting in a more holistic,
systemic approach. The Company measures performance metrics both against internal historical
performance, and also evaluated in context against peer group benchmarks and Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs).

About Ben Murray, The SaaS CFO

Ben Murray is a finance executive and MBA/CPA with over 20 years of progressive experience in
finance and operational management within companies of all sizes, from small technology firms to
global multi-billion dollar organizations. He’s an expert at linking key metrics between finance and
operations to drive corporate transparency and real-time, fact-based decision making. And he now
uses his strong background in developing financial infrastructures necessary to support organiza-
tions and management teams to consult with companies as The SaaS CFO.

SaaS Performance Report 2022 23