Demonstrate Analytics for Business Needs

Company Context

PulseBoard is a B2B SaaS company that provides workflow and reporting software to mid-sized sales teams. The product serves 12,000 paying accounts, and growth has slowed as enterprise prospects increasingly ask for deeper analytics before renewing or expanding contracts.

Problem

The CEO believes customers want “more dashboards,” but recent churn reviews suggest the issue may be broader: users struggle to connect product data to business decisions. Over the last two quarters, net revenue retention fell from 108% to 99%, and 22% of lost deals cited “insufficient business insight” as a reason for not expanding. Product, Sales, and Customer Success each define the problem differently, and engineering can only support one meaningful analytics initiative this quarter.

You are the PM for PulseBoard Analytics. Your task is to show how you would use strong analytical thinking to understand the real business need before proposing a solution.

Deliverables

1. Define how you would diagnose the underlying business need behind the vague request for “more dashboards.”
2. Identify the most important user segment(s) and the jobs they are trying to complete.
3. Propose 2-3 product directions and explain how you would prioritize among them.
4. Define the data, research, and success metrics you would use to validate your recommendation.
5. Explain the key trade-offs you would make given the constraints below.

Constraints

• One quarter to deliver an MVP
• 1 designer, 3 engineers, and no dedicated data scientist
• Existing event instrumentation is incomplete for advanced feature usage
• Must support both self-serve SMB customers and higher-value enterprise accounts
• Leadership expects a recommendation in two weeks, not a full redesign plan