Using metric formulas to extract insights
Formulas are a great way to extract further insights from the metric data you're already collecting from companies.
To create a formula, navigate to Metrics, followed by Portfolio metrics. From here, navigate to the top right of your account and select +New formula.
Within the Formula section, you can create a title and description for your custom formula metric along with the category, default aggregation, frequency, and default unit & format.
Below, we walk through an example of creating a Revenue per Employee Ratio formula.
To create this formula, pull in the Revenue metric and select the insight Trailing 4 periods. This sums the past 4 quarters of revenue data so that the formula is using total revenue from the past year.
Note: If you're using monthly Revenue, you'll want to use the insight Trailing 12 periods to use total revenue from the past year.
Next, divide Revenue (trailing 4 periods) by the Headcount at the end of the period (denoted by "Last Value").
Then, press save at the bottom of the screen.
You can now pull this metric into any Report, Dashboard, Tear Sheet, or build a Benchmarking report. This helps you compare this metric for all companies side by side.
Formula Examples:
-
Revenue per Employee = Annual Revenue / Headcount
-
This answers the question: 'How efficient is this company performing'?
-
-
Runway = Cash on Hand / Monthly Burn
-
This answers the question: 'How many months until this company runs out of cash'?
-
-
Gross Profit = Revenue - COGS
-
This answers the question: 'Is the company making enough money to cover its costs'?
-
-
Customer Aquisition Cost = (Cost of Sales + Marketing) / New Customers Acquired
-
This answers the question: 'Is the company's investment in S&M making a return'?
-