{"id":10313,"date":"2017-07-07T15:22:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/?p=10313"},"modified":"2025-08-14T08:12:43","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T12:12:43","slug":"the-importance-of-benchmarks-for-saas-companies-in-deciding-how-to-allocate-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/the-importance-of-benchmarks-for-saas-companies-in-deciding-how-to-allocate-capital\/","title":{"rendered":"The importance of benchmarks for SaaS companies in deciding how to all locate Capital"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMoney Matters<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThe importance of benchmarks for SaaS companies in deciding how to all locate Capital\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\"David\t\t\t\tDavid Appel<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/a>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

How can you track your progress in a meaningful way that helps you and your Board make the best decisions to guide your business forward?  How can you measure your success in comparison to your peers \u2013 both your competitors, as well as the best in SaaS<\/a>?  To answer these questions, you need two things: 1) benchmarks of other SaaS companies to measure your company against and 2) your own data\/metrics to see how you compare to top-performing companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Benchmarks on How Top Tier SaaS Companies Allocate Their Capital<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

SaaS Capital conducted a survey of over 700 SaaS executives that focused on how companies allocate their capital at different stages of growth.  The Managing Director of SaaS Capital, Todd Gardner, and I just led a very informative discussion with a number of SaaS companies on how to apply these benchmarks to their businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takeaway #1: Net Retention Rate is one of the biggest determinants in valuation<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In the SaaS Capital survey, the top performing companies had a Net Retention Rate of 120%+.  Net Retention Rate measures the total change in recurring revenue from a pool of customers over time and is calculated as follows:  the current monthly recurring revenue (MRR) from a group of customers divided by the company\u2019s MRR from that specific group of customers from one year ago. A high Net Retention Rate is often indicative of a low churn rate, and a swing of 10% has an exponential effect on long-term gains and sustainability in the business.  (If you\u2019d like to know more about Net Retention Rates, here\u2019s a good article<\/a> from SaaS Capital.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SaaS Capital survey examined the differences in how top and bottom-performing companies spend their money. The results clearly show that the more you can shift your cost structure from the COGS involved in delivering your solution (whether via professional services, a complicated deployment model, human experts, etc.) to customers receiving the value from your solution, the faster your growth rate.  The companies who are doing well have found a way to deliver their products more efficiently and have re-allocated those dollars to building a better product and improving customer success \u2013 the things that matter to the customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Sage Intacct\u2019s investors, Bessemer Ventures, has shared a strong measure of SaaS success at the annual State of the Cloud presentations at SaaStr.\u00a0 The Rule of 40 is defined as Growth Rate + Profit = >40%, and it is often attributed to firms >$50M.\u00a0 In this survey, however, SaaS Capital found that many companies are still creating good enterprise value even if they are below the Rule of 40 target.\u00a0 A lot of this has to do with the competition in many spaces for who is going to become their category leader and making the constant decisions on investing for growth versus profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to Get the Metrics to Measure against Benchmarks<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Charting a company\u2019s course through growth is a very important topic.  I spend quite a bit of time with our customers, SaaS investors, and executives of companies we are in a position to potentially assist.  Everyone is working hard on solving big problems better than anyone else in their space, and they all need the data to guide decisions on how to best do that.  Knowing the benchmarks to measure yourself against is only useful if you have your own metrics to make the comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our relationship with Salesforce.com gives us a unique view on the data and workflows behind the entire contract relationship, essentially building a customer-focused finance lifecycle.\u00a0 By integrating the opportunity master record out of Salesforce with the Contract master in Sage Intacct, you can:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Reduce churn by understanding the entire customer lifecycle from lead to cash.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Have real-time reporting for the entire team on the P\/L to make decisions on COGS vs. R&D.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Have a forecast for the future and plan out growth and profit to drive to towards the Rule of 40.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    And having everyone on the same page creates a shared consciousness in decision-making to navigate your company\u2019s growth, and it gives you the data to compare yourself against peer benchmarks to stay ahead of the pack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    To learn more about SaaS Capital\u2019s research, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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    Get our latest business advice delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\"Working\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How can you track your progress in a meaningful way that helps you and your Board make the best decisions to guide your business forward?  How can you measure your success in comparison to your peers \u2013 both your competitors, as well as the best in SaaS?  To answer these questions, you need two things: 1) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1433,"featured_media":9280,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sage_video":false,"post_featured_image_hide":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158,43,44],"tags":[2,4,420,199,168],"business_type":[312,41],"lilypad":[],"context":[418,429],"industry":[55,450,204],"persona":[100,99],"imagine_tag":[209,436,440,444,233],"coauthors":[599],"class_list":["post-10313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accountants","category-money-matters","category-strategy-legal-operations","tag-accountants","tag-business-intelligence","tag-cloud-financial-management","tag-coaching","tag-sage-accounting","business_type-accountants","business_type-growing-business","industry-professional-services","industry-software-saas","industry-technology"],"sage_meta":{"region":"en-us","author_name":"David Appel","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2022\/04\/GettyImages-643644406.jpg","imagine_tags":{"209":"Accounting","436":"Intacct Accounting","440":"Intacct Financial Services","444":"Intacct Medium Business","233":"Medium Businesses"}},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Sage Advice US","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10313\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/9280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"business_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/business_type?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"lilypad","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/lilypad?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"context","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/context?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"imagine_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/imagine_tag?post=10313"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-us\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}