How to analyze your business metrics/KPIs with Pipedrive CRM

Once you start using a CRM system, it becomes a central place to collect and store all the information about your customers, team, and activities performed in your business.

No doubt that using a CRM can (of course doesn’t always have to) help your business grow which is confirmed by the actual research and numbers:

• Av. ROI from investment into CRM system is $8.71 per every $1 spent (based on Nucleus Research)
• Data accessibility through CRM system should shorten sales process by 8–14% (based on Nucleus Research)
• There are quite a few case studies showing positive impact of CRM like the recent one quoting call->QL improvement by +10%

Collecting the relevant data and statistics will take at least 3 months since the system’s initial set up to provide you with insightful metrics but it’s worth the wait taking into account the value of the information you’re about to get.

Outlining just a few stats you can get from your Pipedrive CRM:

• Sales metrics by month vs your actual business goals
  (this applies to both one-time payments but also to subscription revenues)
• The efficiency of your sales team divided by individuals vs their goals
  (how effective is your sales team when compared to goals you initially set for them to complete)
• Conversion of your lead sources vs your expectations and investments into specific channels
  (how effective are your marketing and lead acquisition channels)

The above are just a few metrics you extract from your CRM and there are many more you can use to make your business more effective and we’ll look into them later.

But to make sure you’re able to get the most important metrics and KPIs from your CRM there are a few things you need to remember about when setting up your CRM. Let’s look into a few essential steps to making it work well.

Integrate your CRM well to ensure data accuracy

Some of the integration projects we run here relate to analytics setup and display. But when talking to customers, we always outline to them the importance of proper CRM set up to make sure the data they analyze is real and reliable.

So which integration points are essential to make sure your CRM works correctly?

• Lead sources integration

Without proper lead sources integration, you will not be able to analyze the data divided and broken down into acquisition channels.

• Activities stored in Pipedrive

To be able to analyze your sales team efficiency, they simply need to input their sales activities into Pipedrive, so this might require:
- Calling system integration
- Email integration
- Customer service integration

• Goals planning per individual and company

Proper goals setup will let you analyze your team’s performance versus previous expectations and planning. Without the goals in place, the only benchmark you’d be getting is the previous months/period (still, a good indicator of growth but goals will make this analysis much more down to earth).

• Lost reasons setup

Setting up predefined lost reasons will let you analyze why you lose sales (also by a specific stage in the sales process).

• Sales process setup

Of course, without a sales process in place, there is no chance for insightful data for conversion and progress.

With the above in place and assuming you and your team know how to handle a CRM (so that you actually use it), you should be able to analyze the sales and activities’ data in your system, generate reports, measure KPIs, and display most relevant business metrics to the management.

So how to set it up in Pipedrive CRM? Let’s look into a few ways to make it work both inside Pipedrive and by using external solutions.

Setting up analytics in Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a robust tool so it’s no surprise it offers built-in options for data analytics.

Set up your own dashboard in Pipedrive Insights
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Insights is a new Pipedrive feature in a beta mode allowing you to create fully custom dashboards built out of the most important business metrics you’d like to monitor in your business. To make it work, just go to Progress -> Insights and select the reports you’d like to display on the dashboard. This can include:

• Deal conversion by stage and/or by source
• Planned subscription revenue and subscription revenue change/growth
• Performance of your sales team based on conversion, activities, and lost reasons

and of course, many more, depending on your needs.
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Also, Insights will let you display data in 5 different formats:

• Column chart
• Bar chart
• Pie chart
• Scorecard
• Table

These are just a few options. With Pipedrive Insights, you will be able to create the basic reports and stay up to date with the most important business metrics. For more advanced data, however, a connection with external tools might be required.

Once you set up your Insights dashboard, it’s time to share it with your team using a public link.

Use built-in Pipedrive Dashboard

Pipedrive dashboard is an older version of current Insights and displays a few most important data about your CRM and sales performance. It provides you with a quick glance into the most important business metrics like:

• The number of activities added/completed
• Ongoing deal progress
• Revenue forecast

and a few more but will not offer significant customization options.

Make use of Pipedrive reports
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Pipedrive reports is a set of predefined reports allowing you to analyze the most important performance metrics, including:

• Activities efficiency
• Deal progress and velocity
• Sales performance/closing rates

Pipedrive will let you display reports in multiple dimensions, including:

• by users
• by stages
• by reasons
• by products
• by status

Once you divide your employees into groups, you will also be able to run analytics divided into teams.

Using external resources to enhance your analytics

Using analytical tools inside Pipedrive might not be enough to generate all desired business metrics. Hence, using external tools (including more advanced BI solutions) can be required.

• Google Sheets & Pipedrive integration
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Google Sheets is probably the most common way to store data outside of your CRM system, so why not use it connected with a CRM to generate reports and analyze performance? With Pipedrive’s open API, you can connect your Google Sheets to Pipedrive and sync data automatically both ways, helping you generate valuable insights/KPIs in your Google Sheets report.

• Stitch data

Stitch data is a popular solution used by some of the Pipedrive customers to push data from Pipedrive to other systems, like Google Data Studio. It also syncs with more advanced data warehousing solutions like Amazon Redshift or Microsoft Azure. It will let you push your Pipedrive data for more advanced analysis or regression/statistical models.

• Amazon Redshift & Microsoft Azure

If you’re looking for ways to handle a significant amount of data from different sources and Pipedrive is only one of them, you will finally end up with an SQL database to store and process information. Solutions like Amazon Redshift or Microsoft Azure will let you do this and will let you prepare & process the data for further analytics in external solutions like Tableau or Power BI.

• Tableau analytics

Once you’ve extracted your data from Pipedrive using a connector tool like Stitch and/or connect it with information from other systems through your data warehouses, you can now sync this information with additional analytical solutions like Tableau. One of the benefits of using Tableau is the ability to process large volumes of data and display them in the visual form, helping management make the right business decisions.

• Power BI

Power BI is another data analytics tool allowing you to handle large amounts of data in one place. Power BI will easily sync with your Microsoft software environment letting you analyze data from multiple different sources and will integrate well with your Microsoft software ecosystem.

• Google Data Studio

Google Data Studio (once connected through Stitch) will let you match and display the data from Pipedrive with multiple different data sources such as marketing campaigns (Google Ads/Facebook Ads).

• Native Pipedrive apps

Less complicated apps like Plecto or Klipfolio which integrate natively with Pipedrive will allow you to display more advanced reports and dashboard, also in a gamification form but will not provide opportunities for advanced business intelligence.

A great start for data analytics

Pipedrive is a simple and user-friendly solution and so are its reporting and dashboard features. Assuming you store your data and information in Pipedrive, you will be able to use basic reporting features by yourself. Just remember about:

• Connecting all the relevant lead and data sources
• Making sure you and your team input all the activities in Pipedrive
• Giving yourself some time for the data to collect since the proper setup

More comprehensive dashboards, however, might require understanding business/reporting needs within your organization and proper setup of conditions/display rules within Pipedrive.

Finally, connecting with other data sources and building a data warehousing environment where Pipedrive is just a piece of the puzzle will require specialized know-how and experience. You can then use the support of a dedicated and specialized consultant to make it work right in your business.