Corporate Finance Performance Indicators

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On this page

• Executive Summary
• Key Performance Indicators
• Other PI Pages
• Legends
  • Health
  • Instrumentation
• How to work with pages like this
  • Pages
    • Helper Functions
  • Data

Executive Summary

KPI	Health	Status
Capital Efficiency Ratio	Unknown	tbd
Gross margin	Unknown	tbd
Average Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)	Unknown	tbd
Runway	Unknown	tbd
ARR by Annual Cohort	Unknown	tbd
Capital Consumption vs Plan	Unknown	tbd

Key Performance Indicators

Capital Efficiency Ratio

IACV per Capital Consumed by calendar month. Capital Efficiency Ratio = IACV/Capital Consumed. IACV is sourced from SFDC and Capital Consumed is sourced from Netsuite.

Target: GitLab's target is to be > 2. The target will change in the future when GitLab is no longer in the capital consumption phase.

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Gross margin

Gross margin is defined as total revenue less cost of revenues as defined by GAAP and reported in the Company's financial statements.

Target: Our long term gross margin target is 85% but is dependent on the revenue mix between products - self managed and gitlab.com and professional services.

This KPI cannot be public.

URL(s)

• https://app.periscopedata.com/app/gitlab/483606/Finance-KPIs?widget=6282089&udv=0

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Average Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)

Average Accounts Receivable balance over prior 3 months divided by Total Contract Value (TCV) bookings over the same period multipied by 90 that provides an average number of days that customers pay their invoices. The accounts receivable data is sourced from Netsuite and the TCV data is sourced from SFDC.

Target: the median DSO for SAAS companies is 76 days. Our target at GitLab is 45 days.

Chart (Sisense↗)

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Runway

Runway is defined as the number of months based on cash balance plus available credit divided by average cash burn. The analysis can be found on the Finance Dashboard. Cash data is sourced from Netsuite.

Target: Our target is that this metric is always greater than 12 months.

This KPI cannot be public.

URL(s)

• https://app.periscopedata.com/app/gitlab/483606/Finance-KPIs?widget=6880820&udv=0

Status: Unknown

• tbd

ARR by Annual Cohort

ARR can be sliced many different ways for analysis. In the ARR by Cohort analyses, we look at ARR by the Fiscal Year Cohort. That analysis can be found on the Finance Dashboard. The data for ARR by Annual Cohort is sourced from SFDC and Zuora.

This KPI cannot be public.

URL(s)

• https://app.periscopedata.com/app/gitlab/483606/Finance-KPIs?widget=6256724&udv=0

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Capital Consumption vs Plan

TCV less Total Operating Expenses. This metric tracks net cash consumed excluding changes in working capital (i.e. burn due to balance sheet growth). Since the growth in receivables can be financed using cheap debt instead of equity this is a better measure of capital efficiency than cash burn. Capital Consumed is sourced from Netsuite.

This KPI cannot be public.

URL(s)

• https://app.periscopedata.com/app/gitlab/483606/Finance-KPIs?widget=6279480&udv=0

Status: Unknown

• tbd

Other PI Pages

• Performance Indicator Maturity Table
• Engineering Function Performance Indicators
  • Development Department Performance Indicators
    • Growth Section Performance Indicators
  • Infrastructure Department Performance Indicators
  • Quality Department Performance Indicators
  • Security Department Performance Indicators
  • Support Department Performance Indicators
  • UX Department Performance Indicators
• Product Performance Indicators
• Corporate Finance Performance Indicators
• Recruiting Performance Indicators
• Data Team KPI Index

Legends

Health

Level	Meaning
Okay	The KPI is at an acceptable level compared to the threshold
Attention	This is a blip, or we’re going to watch it, or we just need to enact a proven intervention
Problem	We'll prioritize our efforts here
Unknown	Unknown

Instrumentation

Level	Meaning
Okay	We are correctly capturing and measuring data for GitLab.com and self-managed instances.
Attention	Missing one of: GitLab.com or self-managed data.
Problem	Missing both: GitLab.com and self-managed data.
Unknown	Unknown

How to work with pages like this

Pages

Pages, such as the Engineering Function Performance Indicators page are rendered by an ERB template that contains HTML code.

