Too many SaaS companies don’t have a strategic systems roadmap to support their growth. As a result, they end up making endless tactical fixes and integrations to solve immediate problems but continue to struggle producing key reports and data analysis.In a recent OPEXEngine webinar, SaaS CFO Eric Mersch (Percolate and FLG Partners) and OpFocus CEO David Carnes discuss the people, processes and systems required to scale your information systems as you grow from $20M ARR to $200M ARR.
Strategic Systems Roadmap
A strategic systems roadmap is something every SaaS company should have and update every year as part of the strategic planning process. Start simple when your requirements are simple and build out as the company grows. Just as every SaaS CFO should have a strategic growth plan, they also need a strategic systems roadmap to deliver the business reporting and analysis required along the way. There’s never a good time to make systems changes, especially in a fast growth scenario, but having to do it unplanned, or in the middle of a funding due diligence process, dramatically increases the risk of failure or less than optimal results.
People, Processes and Systems Along the Way
Before getting to $20M ARR, both Eric and David stress the importance of data integrity. If you don’t have relatively clean data in your CRM, there’s no sense in hiring an expensive ops analyst who will waste a lot of time and talent doing manual clean-up. A good sys admin and sales ops person will help make sure the data is clean and establish good processes for keeping the data clean.How many FP&A analysts spend part of their Sundays manually “fixing” or updating reports? To avoid this manual scrambling to get reports right because the systems and processes aren't in place.
