At Easy Agile we make software products for the Atlassian Marketplace such as Easy Agile User Story Maps for Jira. In 2020, we shifted our executive metrics-focus from revenue to SaaS (Software-as-a-Service), revolving around subscriptions.
Dashboards for SaaS metrics
Our goal was to create a dashboard that encompassed previously created dashboards on Active Customers, Churn but also include new SaaS-metrics (such as MRR, LTV, CAC and our Payback Period). This would be easily accessible and filterable by the various products we have on the Atlassian Marketplace. We use Metabase to display our business metrics as it’s a simple and fast way to display pertinent information.
Understand SaaS metrics beforehand
The majority of the work is in SQL, with some transformations and advanced calculations in R which is written back to our database and read into Metabase. Prior to creating this dashboard, we spent a large amount of time understanding the factors that derive these metrics and how they affect each other, building a simple model in Google Sheets.
We have adopted the Principles of Graphical Excellence from Edward Tufte’s book, “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”. Tufte outlines that’s Graphical excellence is the well-designed presentation of interesting data - a matter of substance, of statistics and of design.
Final Thoughts: Our SaaS Metrics Dashboard
Our new SaaS-metrics dashboard has enabled us to better understand the health of our business, our products, our GTM (Go-To-Market) strategy and has helped us become more proactive in planning.