SaaS Analytics
- What is SaaS analytics?
- Why do you need SaaS analytics?
- SAAS metrics you should track
- SAAS analytics for your customers
What is SaaS analytics?
SaaS analytics is how software-as-a-service companies track their data to make smarter, data-driven decisions. The SaaS industry is rife with technological advances and boasts tons of growth potential, so it has become a jam-packed marketplace. The companies that succeed in disrupting their corner of the SaaS world in some way must almost certainly use data to analyze the landscape and carve out a niche.
Because they are competing in this crowded ecosystem, SaaS companies live and die by their ability to understand, analyze, and hit their KPIs. SaaS data analytics systems need to handle enormous amounts of data and be able to scale as querying and reporting needs expand — often rapidly, as SaaS companies can see explosive overnight growth in the number of users and workers!
A versatile SaaS data analytics system needs to perform complex maneuvers, yet still, be easy enough for non-technical users to understand. And finally, the software or app should be agile and flexible enough to allow end-users to customize their reports and reach their own insights.
Why do you need SaaS analytics?
All companies, especially Saas ones, have to track sales, operations, and marketing data to be able to see where and how improvements can be made. You can expect several benefits from implementing SaaS BI tools.
Keep costs down
When you can accurately measure your data with SaaS business intelligence, you can keep your operations as lean as possible. Finding out exactly what works and what doesn’t will keep you from spending time and resources on the wrong path.
And what worked in January won’t necessarily keep working in June, so these results have to be consistently monitored and fine-tuned to keep your “experiments” short and sweet — and all your campaigns successful.
Glimpse the future
When you implement a top-of-the-line SaaS BI tool like Sisense, you’ll get access to predictive analytics features that will allow you to confidently forecast important market trends and tweak how your company responds. Features like these give you the ability to project revenue from each customer segment (even things like their churn timeline) and take preventive measures. When unexpected circumstances occur (like most of 2020), data analytics tools can help your company weather the storm and even come out healthier.
Make AI work for you
Integrating AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning (ML) capabilities into your analytics is no longer optional for organizations that want to stay competitive. These algorithms, once trained on your company’s data, can predict customer behavior and create a better user experience. AI/ML technology can enable web chatbots and other automation options, as well as adding the option of personalization to your mobile apps. Making your SaaS solution smarter with AI/ML could go a long way in helping differentiate your offerings from the crowd.
Which SAAS metrics should you track?
SaaS analytics can be performed by BI tools, which are specifically designed to track the metrics that matter to SaaS companies. Here are a few of the most popular ones:
Customer churn
Most businesses try to convert first-time buyers into long-term profitable customers because keeping their existing customers is usually more efficient than trying to win new ones. The customer churn metric can be a powerful tool to track an organization’s retention efforts. It can be used to analyze the percentage of users who discontinue their subscriptions to a service within a given time period. This information can help you retain as many customers as possible.
User engagement
This metric provides a peek into your users’ brains: how much, when, and where they are implementing your company’s SaaS analytics tools. It’s the BI platform reporting on its own usage patterns and trends. Whether in sales, marketing, or operations, this dashboard shows you which data is most interesting for your users.
Executive dashboard
Getting C-level and other top executives on board with SaaS analytics efforts will be easy once they see that they can access all their data in one place. This tool, customized for executives, will provide company leaders and team managers with up-to-the-minute visualizations of all their KPIs crucial to SaaS success, such as profit and loss, new versus recurring business, open to sales ratio, and more.
SAAS analytics for your customers
The next logical step, after infusing your entire workspace with insights from your data, is to empower your customers as well. Embedding analytics into your mobile app or product will delight your customers with innovative, valuable, and seamless experiences. With Sisense, you get code-first, low-code, and even no-code tools so you can easily visualize large volumes of complex data.
Sisense customer Orion, a portfolio accounting SaaS provider for advisers, uses analytics to gather and track enormous amounts of data on its clients’ investments. Orion’s leadership knew it was time to upgrade from their manually built reporting platform, and they wanted something flexible enough to allow each client to dig in for details and context on any stat.
Sisense was the optimal tool to boost Orion from tracking SaaS business metrics to infusing SaaS business intelligence into daily workflows. Now with an adoption rate of 98% among Orion’s clients, Sisense helps uncover valuable insights on a daily basis, and the results are accessible to all users, not just those with IT expertise.
