Every company collects data. This data can come in many different forms, from sales totals to customer counts, refunds, and invoices. The challenge for businesses is turning that information into useful insights. Business insights transform numbers into answers about why customers leave, how revenue is changing, and what’s working in your operations. When they’re used effectively, they help shape your next move.

Below, we’ll explain what business insights are, how companies use them, and how Stripe Sigma can help you put them into practice.

What’s in this article?

• What are business insights and why do they matter?
  
• How businesses use data for smarter decision-making
  
• How Stripe Sigma delivers powerful business insights
  
• The benefits of using Stripe Sigma for business insights
  
• How companies have used Stripe Sigma to gain business insights
  
• Get started with Stripe Sigma for smarter business insights
  

What are business insights and why do they matter?

Business insights are the useful takeaways that come from raw data. Insights show you patterns, connections, and causes. They answer important questions, such as the following:

• Why do sales peak in one quarter and dip in the next?
  
• Which customers are most likely to renew?
  
• Where is cash flow stalling?
  

Data on its own can tell you what happened, but an insight explains what it means and how to respond. That shift from recording activity to interpreting it is what lets businesses make better calls on strategy, operations, and customer relationships.

Real-time data makes insights even more powerful. When teams can see what’s happening as it happens, they can move faster. If there’s a sudden peak in sales during a campaign, they can double down before the moment passes. If there’s a dip in transactions that signals a checkout issue, they can fix it before they lose a full day’s revenue.

There’s strong evidence that using data-driven insights helps businesses succeed. A 2024 study showed that 65% of highly data-driven small and medium-sized businesses outperformed competitors financially, compared with 33% of those that relied less on data. Companies that turn information into insights can act smarter, faster, and more confidently.

How businesses use data for smarter decision-making

Data becomes most valuable when it can guide decisions. Effective businesses use data to improve their strategies in three main areas: revenue and churn, payments and cash flow, and fraud prevention.

Spotting trends in revenue, churn, and customer behavior

Looking at revenue alone tells you how much came in. Looking at revenue trends tells you why. Seasonality, growth plateaus, and sudden peaks become more apparent when you analyze data over time. Churn, the rate at which customers stop using a product or cancel a subscription, is equally important. A rising churn rate is an early warning sign that something isn’t working, while strong retention signals loyalty and predictable recurring revenue.

To find causes, dig deeper. You might discover that a specific plan type drives cancellations or that usage drops off after three months. Segmenting by tenure, plan, or engagement reveals patterns you can act on, such as by onboarding better, making targeted offers, and improving the product. The same applies to customer behavior data. Tracking trends such as purchase frequency and feature usage shows what your most loyal customers have in common and what behaviors often precede cancellation.

Understanding payment patterns to refine pricing and cash flow

Payment data holds its own insights. Reviewing transactions over time can reveal seasonal demand or regional differences that inform pricing and promotions. Instead of guessing when to run a sale, you’ll know when customers are most responsive.

Payment data also feeds directly into cash flow management. Seeing when customers tend to pay (e.g., end of month, quarterly, at the last minute) helps you forecast and plan with fewer surprises. Businesses use these insights to time expenses, invest confidently, and avoid cash shortfalls. Payment data also flags friction points, such as failed transactions and high refund rates, which are often tied to checkout design or product quality. Addressing these quickly improves both revenue and customer experience.

Reducing fraud and chargebacks with transaction insights

Fraud decreases revenue and trust, and transaction data can help businesses spot it early. Unusual order volumes, mismatched addresses, and irregular geographies stand out in the numbers. Setting up alerts or rules around these patterns helps you block fraudulent charges before they go through.

Chargeback data clarifies why customers are disputing payments. Maybe one product line is overrepresented or certain regions have higher dispute rates. With detailed records, businesses can challenge invalid chargebacks and win more cases. They can also use those insights to fix root causes and minimize disputes in the future.

Data makes the difference between reacting to problems after the fact and solving them before they grow.

How Stripe Sigma delivers powerful business insights

Stripe Sigma is an analytics layer built directly into the Stripe Dashboard. It gives teams direct access to their Stripe data without the need for custom tooling. The result is faster answers to everyday questions about payments, revenue, and customers.

Here’s what Stripe Sigma can do for your business.

Near real-time answers in the Dashboard

Because Stripe Sigma queries live transaction data every three hours, results are up-to-date. A finance lead can check charge volume for the week, a product manager can see new subscriptions, or a support team can identify failed payments, all within minutes. Having that information available keeps decisions from stalling while teams wait for a scheduled report.

