Scaling operations in the Subscription Economy (Brandwatch)

Scaling Operations in the Subscription Economy

A COO’s Perspective

Bryan Tookey

Chief Operations Officer

Brandwatch Agenda

1.  Brandwatch Introduction

2.  Operations at Brandwatch

3.  Measuring success

4.  Operational challenges in the Subscription Economy

Brandwatch: we analyse social media

•  130 employees •  5 offices •  750 customers •  $1.2m+ monthly revenue •  100%+ y/y growth

In Brandwatch “Operations” means…

Boring stuff?

…not sales, marketing or product

Make it better

Why not p#$% off and sell something?

KPIs

Support

Billing

Process

Services Right gents, AOB?

Operations covers a lot of topics

Finance

HR and Legal

Set up

Sales

22% of Brandwatch Staff are Ops

HR, Legal, Office (4)

F I N A N C E A N D M I I S S I G N I F I C A N T , B U T M I N O R I T Y

Support (5)

Set-up (7)

MI (1)

Finance (5)

Consulting services (7)

Total 29 (out of 130, 22%)

£0k

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All staff Index) Operations staff (index) Monthly revenue

How operations has grown R E V E N U E , H E A D C O U N T A N D O P S G R O W T H

Under invest as limited resources

Over-invest to fix processes

Enjoy benefits of scale

Increased enterprise customers

Zuora has improved Billing E R R O R S C A U S E D B Y C O M P L E X I T Y / F L E X I B I L I T Y

28 28

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26 29

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10 15 15 14 13

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Invoice date

Also: fewer invoices per customer + faster invoicing + lots more flexible options

Post-Zuora: on average we issued corrections to 5% of invoices

Pre-Zuora: on average we issued corrections to 9% of invoices

KPIs

Insert chart on sa,sfac,on rates and speed of response

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Revenue Index

Staff Index

Ops staff Index

KPIs: we use Bessemer’s SaaS metrics

KPIs


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All Staff Index

Opera,ons

MRR Are we selling enough?

KPIs


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All Staff Index

Opera,ons

MRR Pipe Will we grow

KPIs


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All Staff Index

Opera,ons

Cash flow Will we run out of cash?

KPIs


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All Staff Index

Opera,ons

Churn Do my

customer hate me?

KPIs


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All Staff Index

Opera,ons

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Are my sales team too

expensive?

KPIs


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All Staff Index

Opera,ons

CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value)

Is it all worth it?

Support: hard to scale 2 4 H R A N D M O R E L A N G U A G E S I S E X P E N S I V E

750 customers c. 40 requests (tickets) per day 14 hours support, 5 days a week 2 languages (EN and DE) except Portal (EN

only) 2.5 1st line Full Time Equivalent employees 1 second line FTE 1 FTE for support materials 1.25 FTEs for training (EN, DE)

2013 1300 customers c. 70 requests (tickets) per day 24 hours support, 5 days a week 5 languages (EN/DE/CN/ES/FR) including

Portal 10 1st line Full Time Equivalent employees 2 second line FTE 1 FTE for support materials + 4 freelancers 3 FTEs for training (EN/DE/CN/ES/FR)

2014 2x revenue

1.7x customers

Up to 4x costs

Clients demand Services G R O W T H O F B R A N D W A T C H S E R V I C E S O F T I M E

23% 20%

31% 32% 31% 34%

37% 35%

38%

8% 9%

14% 13%

19% 21% 21%

9%

22%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Jan-13 Feb-13 Mar-13 Apr-13 May-13 Jun-13 Jul-13 Aug-13 Sep-13

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Revenue from Brands Revenue from Services

•  We get asked for Services (set up and summary social media reports) from our direct brand clients

•  Services are very lumpy

HR and Legal: from… You can’t do

that Sign up to our standard Ts &

Cs

HR and Legal: to… Happy and motivated

staff

Let’s negotiate the Ts &Cs

Our strengths…

$

PRICE ACQUIRE BILL COLLECT

NURTURE ACCOUNT MEASURE ITERATE SCALE

Some challenges remain…

$

PRICE ACQUIRE BILL COLLECT

NURTURE ACCOUNT MEASURE ITERATE SCALE

Reasons why…

Acquire: Complex product

Bill: One offs

Collect: Enterprise Customers

Nurture: Complex Product

1 2 3 4

What it all means R U N N I N G O P E R A T I O N S I N A S U B S C R I B E D B U S I N E S S

•  A subscription company can grow v fast •  Existing customers retained at low(ish) cost •  Allow majority of company focus on product and new sales

•  Flexibility, a complex product and larger enterprise clients can make it hard to get all benefits of subscription economy

•  For Brandwatch, Operations has been a slow building process

Thankyou

Photo AGribu,on Slide 6 Gargoyle 1: by Julian Fong Slide 7: (sales and product) by chuck624 Slide 8: Rob Faulkner with thoughUul frieze Slide 21: Alexandre Dulaunoy with the graffiY gargoyles Slide 23: Akbar Sim with RoGweiler Slide 24: Jennifer with thank you gargoyle

Extra 10% price Amazing increase in func,onality + not really loose on price 1 day to implement

Scaling operations in the Subscription Economy (Brandwatch)

Technology

Transcript of Scaling operations in the Subscription Economy (Brandwatch)