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Many may read the title of this blog post and wonder “Isn’t subscription intelligence and analytics the same thing?” That would be a good question. While there isn’t an industry-accepted view of the differences, it is widely accepted that intelligence provides information on what has happened, while analytics is used to understand the why. This makes both capabilities key to making better decisions.

Based on your real-time data, SIA is a view into what’s happening with your business and why. Plus, it’s tailored guidance when you have deeper questions or want an expert’s perspective. Perhaps most importantly, SIA helps you act in ways that move your business in the right direction sooner.

At Vindicia, we make subscription intelligence part of everything we do, and we always have. For instance, SIA is what lets us deliver measurably higher retention rates. We’ve spent years refining our approach to resolving failed transactions, going beyond simple retries to actually recover lost revenue. Using this experience, we’re making our data-first way of working even more available to clients. That means you access more subscription intelligence—more easily—than ever before.

Drawbacks of canned reports and DIY analysis

Most subscription platforms deliver basic canned reports. You see what’s happened, but it’s not easy to dig into why, as the report parameters that can be changed are very limited. When you want to know more, you have to engage in DIY analysis, but that’s not so straightforward either. Even if you have an analyst ready to do your bidding, you may not have ready access to your data or the ability to easily sync subscription data into internal systems. And when you have deeper questions—like how your results compare to similar companies, or if you should raise your prices—you’re on your own.

Vindicia takes a different approach. We make it easy to access data-driven insights, so you can steer your business more strategically.

Discover, learn, apply—repeat

Our SIA is based on three key principles. You need to be able to discover facts about your business independently. You also need access to industry experts and best-practice information, as this adds even more value. Then, you must be able to apply insights to both big decisions and everyday operational choices in ways that measurably improve results. Here’s a closer look:

• Discover: Dig into what happened, what’s happening, and why, drawing from a deep data warehouse. You can use a personalized, configurable analytics dashboard to explore churn, revenue, in-app purchases, and other metrics. Personalization means you see the metrics that matter to you, and people in other areas of the business view their key metrics. The whole business aligns more easily behind goals. Want to use other systems or business intelligence tools? Create push notifications to sync subscription data with other systems.
• Learn: Engage with our industry experts as they share curated data deep dives into your business. They mine your data for insights into pricing, retention, conversion rates, and more. Benchmarking data helps them spot areas where you stand out—or need to improve. You see how you perform as compared to an anonymous cohort of like companies.
• Apply: Take what you’ve discovered and learned, and act to improve business outcomes. For instance, you can spot and amplify promotions that attract customers who have a low risk of churn. Or refine your pricing plans to keep customers longer. Your subscription platform from Vindicia simplifies trying innovative ideas and finding the ones that work for your business.

Maneuvering with intelligence

Let’s look at an example of how SIA works. Big price increases can cause cancellations to skyrocket. Frequent tiny increases annoy subscribers—who then cancel. Small and infrequent price adjustments leave money on the table. You could guess at the perfect amount and hope for the best. Or you might consider A/B testing around pricing, but any customers who see inconsistent pricing will be confused and might cancel or complain. So, what should you do?

When you work with Vindicia, you can turn to SIA. That’s what a long-time Vindicia client did. The client knew it was time for a price jump and wanted to get the increased amount just right. They came to the Vindicia team for help. Looking at the relationship between price and churn for a group of similar companies, the Vindicia team crunched the numbers and then recommended a new price—backing their recommendation with data. The client followed Vindicia’s recommendation and saw revenue rise. Despite higher prices, the company even increased retention.

That’s just one example of how Vindicia can help you learn from experts and apply your insights. Here’s a more mundane example. A client recently spotted a small but unusual jump in churn rates. They weren’t sure why, and they asked for help. The Vindicia team traced it to an issue with one of their payment processors. The processor quickly addressed the issue. And Vindicia helped the customer capture the lost revenue and keep the customers. Dealing with issues like this requires you to look across all the data available to you from pricing, signup, and LTV to payment failure reason codes and trends.

Get subscription intelligence and analytics

We bake SIA into everything we do. You access it by choosing the Vindicia MarketONE platform. To learn more, read our subscription intelligence datasheet. And talk to us today about getting started.