As the leading social monitoring brand, it is essential that Brandwatch demonstrate that they are listening to their own customers’ needs. A company who are deeply committed to innovation with 40% of their workforce dedicated to improving their platform, Brandwatch have demonstrated that by managing their subscriptions on Zuora, they are ahead of the curve in all areas, offering intuitive and flexible pricing models to suit their diverse customer base. Since migrating to Zuora, Brandwatch’s customer focus has allowed them to accelerate their expansion from 78% year on year growth to 118%.

1. Scaling Operations in the
Subscription Economy
A COO’s Perspective
Bryan Tookey
Chief Operations Officer

2. Brandwatch Agenda
1. Brandwatch Introduction
2. Operations at Brandwatch
3. Measuring success
4. Operational challenges in the Subscription Economy

3. Brandwatch: we
analyse social
media

4. • 130 employees
• 5 offices
• 750 customers
• $1.2m+ monthly revenue
• 100%+ y/y growth

5. In Brandwatch “Operations” means…
Boring stuff?

6. …not sales, marketing or product
Make it better
Why not p#$%
off and sell
something?

7. KPIs
Support
Billing
Proces
s
Services
Right
gents, AOB?
Operations covers a lot of topics
Finance
HR and
Legal
Set up

8. 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%)

9. £0k
£100k
£200k
£300k
£400k
£500k
£600k
£700k
£800k
£900k
0.00
0.50
1.00
1.50
2.00
2.50
3.00
3.50
Jan-10
Mar-10
May-10
Jul-10
Sep-10
Nov-10
Jan-11
Mar-11
May-11
Jul-11
Sep-11
Nov-11
Jan-12
Mar-12
May-12
Jul-12
Sep-12
Nov-12
Jan-13
Mar-13
May-13
Jul-13
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

10. Zuora has improved BillingE 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
10
18
26
29
25 23
20
10
15 15 14 13
16
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
-
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Numberofcustomersinvoiced
Numberofcreditnotes
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

11. KPIs
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25
27
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31
33
35
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39
41
43
Revenue
Index
Staff
Index
Ops
staff
Index
KPIs: we use
Bessemer’s
SaaS metrics

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Opera,ons
MRR Are we selling
enough?

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Opera,ons
MRR Pipe Will we grow

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Opera,ons
Cash flow Will we run out
of cash?

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Opera,ons
Churn Do my
customer
hate me?

16. KPIs
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Opera,ons
CAC
(Customer
Acquisition Cost)
Are my sales
team too
expensive?

17. KPIs
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sa,sfac,on
rates
and
speed
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response
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Opera,ons
CLTV
(Customer Lifetime
Value)
Is it all worth
it?

18. 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

19. Clients demand ServicesG 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
Numberofcreditnotes
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

20. HR and Legal: from…
You can’t do
that Sign up to our
standard Ts &
Cs

21. HR and Legal: to…
Happy and
motivated
staff
Let’s negotiate
the Ts &Cs

22. Ourstrengths…
$
PRICE
ACQUIRE
BILL
COLLECT
NURTURE
ACCOUNT
MEASURE
ITERATE
SCALE

23. Somechallengesremain…
$
PRICE
ACQUIRE
BILL
COLLECT
NURTURE
ACCOUNT
MEASURE
ITERATE
SCALE

24. Reasons why…
Acquire:
Complex
product
Bill:
One
offs
Collect:
Enterprise
Customers
Nurture:
Complex
Product
1 2 3 4

25. 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

26. Thankyou

27. 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