The contribution

Revenue minus attributable cost, per customer, product or segment.

The part

What it is

The unit of analysis matters. The same business looks different by customer, by product and by channel, and each view suggests different actions.

Contribution should be shown as an amount and as a rate; the two rank differently and both rankings are useful.

The smallest level

The attributes it carries

Each attribute is one of the framework’s shared types. What a date is, and how it is written, is defined once for the whole model — the note here says what it means in this particular place.

Contribution
The absolute amount, which is what actually funds the organisation.
Money shared type
Contribution rate
The rate, which ranks differently from the amount and answers a different question.
Percentage shared type
Unit of analysis
Customer, product, segment or channel — each view suggests different action.
Choice shared type