Companies said to need deeper data dives to improve metrics

Data lakes contain much more information than CFOs and other executives typically use to track performance, say data specialists. Companies are missing opportunities to grow revenue and improve margins by approaching the data they collect too narrowly, data specialists said in a SaaStr webcast last week. Many software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies are investing heavily in data collection, but they're only analyzing the most obvious results in their metrics, like churn. They can get a more accurate picture of performance, more quickly, by using AI to analyze a broader range of data, even if it's not obvious how it relates to a metric, said Berit Hoffmann, vice president of product at data analysis software company Sisu. One large business-to-business SaaS company Sisu worked with started seeing unusually heavy churn even though one of the main data points they look at regularly showed no change.