How Smile.io uses Klipfolio dashboards to stay focused during growth

After hitting his rowing machine, drinking 1.5 litres of water and then his morning shake, Steve Deckert, a co-founder of Smile.io, walks to the Smile.io headquarters in downtown Kitchener, Canada.

He grabs a coffee at the office, strolls past his company's four TV dashboards to get a real-time glimpse into how the teams are performing, and then he gets to work.

Founded in 2012, Smile.io started out as Sweet Tooth Rewards with a clear vision: help brands keep more customers coming back. They've come a long way since then.

While staying focused on powering beautiful reward programs, they've brought on customers like Topps and Jones Soda Co. and reached 50 million program members.

There's a good chance you're already a member without realizing it.

Staying in control during growth

For many growing companies, growth is at once exhilarating and terrifying. It's the goal they've been driving toward, but picking up speed means things can start to feel out of control fast.

The Smile.io team wanted to stay grounded as they scaled. They chose Klipfolio because it could pull data from multiple sources into one place and put it in front of everyone, not just the people running the reports. TV dashboards went up early so every team could see how the business was performing, in real time, without having to ask.

And they've been growing steadily ever since.

Seeing the big picture

"It was critical to keep our team aligned on the most important metrics for our business," Deckert said. "Klipfolio dashboards help keep everyone focused on driving toward the metrics that matter."

"It's easy to get distracted by small wins, and we wanted our team to stay focused on the big picture and work towards that."

Smile.io still runs weekly meetings to make sure they're working toward the right goals. But Deckert says there's real peace of mind in knowing that anyone, at any time, can find out where the business stands just by glancing at a dashboard. No waiting for someone to pull a number. No digging through a spreadsheet. The answer is already there.

Smile.io runs a general dashboard for the whole company, with dedicated dashboards for the product and support teams. Not every team has one: some track too many metrics to display cleanly, and a cluttered dashboard defeats the purpose.

The dashboards surface what matters most: monthly recurring revenue (MRR), customer churn, customer satisfaction, and install and uninstall counts. The right numbers, visible to the right people, all the time.

Focus as a growth strategy

Smile.io now powers reward programs for 15,000 merchants around the world. Focus has been central to how they got there.

It's fitting that Deckert's favourite quote comes from Abraham Maslow:

"To be looking elsewhere for miracles is to me a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous."

Alongside Klipfolio, Smile.io credits a handful of tools for helping the team stay productive and focused during growth:

• Visualping.io: monitors web pages for changes
• ViewEdit: records and sends quick videos from your webcam
• UberConference: hosts conference calls with dial-in, computer audio, and screen share
• HubSpot: CRM, marketing automation, and sales tools
• Slack: team communication
• Google Keep: notes
• Google Drive, Docs, Calendar, Gmail: everything else
• Boomerang for Gmail: follows up on emails that go unanswered

And Deckert's advice for any company wondering whether to try Klipfolio?

"Do it."

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Learn more about their success and offerings at Smile.io.