• Any changes to the Performance Indicator (PI) ERB template will cascade to all links under the Other PI Pages section
• To update the options for the maturity table, make changes to the Performance Indicators Maturities ERB file
• To update the way each individual (K)PI displays:
  • make changes to the Performance Indicators List ERB file for how the (K)PI is displayed on the KPI Index page
  • make changes to the Performance Indicators ERB file for any other properties and its format
• When adding a new PI page,
  • create the new PI page in the business division's handbook section (like the Engineering Division page)
  • include the relative link to the PI page in the Performance Indicators List ERB file
  • add all the (K)PI information into the Performance Indicators data file

Helper Functions

These ERB templates calls custom helper functions that extract and transform data from the Performance Indicators data file.

• The kpi_list_by_org(org) helper function takes a required string argument named org (deparment or division level) that returns all the KPIs (pi.is_key == true) for a specific organization grouping (pi.org == org) from the Performance Indicators data file.
• The pi_maturity_level(performance_indicator) helper function automatically assigns a maturity level based on the availability of certain data properties for a particular PI.
• The pi_maturity_reasons(performance_indicator) helper function returns a reason for a PI maturity based on other data properties.
• The performance_indicator_target(name) helper function returns the target value from the target property for a specific PI from the Performance Indicators data file.
• The performance_indicators(org) takes a required string argument named org (deparment or division level) that returns two lists - a list of all KPIs and a list of all PIs for a specific organization grouping (department/division).
• The signed_periscope_url(data) takes in the sisense_data property information from the Performance Indicators data file and returns a signed chart URL for embedding a Sisense chart into the handbook.

Data

The heart of pages like this is the Performance Indicators data file which is in YAML file. Each - denotes a dictionary of values for a new (K)PI. The current elements (or data properties) are:

Property	Type	Description
name	Required	String value of the name of the (K)PI
base_path	Required	Relative path to the performance indicator page that this (K)PI should live on
definition	Required	refer to Parts of a KPI
parent	Optional	should be used when a (K)PI is a subset of another PI. For example, we might care about Hiring vs Plan at the company level. The child would be the division and department levels, which would have the parent flag.
target	Required	The target or cap for the (K)PI. Please use Unknown until we reach maturity level 2 if this is not yet defined.
org	Required	the organizational grouping (Ex: Engineering Function or Development Department)
is_key	Required	boolean value (true/false) that indicates if it is a (key) performance indicator
health	Required	has two additional elements/property - level (inclusive value between 0-3) and reasons. This should be updated monthly before Key Meetings by the DRI.
urls	Optional	list of urls associated with the (K)PI
sisense_data	Optional	contains elements/properties related to Sisense, including chart (numeric Sisense widget ID), dashboard (numeric Sisense dashboard ID), shared_dashboard (Sisense shared dashboard ID), embed (v2)
public	Optional	boolean flag that can be set to false where a (K)PI does not meet the public guidelines.
instrumentation	Optional	has two additional elements/property - level (inclusive value between 0-3) and reasons. This should be updated monthly before Key Meetings by the DRI.

Here are some additional tips:

• Each KPI chart should be a timeseries chart.
• Each KPI should have a standalone dashboard with a single chart representing the KPI and a text box with a link back to the handbook definition.
  • In Sisense, create a shared dashboard link to get the shared dashboard ID.
  • In Sisense, use the Share Link action of the chart to get the chart (widget_id) and the dashboard ID.
  • Add the shared_dashboard, chart , and the dashboard key-value pairs to the Performance Indicators data file under the sisense_data property
• Avoid : in strings as it's an important character in YAML and will confuse the data parsing process. Put the string in "quotes" if you really need to use a :
• urls: should be an array (indented lines starting with dashes) even if you only have one url
• Both maturity.level and health.level display a value between 0 and 3 (inclusive). The health value is a manual input while the maturity is an automated value based on other discrete (K)PI data properties.