I’m excited to be speaking at CFO’s Corporate Performance Management conference on January 30th about benchmarking for data-driven decision-making. Finance is in the driver’s seat in today’s world where companies are competing on getting the best outcomes from their resources. For most companies, competition today is more about new business models and less often about [...]
13
Dec
‘Tis the Budget Season
Most companies are now preparing their 2012 budgets and going through the approval process. To say the least, few people enjoy the budget process. It is often long and drawn out to the point where many managers involved in the process are just relieved that it is over, regardless of whether they agree with the [...]
15
Nov
Defining Cost of Customer Acquisition
We’ve been tracking COCA for SaaS companies for about 5 years now. We use the metric to calculate benchmarks for customer acquisition expense by size of company, and by type of product offering, ie., whether a company is selling a low cost solution or a relatively high cost solution. We incorporate COCA into other benchmarks [...]
15
Jun
The Value of Benchmarking – One Company’s Perspective
I thought it would be worthwhile to publish an interview I did earlier this year with Mike Morgan, CFO of Bomgar Corporation talking about the value of benchmarking for them. Bomgar is a venture-backed, mid-sized software vendor which has ranked in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for the past 4 years. With over 20 years [...]
20
Apr
A VC’s Perspective on Software Operating Metrics
General Catalyst’s tagline is “entrepreneurs investing in entrepreneurs,” and partners of the active venture firm are well known for lending deep operating experience to their portfolio executives’ growing businesses. I’ve known General Catalyst Managing Director Larry Bohn for years, since we were both operating executives at various software companies. Here is Larry’s take on the [...]
23
Feb
Benefits of Metrics-Driven Decision Making: A SIIA Webinar
In this webinar from the Software & Information Industry Association, I team up with Kelly Bodnar Battles – CFO of Host Analytics, Inc. – to talk about the benefits of fact based, metrics-driven decision making.
05
Dec
Financial Operating Plans for 2009 from the MIT CFO Summit
As most of our clients are currently finalizing their 2009 operating plans, I thought I’d share some of the insights from the recent annual MIT CFO Summit on operating in the current economic climate. CFOs from major public companies like Microsoft, Broadcom, and Cardinal Health mixed with financial professionals from smaller New England based companies, [...]