Flexible reporting with SQL or natural language

Stripe Sigma supports Structured Query Language (SQL) for teams that want precise control over metrics such as customer lifetime value (LTV) and churn across regions. For those who are less comfortable with SQL, an AI assistant translates natural language prompts into queries. Prebuilt templates cover common needs such as monthly recurring revenue and overdue invoices, which can be customized to fit specific use cases.

Scheduled report delivery

With Stripe Sigma, users can set queries to run on a schedule. Daily sales summaries, weekly subscription updates, or monthly revenue breakdowns can be delivered automatically. This ensures that recurring insights are available without requiring someone to manually run reports each time.

Shared results across teams

Reports can be saved, shared, visualized, or exported as CSV files. This makes it easier for different teams to work from the same dataset rather than piece together their own versions. Using a shared source of truth helps keep discussions focused on the data itself, instead of the reconciliation of mismatched numbers.

Stripe Sigma provides direct, customizable access to Stripe data in a way that fits into regular business workflows.

The benefits of using Stripe Sigma for business insights

Stripe Sigma removes extra steps between having data and acting on it. Businesses that use this tool see the following benefits:

• Direct access to Stripe data: Stripe Sigma queries the same data that runs through your Stripe account. There’s no exporting, no custom pipelines, and no risk of working from outdated files. Teams can explore payments, subscriptions, disputes, and more, all from one place.

• Customizable reports on demand: This tool makes it possible to customize reports to the metrics a business cares about most, whether that’s LTV, churn by cohort, regional revenue, or detailed dispute logs. Getting these answers directly means more agility in day-to-day decisions.

• Structured insights for financial and customer decisions: Because Stripe Sigma joins data across charges, invoices, customers, and subscriptions, it offers a more comprehensive picture of performance. Teams use it to discover patterns in retention, identify opportunities for upselling, or track revenue at a granular level.

• Lower operational overhead: Traditional reporting setups often require dedicated time from data teams. Stripe Sigma removes that dependency. Teams can run their own queries or adapt templates without needing to maintain a separate analytics environment.

These benefits help guide decisions across finance, product, and operations with accurate, current information.

How companies have used Stripe Sigma to gain business insights

Businesses use Stripe Sigma to answer practical questions that would otherwise take days of data work. The following examples show how it fits into everyday operations.

Accelerating financial processes at Slack

Slack’s team uses Stripe Sigma to dig into transaction data and track revenue metrics, identify trends, and troubleshoot potential problems. Running queries that join Stripe payment data automatically gives leadership faster visibility into revenue and fees and helps the team solve payment problems more quickly.

Handling disputes at Green Flag

Green Flag, a UK-based roadside assistance provider, uses Stripe Sigma to improve the way it manages chargebacks. Before, the team lacked details that would help them challenge chargebacks. Stripe Sigma reports bring together transaction history, timing, and customer data in one place and give the team the evidence needed to challenge invalid claims. This quickens the process and enhances decision-making.

Accessing valuable insights at Cloudbeds

Cloudbeds, a hospitality software company, uses Stripe Sigma to get granular data on volume, approval rates, fees, and disputes through natural language prompts—all within the Stripe Dashboard. This allows the team to access valuable insights without a heavy engineering lift or SQL expertise. The company also integrated Stripe Data Pipeline so it can easily export payment data to its data warehouse and view all its business data together.

These cases reflect a larger pattern. When teams have direct access to detailed, timely data, they can discover risks, plug revenue gaps, and improve their operations without waiting on custom tools or manual reporting.

Get started with Stripe Sigma for smarter business insights

Getting started with Stripe Sigma is straightforward. It’s available directly in the Stripe Dashboard, with no separate setup or data migration. Once it’s enabled, all historical and live payment data can be queried.

Here’s how to get started.

Explore reports quickly

This tool comes with a library of prebuilt templates that cover common needs such as monthly revenue, unpaid invoices, subscription renewals, and disputed charges. Running one of these queries is often the fastest way to see value. Teams without SQL expertise can use the AI assistant to translate plain language prompts into usable queries.

Customize and refine

As teams get comfortable, they can adjust queries to reflect specific business concerns such as churn rate by product line, LTV by geography, and cash flow by billing cycle. Saved queries become reusable reports that develop into a company’s own metrics library.

Automate and share

Reports can be scheduled to run daily, weekly, or monthly, and results can be shared across teams. This ensures decision-makers see the same, current numbers without manual pulls. Exports and simple charting tools make it easier to use Stripe Sigma outputs in other contexts from spreadsheets to presentations.

The goal is to be able to make sharper decisions. Stripe Sigma gives businesses a way to reach those decisions with more confidence.