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Have you spent time worrying about how your revenue generating teams just don’t seem to be operating as cohesively as you’d like them to be? Maybe your data is messy, or you feel like there are significant silos holding your teams back from performing optimally but you’re just not exactly sure where to start.
Well, if you’ve ever found yourself in this position, first and foremost you should know that you’re not alone. And second -- this is where Revenue Operations (aka “RevOps”) can help.
So, what exactly is RevOps?
If you’re asking yourself this question right now, then you fit in a surprisingly large cohort of individuals. In fact, a study by Forrester Consulting found that while a whopping 86% of executives felt that implementing a revenue operations approach was important when it came to meeting their goals, 41% of these executives weren’t even all that confident that they even understood exactly what RevOps is.
If you’re interested in learning more, check out the next few sections to learn exactly what RevOps is and how it can help you streamline workflows, bust down silos, and boost your revenue potential.
What is revenue operations (RevOps?)
Revenue Operations, also referred to as “RevOps” is a business function or, approach, in a sense, which seeks to eliminate information silos with the ultimate focus and goal being to improve revenue potential.
What makes RevOps unique is the fact that the approach is used to facilitate cross-departmental harmony, specifically with teams who directly impact and influence company revenue (e.g., sales, marketing, customer service, finance).
The rise of revenue operations
Revenue Operations pretty much resulted as a byproduct of the ever-evolving landscape of the customer experience. As technology continues to advance and market competition expands and diversifies, consumers are becoming more educated and discerning now more than ever. This has led to a significant uptick in the need for companies to develop highly personalized approaches in order to truly stand out amongst the sea of competitors. But, it’s not just enough for these approaches to be personalized. The key is that they must also have the ability to scale.
Furthermore, increased demands surrounding the customer experience have resulted in savvier marketing technology, which as a result, has become an increasingly more vital resource to businesses.
However, conventional operations models have been steeped in silos and bottlenecks often causing discontinuities in the customer experience, inefficient workflows, and revenue leakage. That’s because they are traditionally funnel focused, leaving the customer as an afterthought.
In a RevOps model, companies realize a need for operations across departments such as marketing, sales, customer service and finance to be more unified. This unification happens by shifting away from individual funnel approaches and to a more customer-centric approach which takes into account all of the various activities, processes, and responsibilities of each department.
So, what are the benefits of RevOps?
So, first and foremost, the primary and ultimate benefit of implementing RevOps is that if done properly, it will maximize a company’s revenue potential. However, there are also other benefits along the way associated with the implementation process.
Perhaps the most significant benefit to be realized is cross-departmental alignment. Instead of your marketing, sales, and customer service teams acting independently of each other, a RevOps approach enables them to work together and develop a shared understanding of the full-funnel process as well as their roles and accountabilities within this process.
This alignment not only includes a shared process, but also shared resources such as tools and systems, data, and even people -- working collaboratively to fill gaps and provide support between departments.
Another great benefit of the RevOps approach is its ability to eliminate silos. Most of us are well aware of the age-old silo-fueled feud between marketing and sales. However, the truth of the matter is that silos such as these happen across many departments in all organizations big or small. It’s simply a natural product of having an operation with multiple departments and teams.
However, when RevOps is implemented, collaboration and cohesion is cultivated and as a result, this not only helps companies in their abilities to identify silos in areas such as communications, data, and workflows, but it gives them the ability to fix them.
At the end of the day, a solid RevOps approach is not only able to identify and address bottlenecks, improve cross-departmental alignment, and set your team up for increased revenue potential – it also naturally facilitates the discovery of opportunities and strengths as teams begin to work together and truly understand each other’s value.
However, RevOps doesn’t just stop at helping to align teams towards a shared goal. It can also help transform disconnected revenue processes, set teams up to scale, and make for a more customer centric model.
More traditional approaches to the customer revenue lifecycle tend to lean much more heavily on shaping the customer lifecycle around a specific channel and revenue model. This tends to be just fine until company offerings begin to diversify. Once this happens, so do the number of disconnected revenue processes (and data, and tools). And disconnects equal information silos which lead to teams operating without a view of the full picture.
A great example would be a sales team attempting to upsell a customer who, according to finance records, is actually 2 months behind on payments.
When RevOps is implemented, teams are brought together around a single process that is shaped not around a channel or a product but the individual customer themselves.
How to implement RevOps: The 3 P’s and more
The three pillars of RevOps
RevOps is essentially rooted in three primary pillars which are key to successful implementation. These three pillars are:
- Process
- Platform
- People
Process
RevOps is all about unifying processes and facilitating alignment. In order to be successful, a company must work to foster a spirit of collaboration between its key departments so that they are all working together via a full-funnel approach which encompasses all of their individual processes. Once you are able to realize team alignment, additional benefits will naturally arise such as improved customer experiences and retention rates, a decrease in lost revenue opportunities, more refined customer journeys, shorter sales cycles and higher sales volumes.
Platform
A significant part of unifying processes includes aligning technology and tools. In traditional operations scenarios, different departments often manage different tools, which handle different things and collect different data that is stored separately. When you’re able to achieve alignment internally, including with the platforms you use and the data which they harness, you are able to gain a clearer understanding of the customer experience, story and journey via one centralized source of truth. Gone are the days where your sales team is attempting to upsell a customer who finance has on record being 2 months behind on payments.
People
It should come as no surprise that human power is key to achieving successful RevOps implementation. At the end of the day, your company is only as strong as the individuals who work within it and how well they work amongst themselves. In some instances, you may find that it’s necessary to create a specific RevOps team, however, in many scenarios, it may be sufficient to simply distribute responsibilities amongst team members across departments.
The ’and more’ part…
While the three pillars serve as a solid base for implementing your RevOps approach, there are other essential components which are key to ensuring success.
For one, you’ll need to perform an audit of your processes in order to identify gaps within not just the customer journey, but within tour tech stack, data, and communications workflows. Don’t be afraid to take the time to do a deep dive. The more you know, the better prepared you are to move forward with solutions and be successful in the end.
We wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t mention automation. While you’re doing a deep dive into your processes, you’ll want to also take a nice hard look at the manual lift. More often than not, if this is your first time doing something of the sort, you’re going to find an opportunity for automation. Reducing unnecessary manual lift not only helps to streamline workflows, it provides your teams with the support they truly need so that they can focus on other more important tasks such as upskilling and thinking more strategically.
Lastly, we want to emphasize that it’s important to view this as an iterative process. Continually seek ways to maintain consistency with this new strategic approach, to measure progress, and to look for opportunities to improve. Maybe this entails tactics such as establishing a steering committee who meets on a regular basis to ensure alignment and track progress. Maybe it involves the development of a visual dashboard to track key metrics. The tactics will vary based on your particular environment and culture. But, as long as you’re willing to consistently put in the work, you’ll be just fine.
Conclusion
RevOps is a business function or approach which can be leveraged by any company, large or small to generate greater alignment, streamline workflows, eliminate silos, and boost revenue potential. While there are fundamental basics when it comes to implementing a RevOps approach, the truth of the matter remains that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. In order to be truly effective and impactful, companies must take into account their own unique needs as well as those of their talent and teams. In many instances, the best way to move forward is to work with an external partner who is well-versed in implementing RevOps strategies and will work hand-in-hand with you to create a customized and tailored approach.
If you’re interested in gaining more information on how you can leverage RevOps to upskill your teams, improve your customer experience, boost revenue, and truly thrive in 2023 and beyond, then VisioneerIT can help. Start the conversation today by visiting our website to learn more.
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