David Stack is a chief financial officer with over 20 years of success in leading global financial operations for growing companies, particularly those in the software as a service (SaaS) industry. In this presentation, David shares 6 essential categories of data that every financial advisor should use to identify upcoming trends in their business/organization.

1. Financial Reporting:
Building a Strong
Structure
Presentation by David Stack

2. CFO’s Role
❖ A critical aspect of a CFO’s role
at a startup is facilitating the
creation and implementation of
a strong, comprehensive
reporting structure.

3. Reporting Guidelines
❖ This reporting algorithm
should evaluate the current
health of the business by
identifying key sensitivities in
the business model, tracking
progress in scaling the
company, providing a useful
dashboard for each separate
department, and serving as a
tool both the CEO and
management team can use to
grow the business.

4. Additionally, a great reporting package
will allow you to analyze your current
data to identify upcoming trends.

5. #1. Current state of the business
❖ This includes fundamental
metrics, like what it costs you
to acquire a customer and what
the lifetime value of your
customer is.

6. #1. Current State of the Business
Comprehensive Reporting
Package Details…
In the comprehensive reporting package
you should show key financial statements,
headcount vs budgeted hiring, bookings
data, and other important metrics.
This will help everyone understand where
you are today and how actual results
compare to your short and long term
goals.

7. #2. Key Sensitivities
❖ Do you know how much of an
impact reducing churn has on
your recurring revenue?
❖ How about driving more
productivity from your existing
sales reps both today and as
you scale up your sales
organization?
❖ It is critical that everyone
grasps the sensitivity of all the
key business drivers in your
organization.

8. #2. Key Sensitivities
Creating an effective financial
model…
As a CFO, creating a financial model that
captures all of these elements and allows
you to clearly communicate the impact
on key metrics is essential.

9. #3. Tracking Progress
❖ It is critical to establish a
rhythm for monthly and
quarterly reporting.
❖ Depending on the nature of
your business, it might make
more sense to report on a
monthly basis vs quarterly, or
vice versa.

10. #3. Tracking Progress
Monthly Reporting…
In any case, there should always be
monthly reporting so that you can react
to any trends that emerge and make wise
decisions to impact your current quarter.

11. #4. Departmental Dashboards
❖ For departments, it is
important to have high level
metrics in the standard
company reporting package.

12. #4. Departmental Dashboards
Company-level reporting…
Here, reports that cover the effectiveness
of components like the Marketing and
Sales funnel, customer retention metrics,
engineering metrics, and hiring by
department are essential, mostly because
they allow the senior team to understand
the metrics across each area within the
company.

13. #4. Departmental Dashboards
Internal Reporting…
You should also have more detailed
internal reporting for your department that
compares the performance of your team
each month and each quarter to the specific
goals that you’ve set.
This dashboard will not only make it easier
to evaluate the performance of your
investments and team, but also fosters a
collaborative environment as you work on
allocating resources in the future.

14. 5. Managing the Business
❖ Is your reporting analysis a key
part of evaluating your
strategy and its effectiveness?
❖ Does it play a key role in
discussions with your BOD?
❖ Have you set up a recurring
meeting in which your
management team can discuss
actual results and metrics
along with reviewing long
term strategy?

15. #5. Managing the Business
Key Structure Elements…
These are all key elements of the
structure you should implement as you
are scaling your business. A thoughtful
and thorough approach to reporting
should allow you to use your reports
and data to manage your business and
leverage that information when it comes
time to report to the entire company and
your Board of Directors.

16. #6. Evolving Indicator
❖ One constant in your reporting
structure should be adaptation to
changes in the business.
❖ Are you identifying emerging
trends and escalating them to the
right departments in your
monthly reporting?
❖ By analyzing your core standard
reporting and metrics, you can
dig deeper into the data to
evaluate emerging trends and pay
them the attention they deserve.

17. #6. Evolving Indicator
Assessing an internal
environment…
Understanding the impact of your
organization’s channels, verticals,
geography, usage, and other factors, will
help develop a strategy for improvement
and increase retention of existing customers.
This will also help you refine your ideal
customer profile and lead to a more efficient
sales and marketing process for growing
your customer base.

18. If you liked this piece, please visit:
david-stack.com
❖ David Stack is a chief financial
officer with over 20 years of success
in leading global financial
operations for growing companies,
particularly those in the software as
a service (SaaS) industry. Having
supported impressive growth and
revenue generation at several
startups and established
companies, David Stack recently
joined the company, Qstream, as
new CFO, to facilitate their
continued growth in the emerging
sales performance analytics market.