Topic: Financial Planning (17 articles)
SaaS Financial Metrics: The Numbers That Determine Your Destiny
SaaS financial metrics like Rule of 40, Magic Number, LTV:CAC Ratio, and CAC Payback Period determine whether your business is healthy. Learn how these metrics connect to your roadmap—and why your roadmap is the lever that moves them.
Does Your Capacity Actually Match Your Growth Plan?
The board signs off a 40% growth plan. Engineering capacity, honestly audited, shows 8% of squad-sprints allocated to growth work. Both numbers cannot be true. The arithmetic that reconciles them is what every business plan relies on and almost no product organisation actually does — and it's the single most productive thing a CPO, CTO or NED can put on the table.
Users Do Not Experience Averages
No user ever experiences an average. Every user experiences a single point on a distribution — and dashboards that report means are lying to boards about the real user experience. A primer for analysts, PMs and CPOs on standard deviations, common-cause vs special-cause variation, wing-to-wing outcomes, and how to actually present data to a board.
Business Case for a New Product: The 3-Page PID Template That Forces ExCo Alignment
A business case for a new product is not a forecast — it's the alignment artefact that forces every ExCo member to commit, in writing, to their functional contribution to the product's success. This article covers the tight 3-page Project Initiation Document (PID) template that took Trayport to 62% CAGR, why PE-owned companies are better at this than anyone else, and why nothing should be allowed onto the roadmap until the PID is signed.
CAC Payback Period: The Cash Flow Metric That Gates Your Growth Speed
CAC Payback Period reveals how long until customer acquisition investments break even. Learn how this cash flow metric determines how fast you can grow—and how your roadmap can accelerate payback from both sides.
LTV:CAC Ratio: The Unit Economics Metric That Determines SaaS Survival
LTV:CAC Ratio reveals whether your customers generate more value than they cost to acquire. Learn how this fundamental unit economics metric determines SaaS sustainability—and how your roadmap can improve it from both sides of the equation.
Rule of 40: The SaaS Health Metric That Investors Actually Care About
The Rule of 40 is the single metric that tells investors whether your SaaS business is healthy. Learn how growth rate plus profit margin reveals whether you're building sustainably—and how your roadmap can move the number.
SaaS Magic Number: The Growth Efficiency Metric That Reveals Your GTM Truth
The SaaS Magic Number measures whether your sales and marketing investments generate proportional revenue returns. Learn how this efficiency metric separates sustainable growth from expensive growth—and how your roadmap can improve it.
RoadmapOne Release 3.2 is here
Introducing PowerPoint Export, and your Finance team's favourite feature
Announcing RoadmapOne Release 3.2. Featuring Powerpoint Export, a simplified user interface, and the one feature your Finance team care the most about
Objective Tagging: Opex vs Capex
Help your finance team understand capital vs operational spend across your roadmap, enabling smarter budget allocation and tax planning.
RoadmapOne Release 3.1 is here
Tuned to perfection!
Following on from version 3, here is release 3.1 with new financial and cost modelling capabitilites.
Objective Prioritisation: ROI (Return on Investment)
The Timeboxed Benefit Calculator Finance Actually Trusts
ROI prioritisation ranks objectives by benefit-to-cost ratio over 12, 18, or 24 months—simpler than NPV, more financially credible than gut instinct. When finance demands numbers but won't accept spreadsheet theatre.
Objective Prioritisation: ARR
When Your Customers' Cheque Size Decides Your Roadmap
ARR prioritisation ranks features by the recurring revenue at stake—letting your highest-value customers vote with their wallets. When does revenue-driven roadmapping create strategic clarity, and when does it turn your product into a consulting service?
Objective Prioritisation: Cost of Delay
The Economics of Waiting—When Time Is Literally Money
Cost of Delay prioritisation quantifies the economic damage from waiting—then divides by duration to find maximum value per time. Every week you delay shipping costs £X. Which features cost the most to postpone?
Objective Prioritisation: NPV
When Finance Owns Your Roadmap (And Why That Might Be Good)
NPV prioritisation brings finance-grade rigour to roadmap decisions by calculating the present value of future cash flows. When should product teams embrace the spreadsheet complexity—and when should they run?
Objective Prioritisation: Payback Period
The Financial Metric Product People Actually Understand
Payback Period prioritisation ranks features by time to recover investment—the CFO's favourite metric because it answers 'when do I get my money back?' Simpler than NPV, more intuitive than IRR, but blind to what happens after break-even.
Key Result Tagging: R&D Tax Credit
From Engineering Work to Tax Relief—Tagging What Qualifies
Turn qualifying R&D work into tax relief by tagging key results that prove technical uncertainty, systematic investigation, and genuine innovation—making claims audit-ready before HMRC comes knocking.