Gross Margin
The percentage of revenue remaining after subtracting the direct cost of goods sold (COGS) — for SaaS, COGS includes hosting, support, and customer success costs attributed to delivering the service.
What it shows
Gross margin reveals the inherent profitability of the product at scale. SaaS businesses typically target 70-80% gross margins. Lower margins indicate high delivery costs that constrain the business's ability to invest in growth and reach operating profitability.
Formula
Gross Margin % = (Revenue − COGS) ÷ Revenue × 100. COGS for SaaS includes hosting/infrastructure, third-party licence costs, and direct CS/support team costs.
Tracked in these industries
E-commerce
Transaction-based retail across digital channels. Revenue tied to conversion rates, AOV, cart abandonment, and multi-channel attribution.
FinTech
Revenue from interchange fees, lending spreads, AUM, or SaaS licensing. Compliance-aware pipelines and complex fee structure reporting.
Manufacturing
Unit sales and volume contracts with long procurement cycles. RevOps bridges ERP (operations) and CRM (sales) through CPQ and contract management.
Media & Publishing
Ad revenue and subscription access. Operations balance CPM yield, subscriber growth, and content performance as revenue signals.
Professional Services & Consulting
Consulting and professional services firms generate revenue through billable hours, project milestones, and retainer agreements — requiring RevOps to instrument utilisation rates, SOW pipelines, and resource capacity constraints that directly cap top-line growth.
Marketplace & Two-Sided Platforms
Marketplace companies operate dual-sided revenue models — take rates on transactions plus optional SaaS subscriptions for sellers — requiring RevOps to instrument GMV, seller acquisition, buyer activation, and cohort-based retention with attribution models standard CRMs cannot support.
CleanTech & Energy
Clean technology and energy companies blend hardware sales, EPC project revenue, and recurring SaaS monitoring fees — requiring RevOps to manage hybrid revenue recognition, government incentive program tracking, and utility-scale deal structures simultaneously.
HRTech & Staffing
HR technology and staffing companies operate on placement fees, contractor spread models, and SaaS subscription revenue — requiring RevOps to track time-to-fill as pipeline velocity, bill rate vs. pay rate margin as deal quality, and recruiter quota structures fundamentally different from SaaS ARR models.