Growth Institute is making data-driven decisions faster with Klipfolio

"It takes a village of gurus to help companies scale up. We are building that village here."

Somewhere between startups and unicorns are the growing mid-market companies, the unsung heroes of the market. These companies provide jobs and boost the economy, yet the resources available to their leadership teams are scattered and narrowly available. Growth Institute is working to change that.

By combining learning, implementation, and guidance into one experience, Growth Institute gives leaders the surest pathway to scale themselves and their company.

"Our goal is to help scale impact and reduce drama for 10 million leaders by 2040."

Meet the crew

Rowan Stanek is the Product Owner for Scaling Up Club, Growth Institute's subscription product. CPA Patricio Alcerreca Burgos (Pato) is the Financial Controller, and Karina Reyes is the Product Manager.

All three work on data analysis and bring distinct skills to the process.

On any given day, Rowan gathers feedback from users, grooms the product backlog, and helps manage the development team. As a CPA, Pato owns everything financial, administrative, and HR-related. His biggest task is managing company risk across every department. Karina oversees the development and production of all products, leading a team of six through planning, envisioning, and execution.

Basic spreadsheet reporting would take days to complete

"Before Klipfolio, if I wanted to know a specific metric in any department including mine, I had to ask multiple people, eventually involve the IT team to run a report, and then clean and format the data myself so I could better understand it. It could take up to 3 days to obtain fairly basic information." — Rowan

For financial reporting, Pato worked manually with Excel spreadsheets. The process was slow and tedious.

"With our old reporting process, I used spreadsheets as best I could to keep track of what needed to get done, by when, and by who. Visualizations go a long way in motivating people in the work they do." — Karina

Waiting days for a number that should be available in seconds is a real cost: slower decisions, more back-and-forth, and a leadership team that can't act on what it doesn't yet know. Growth Institute needed a better way, which is why they decided to try Klipfolio.

Automated reporting without the headaches

Now, Pato has connected Klipfolio to his spreadsheets, pulling data from different systems, organizing it in a Google Sheet, and pushing it to dashboards that refresh every day.

"We have our top KPIs displayed on Klipfolio dashboards that are accessible at any time by the whole company." — Pato

The difference isn't just speed. When every leader sees the same numbers without having to ask for them, there's less time spent explaining context and more time spent deciding what to do. Karina also values how intuitive Klipfolio is for showing her team's progress to other departments and company stakeholders.

Growth and product metrics worth measuring

Rowan, Pato, and Karina all understand the importance of staying on top of their metrics. Here are the financial growth metrics and product KPIs they track:

Financial and growth metrics:

• New Revenue (daily, monthly, quarterly, and annually)
• Average Revenue per Day
• Revenue vs. Projections
• Revenue by Category
• Revenue vs. Profit/Losses
• New Members
• Monthly Retention/Churn

"My team recently started incorporating the SCRUM methodology). It's easy to show in Klipfolio what our projected story points will be vs. what we are actually producing."

Product metrics:

• Projects completed
• Status of project requests
• Status of new small project requests

Data visualizations that move the needle

"Our sales dashboard is my favourite report. With Klipfolio, changes we make to the product, or how we market/sell it, can be immediately tracked so we can iterate quickly. Also, who doesn't love to see the $$$ graph trending up and to the right?!" — Rowan

Pato values how dashboards have improved cross-departmental transparency at Growth Institute. Having visibility into every department's key metrics means decisions get made with the full picture in view, not just one team's slice of it.

"I love our finance dashboard! It's really cool as a team member who doesn't work in finance to see all the various, clear breakdowns of where we are with our financial goals as a company." — Karina

Winning back hours every week

With Klipfolio, Growth Institute has visibility across all departments and makes decisions backed by accurate, real-time data, without waiting for someone to pull a report.

Once Growth Institute implemented Klipfolio across the company, Rowan immediately started saving hours each week that had previously gone to chasing people in other departments for information. He now makes confident decisions faster because the numbers he needs are already there, clearly presented, without a request to IT or a three-day wait.

"Klipfolio makes data easy to access, clearly represents trends, empowers accountability, and encourages companies like Growth Institute to be more mindful of making data-driven decisions."

Dashboards have also helped Karina and her team cut down on meeting time.

"Klipfolio has made our morning meetings so much more efficient. Instead of spouting off a list of things to work on, we have clear graphs and dashboards we can reference to strengthen our reasons to prioritize certain actions."

Several departments at Growth Institute present their key metrics every morning during daily stand-ups by referring to their Klipfolio dashboards. They also bring dashboards into quarterly and annual strategic planning meetings to test the viability of new initiatives and benchmark against past performance.

"Displaying your data clearly and visually in Klipfolio helps everyone make faster, more impactful decisions and get quick feedback on new initiatives." — Rowan

A tight-knit, agile culture built on transparency

Pato values the fact that everything at Growth Institute is virtual. Employees work remotely from almost anywhere with an internet connection.

"...this is why dashboards are so important for us. They are a very practical way to share critical information with everybody at the same time without having to physically attend a meeting."

Rowan describes Growth Institute as a small, agile company that is very tight-knit.

"We value transparency, people taking ownership of their work, and not being afraid to try new things in the quest to provide greater value to our clients and improve profitability for our company."

Karina values how employees are independent yet collaborate often.

"As a virtual team, Klipfolio dashboards go a long way towards maintaining accountability and staying transparent with each other."

The company shares big wins in their #wins Slack channel and celebrates with a happy hour at the end of each week. They also get together occasionally for off-site activities.

One piece of advice for leaders considering the shift

"Don't delay! The quicker you get in the rhythm of updating and displaying your metrics consistently, the sooner the rest of your team will follow suit and the whole company benefits."

The fastest path to confident decisions is making sure the right numbers are already in front of the right people, every day, without anyone having to ask.