This document summarizes a presentation about dimensional modeling for subscription-based businesses. It discusses key metrics like annual recurring revenue, churn, and annual contract value. It also covers challenges in the subscription economy and strategies to address them. The presentation demonstrates how to model customer, subscription, and transaction data to calculate metrics and visualize trends. It emphasizes asking the right questions during data modeling and handling scenarios like prorated payments and refunds.

1. Measuring the Subscription
Economy
Dimensional Modeling/Analytics
Angel Abundez, Lead BI Consultant, DesignMind
April 10-12 | Chicago, IL

2. Please silence
cell phones
April 10-12 | Chicago, IL

3. Familiar Subscription models
Content Subscriptions
3

4. Familiar Subscription models
Service and Product Subscriptions
4

5. Yesterday’s Subscription Economy
Linear Transaction
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6. Business models have changed
Technology and Innovation
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Cloud Computing
Digital Media
Mobile Devices
Social Media
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Internet Access and Broadband speeds
Startups, Apps, Innovative Entreprenuers
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7. New Content Subscriptions
7

8. Software as a Service (Saas)
Infrastructure/Platform
Productivity Software
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9. Today’s Subscription Economy
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10. The Key Metrics
Recurring Revenue
•
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
Churn
•
Percentage of members lost
New Business
•
Annual Contract Value (ACV)
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11. The Key Metrics
ARRn
What Recurring
Revenue can we
anticipate for the year?
Churn
What percentage
of customers
are leaving you?
ACV
How many new
customers do we
need to sign up?
ARRn+1
How many new
customers do we
need to sign up?
11

12. Subscription Economy Difficulties
Insufficient Funds
Invalid Credit Card number
Or Expired Card
Rapidly Changing
Marketing Campaigns
System loop-holes
Refunds
Freemium
Credits
Charges
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13. Assemble the Team
Operations
Sales and
Marketing
Business
Analysts *
Finance
IT
13

14. Define your Data
Customers
•
New, Renewed, Cancelled, Expired
Subscription Terms
•
Free Trial, Paid, Overdue, In-Grace, Cancelled,Expired, Silver, Gold
Payment Transactions
•
Recurring, Credit Card, Free Trial, Coupons, Credits
Service or Product Usage
•
Minutes, Hours, Visits, Downloads, etc
14

15. Data Profile Subscriptions, Products
1.
2.
3.
Subscriptions
Products
Customers
APIs Available at:
15

16. Demo
Subscription Data Profile
April 10-12 | Chicago, IL

17. The Key Metrics
ARRn
Churn
What percentage of
customers
are leaving you?
ACV
ARRn+
1
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18. Key Metrics - Churn
From your data definition
meetings, you have the following
customers:
•
•
•
•
Active Customers
Overdue Customers
Cancelled Customers
Expired Customers
• What type of Facts are these?
1. Additive
2. Semi-additive
3. Factless
4. Text
18

19. Key Metrics - Churn
For Churn percentage, you need
total Active Membership. This
requires moment-in-time views of
how many members were active
on a given date.
• What type of Fact table is
needed?
1. Transactional
2. Periodic Snapshot
3. Accumulating Snapshot
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20. Key Metrics - Churn
Ask the right questions:
What events lead up to an active customer?
What events lead up to a cancelled customer?
Do we want to trend active membership over time?
Dimensional Modeling lessons learned:
Don’t even think about aggregating Slowly Changing Dimensions.
Subscriptions could be modeled as a Slowly Changing Dimension, but
will people use it in the data model?
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21. Timeline Scenarios
21

22. Demo
Membership Facts for calculating Churn
April 10-12 | Chicago, IL

23. The Key Metrics
ARRn
Churn
ACV
ARRn+
1
What Recurring
Revenue can we
anticipate for the year ?
23

24. Key Metrics – Recurring Revenue
Goal: Spread out a payment transactions into equal interval units
What T-SQL function can do this the best?
1.
2.
3.
4.
CROSS JOIN
UNPIVOT
OUTER APPLY
CROSS APPLY
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25. Key Metrics – Recurring Revenue
Ask the right questions
What if payment transactions occur before, during, or after the subscription
period?
Do we want to add discount amounts?
How should refunds be treated?
Dimensional Modeling lessons learned:
Use transaction date, not effective date.
Draw up scenarios for how to handle +/- transactions, when they could
occur, and handle the grain carefully.
Use the CROSS APPLY function as it scales for variable-length subscriptions.
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26. Demo
Recurring Revenue Facts
April 10-12 | Chicago, IL

27. Strategies using Subscription Data
Reduce Attrition and Churn
Increase Cash
The Freemium Model
Long Term Agreements
Let’s Visualize our data to answer these needs
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28. Demo
Visualizations
April 10-12 | Chicago, IL

29. Summing it all Up –
Subscription Economy is vital in todays economy. There are no
publications out there that tell you how to dimensionally model this
lucrative business model, so we thought we’d show you how we were
to successfully implement this for our clients.
For further questions, feel free to contact us:
•
•
Angel Abundez: angel@designmind.com; @angelstreamline or at
www.angelstreamline.com
Mark Ginnebaugh: mark@designmind.com; @markginnebaugh or at
designmind.com/blog
29

30. Win a Microsoft Surface Pro!
Complete an online SESSION EVALUATION
to be entered into the draw.
Draw closes April 12, 11:59pm CT
Winners will be announced on the PASS BA
Conference website and on Twitter.
Go to passbaconference.com/evals or follow the QR code link displayed on
session signage throughout the conference venue.
Your feedback is important and valuable. All feedback will be used to improve
and select sessions for future events.

31. Thank you!
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April 10-12, Chicago, IL