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How can you measure the financial efficiency of your organization? Tracking the financial health of your business goes well beyond looking at a profit and loss statement. You need to assess how efficiently you're generating revenues and whether your financial model is sustainable over the long run. That means looking at various metrics to determine how well your business is performing in several key areas.
Financial efficiency measures how successful your organization is at turning expenses into revenue. You'll generate fewer profits or even a loss if your expenses become excessive. Having revenue outpace your expenses shows that your organization is financially efficient.
You want your business to be both financially efficient and capable of sustaining growth. Tracking financial efficiency, and other metrics provides valuable insight into how your business is running. The right metrics can tell you where you're doing well and where you need improvement.
Unfortunately there's no single metric you can use to determine your organization's financial efficiency.
Let's take the example of an individual who's looking to buy a car.
Before they purchase, the bank or dealership will assess their credit file to see if they qualify for a loan on approved credit. In contrast, businesses use a series of metrics that examine different parts of your business to track the efficiency of those areas.
The most effective way to measure your organization's financial efficiency is to employ one or more common and easy-to-calculate financial ratios.
These metrics are powerful tools that tell you how your organization is doing today and how it can improve to do even better in the future.
10 key financial efficiency ratios we are going to talk about today are:
One of the most popular ways to measure an organization's financial efficiency is to track the operating expense ratio (OER). This metric measures the cost of operating your business, expressed as a percent of gross revenues. The higher the OER, the less efficient your business is.
To calculate the operating expense ratio, divide your organization's total operating expenses by gross revenues. Keeping a close watch on your OER helps you more accurately forecast your operating budget.
The next useful way to measure financial efficiency is via the asset turnover ratio (ATR). This metric measures how efficiently an organization generates revenue from its assets by tracking how much each dollar of assets generates. It's expressed as a percentage of an organization's total assets.
To calculate the ATR for your organization, divide your company's total revenues by your total assets.
Although it sounds similar to the asset turnover ratio, the accounts receivable turnover ratio, or AR turnover ratio, measures something quite different. For those businesses that let customers buy on credit, this metric tracks how efficiently you collect payments from your customers. Generally, the higher the AR turnover ratio, the better you are at collecting payments—and the better your customers pay on time.
To calculate the AR turnover ratio, divide your net credit sales by your average accounts receivable.
How efficiently does your company manage its inventory? You can find out by measuring the inventory turnover ratio (ITR). The ITR calculates how often your total average inventory has turned over the course of the measuring period. The faster you turn your inventory, the higher the ITR.
A high ITR could be good or bad. It could indicate that your sales are so strong that you're constantly turning your inventory. Or it could indicate that your inventory levels are insufficient for your amount of sales. To further complicate matters, ITR differs from industry to industry, so a "good" ITR for one business might be unacceptable to another.
To calculate the inventory turnover ratio, divide your company's cost of goods sold (COGS) by the average inventory value.
Experts have long held that retaining an existing customer costs less than acquiring a new one. If you're not acquiring new customers, you're not growing your business. And if the cost of acquiring new customers is too high, those new customers will be substantially less profitable than your existing ones.
To measure the customer acquisition cost or CAC, divide your marketing campaign costs by the total customers acquired. CAC is typically measured separately for individual campaigns.
When looking at the return on investment (ROI) per customer, use the LTV-CAC ratio. In this metric, LTV refers to your calculated customer lifetime value, which you divide by your average customer acquisition cost (CAC).
The LTV-CAC ratio goes beyond simply examining how much it costs to acquire new customers to analyzing how profitable your new customers are. The higher the LTV-CAC ratio, the more efficient your customer acquisition activities—and the more profitable your new customers become.
Sales efficiency tracks how efficiently your organization generates sales. It compares sales generated to the sales and marketing costs associated with those sales. In the SaaS world, this is known as the "magic number."
The higher your sales efficiency, the higher the rate of return on your sales/marketing investments—and the more successful your business is.
You can calculate sales efficiency monthly, quarterly or yearly. Divide your revenue for the period by your sales and marketing costs for that same period.
Net revenue retention (NRR) is a way to track customer satisfaction with the products you offer. It's a customer retention metric. NRR tracks the percentage of recurring revenue generated from existing customers. The more satisfied your customers, the higher your NRR rate will be.
To calculate NRR, start with your monthly recurring revenue (MRR), subtract your contraction MRR and churn MRR (the amount your MRR is decreasing), add your expansion MRR (the amount your MRR is increasing) and divide the whole thing by your starting MRR. Experts say to aim for 120%.
How effective is your organization's headcount planning? Find out by calculating your human capital efficiency. This metric compares your number of employees to the total revenue generated. Since your employees are your largest single expense, it pays to get the most impact from your employees.
To measure your human capital efficiency, divide your annual recurring revenue (ARR) by the number of full-time employees. The higher the number, the more efficient and productive your workforce becomes.
The final way to measure your organization's financial efficiency is what experts call the Rule of 40. It gets its name from experts determining that this metric should equal 40% or higher—even though only about one-third of businesses achieve that goal.
The Rule of 40 measures the combined growth and profitability of your company. You calculate it by adding your growth rate to your profit margin. If these total over 40%, your business is financially efficient and well positioned for sustainable growth.
When you want to improve your organization's financial efficiency, turn to Vena, the only native Excel Complete Planning platform built for Microsoft 365 with Power BI Embedded. With Vena, you get better control over your business operations and can make better-informed strategic decisions in the future.
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Start LearningAs Vice President, FP&A at Vena, Tom Seegmiller is responsible for strategic finance, including business partnering, budgeting and forecasting, with a focus on optimizing enterprise value. Tom is instrumental in the formulation of the financial narrative for the executive leadership team, investors and board members. Tom has always had a focus on driving enhanced business decisions through leveraging financial and operational data. He is an experienced finance executive, having most recently led the finance team at Miovision Technologies. Prior to that, he was in senior FP&A leadership roles at OpenText. Tom enjoys golfing, skiing, exercising and traveling in his spare time, but most importantly, he loves spending time with his wife and daughter.
