In many growth companies, finance, sales, and marketing measure performance, but too often, separately from each other.
Finance looks at revenue, margins, and cash flow.
Sales tracks pipeline, deals, and win rates.
Marketing reports on leads, reach, and engagement.
Each function has valid metrics. The problem is that they often live in separate dashboards, spreadsheets, and conversations. When this happens, leadership sees fragments of the truth instead of a coherent picture of how growth actually happens.
Transparency enables effectiveness: make the numbers visible
First of all, whether it’s for the leadership team or the whole organization (especially in smaller growth companies), everyone should have a clear overall vision of where the company stands financially.
Transparent financial reporting allows people to emphasize current results, key learnings, available resources, and future predictions, and to implement them in their everyday work. There’s no excuse for hiding your numbers from the very people who can make or break it – additionally, it creates a strong sense of pride and importance in one’s job by understanding how it all comes down in the company’s perspective.
Reporting is an analysis, not just presenting numbers
Now that we’re clear on what to report and whom to report it to, the next question is how to report effectively. As we start combining financial, sales, and marketing metrics, we face the fact that each section is most likely analyzed and presented by a different person or department.
Who is the best person to analyze the report? Obviously, the one who makes it will be the most relevant person on the given topic. Therefore, each reporter should be responsible for delivering analysis and key takeaways along with their figures.
Take a look at the example of a single monthly or quarterly report duties:
- Marketing metrics, key results, and learnings from the CMO
- Sales report, pipeline value, and lead analysis from the Sales Director or Manager
- Financial report, revenue, cash flow, and profitability metrics from the CFO or CEO
Each sector is built by its respective correspondent, but when gathered together, it provides a good overview of the company’s most crucial metrics and enables general observations and learnings.
Also read:
Measurement Mindset: 7 Simple and Satisfactory Ideas for Marketing Analytics
Growth is a system, not a set of isolated activities
Revenue does not start in finance. Deals do not start in sales. They are all part of the same flow.
When metrics are viewed together, leadership can see how marketing activity translates into the sales pipeline, how the pipeline converts into revenue, and how efficiently growth capital is being used. This is where better decisions start.
A shared view does not mean more metrics. It means fewer, more meaningful ones. The goal is to enable faster, more confident decisions and transparent information that emphasizes the big picture throughout the company.
Less is more – How to get started without overengineering?
Most companies fail not because the idea is wrong, but because execution focuses on the wrong things. While it’s increasingly easy to drown in endless data, the most important reporting skill is finding the relevant information and leaving out the unnecessary.
Avoid falling into these pitfalls:
- Starting with tools instead of questions. Dashboards are built before leadership agrees on what actually matters.
- Overloading the view with operational detail that is useful for specialists but irrelevant for decision-makers.
- Treating the setup as a one-time project instead of a living system that evolves with the business.
A unified view should simplify complexity, not add to it. Instead, you can start by aligning on a small set of shared questions:
- Where is the money coming from, and what’s the cost structure?
- Which segments, clients, or efforts are most profitable?
- How does marketing activity translate into the sales pipeline?
- How long does it take from first touch to revenue?
- What does growth cost, and how predictable is it?
From there, metrics can be selected to support answers, not reporting habits. It is also important to accept that the data will never be perfect. What matters is directionally correct insight that leadership trusts and uses.
You might also be interested in this:
How to Combine Marketing Metrics with Essential Business KPIs on a Unified Marketing Dashboard
The more uncertainty, the more it matters
When markets are stable, fragmented views can survive longer, but when markets are volatile, they become a liability.
Uncertainty increases the need for clarity. Budget decisions, hiring plans, and growth bets all depend on understanding how the commercial engine actually performs. A unified view enables earlier signals and faster course correction. Whether you’re investing in or cutting costs, you need to base your decisions on knowledge, which can only be found through a comprehensive understanding of the business.
In practice, this often separates companies that react late from those that adapt early. When everyone looks at the same picture, conversations change. Decisions become faster. Trade-offs become clearer. Growth becomes more intentional.
And most importantly, teams stop optimizing their own numbers and start optimizing the business outcomes as a whole.
