1. Benchmarking Your Company- The Why & How
August 15, am-12noon PST|2-3pm EST
A SaaS Conversation with
Eric Mersch,CFO, FLG Partners

2. Housekeeping
All phones on mute, if you hear an echo, try dialing in on a landline and make sure that the sound on your computer is turned off You can send questions in chat to the moderator; we’ll take questions throughout and have Q&A at the end of the discussion Follow up discussion and questions thru the SaaS Q&A at

3. Dedicated, proprietary benchmarking platform for Software & SaaS
Benchmark Data, Content & Community
Dedicated, proprietary benchmarking platform for Software & SaaS
3rd party, independent benchmarking
10 year longitudinal database
Founded 2007
Hundreds of private and public Software & SaaS
EARLY STAGE
GROWTH STAGE
ENTERPRISE

4. Welcome to SaaS Conversations
Eric Mersch, CFO, FLG Partners
Eric joined FLG in He has nearly 20 years of executive finance experience, including twice serving in public company Chief Financial Officer roles. Currently, he serves as Chief Financial Officer for Percolate, an Enterprise SaaS company delivering a Content Marketing Platform.
Lauren Kelley, Founder & CEO OPEXEngine
Lauren Kelley is the founder of OPEXEngine. She founded OPEXEngine to solve the problem that high tech companies lack good quality benchmarks from an independent provider — especially operational benchmarks — to reduce risk and improve efficiency and growth.

5. Quick Assessment Strategies for New CFOs
Initial information gather by a new CFO reveals:
company’s ability to track performance and operations
adherence to industry standard definitions
quality of reporting (sophistication, data-driven)
how high level metrics compare to benchmarks

6. Metric Definitions Need to be Industry Standard
to have meaning…
Cost of Revenue/Goods
Bookings, Billings, CARR
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
range of definitions
non-standard Customer “Success”
recurring, variable, easy to misdefine
“juicing” numbers
who’s defining the numerator and denominator?
Are you including “Freemium”?

7. Digging Into Growth Performance
Sales Expense & Headcount
compared to benchmarks
Marketing Expense & Headcount
Customer Acquisition Cost

8. Benchmarks Set Context in Budgets
CFOs use Benchmark analysis to:
Inform the annual and bi-annual budgeting process
Communicate the context of the numbers with the Management Team and Board
Set expectations on what the targets for performance and expenses should be
Help build collaboration among the Management team by seeing resource allocation benchmarks

9. Audience Questions
The board thinks we should spend more in Sales because our revenue growth isn’t high enough, but we are a transactional business, more like B-2-C and maybe should be spending more in Marketing. How can I use benchmarks to improve this discussion?
How much time does it take to fill out the benchmarking?
We sell healthcare management apps. I’m looking for benchmarks for peers in my space?
How many companies participate in the benchmarking?

10. Audience Questions Cont.
We are transitioning from a perpetual model to SaaS, do you have benchmarks for companies like ours?
Does OPEXEngine just have data for highly funded, fast growth companies?
What kind of filters do you have; how do I get benchmarks for companies with similar business models to ours?
Does adding benchmark numbers give me credibility with my board?

11. An Independent SaaS Benchmarking Community
BenchmarkEngine™ analytics platform
Monthly SaaS Finance Webinars, Bi-Annual SaaS Finance Meet-Ups
Network
Discuss with SaaS Finance peers
Get answers to questions
Share best practices
2019 informational surveys
2019 SaaS Sales Planning Survey – report in Q2
Employee productivity, hiring and retention costs and practices – report in Q4
Contact us at

12. We deliver actionable benchmark analytics for Cloud, SaaS and software companies to increase operational efficiency and growth
Waltham, MA