September 4, 2025
Evaluate your SaaS go-to-market strategy with this 20-question GTM audit checklist. Assess sales, marketing, customer success, and data alignment for growth and scalability.
We’re thrilled to announce the launch of SaaS Conversations, our new podcast series. Lauren Kelley is joined by finance leaders, technology experts, investors, operations professionals, and more for conversations about metrics, benchmarking, and the state of SaaS.
The conversation explored key considerations and best practices for a SaaS company to do now – the organizational positioning, reporting, and systems required for a successful reception from investors. An authentic, data-validated story is key when you’re communicating to the market. And benchmarking gives an organization the tools to accurately prepare to represent itself when engaging with external stakeholders.
While many SaaS companies only track one or two retention rates, best in class companies (best in class companies maintain top quartile growth rates) track three retention KPIs: Net Revenue, Gross Dollar, and Customer Retention rates.
Lauren Kelley — OPEXEngine Founder and CEO — presented at the 2023 Business of Software conference, a valuable conference for founders and C-Suite executives of software and SaaS companies with an amazingly thoughtful curation of content and speakers. Lauren presented on the topic of benchmarking, focusing on some key themes which are summarized here.
The key takeaway for SaaS companies and technology portfolios: operational efficiency has never been more important. OPEXEngine's benchmarking solutions help many of the world’s leading SaaS brands and investors unlock validated insights that improve performance, profitability, and operational efficiency.
Do you have one source of truth for your customer number? If a SaaS vendor can't count the number of customers it has in a consistent way, then their Unit Economics won’t be correct. Metrics like Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Customer Retention rate and related KPIs like CLV/CAC rate or months to recover CAC, etc. will be incorrect.
How can we budget for AI usage and its effect on productivity - and cost management - in the short to medium term?
Don’t get me wrong, Net Dollar Retention (NDR) is a key retention metric for SaaS companies to track and benchmark against peer companies — but focusing on NDR alone is dangerous to the health of your growth and profitability and here’s why.
With the right methodology, cost productivity discipline not only helps fuel steady growth and big initiatives but also are rewarded by shareholders, leading to substantially higher TSR, in both good times and downturns, according to Bain long-term research.
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