RevOps (revenue operations) isn’t just a new buzzword. Although it borrows from existing marketing, sales, and service operations disciplines it focuses on the full client journey. RevOps supports all customer-facing teams, improves revenue opportunities and customer satisfaction. Why is it time to consider adding a RevOps function to your organization?
1 - Broken processes
Marketing, sales, and customer success professionals all agree that there are gaps between each team in traditionally siloed organizations. Sales doesn’t act on marketing leads quickly enough, marketing can’t measure the value of their programs, and customer success has to rediscover client requirements during onboarding.
Do you have a customer-centered process to address needs from lead generation through renewal?
2 - Broken data
Each team believes they have unique data requirements, which all need to be added into the data structure. Each group adds new fields and values to the database, which makes record management unwieldy and data difficult to use. With no governance, you’ll soon see duplication, invalid information, non-standard values, and far more.
Do you have a single-source-of-truth database that all teams can report from confidently?
3 - Broken tech stacks
It is far too easy to add a new widget because it’s “vital”. Then, to have it abandoned when it’s too complex or doesn’t provide the value promised. Often, companies have multiple solutions that do very similar things. On a good day, that’s expensive. On a bad day, infrastructure will simply break down leaving vital tools unavailable to your teams.
Do you have a way to manage additional software that focuses on customer experience rather than technical wizardry?
4 - KPIs don’t align with business success
While marketing reports hundreds of qualified leads, sales reports that only the leads they create close as new deals. And customer success reports high client attrition because the products they received weren’t what was sold to them.
Are your teams’ success metrics aligned with organizational objectives?
How does a RevOps Wizard Solve these Challenges?
The strength of a fully-enabled RevOps leader is that they think through a client satisfaction lens. They consider process, data, technology, KPIs, training and more across the organization. To bridge organizational gaps, a RevOps leader will focus on ensuring the right processes are in place. They also guarantee all data is clean and reliable, and the tech stack is optimized to support the customer lifecycle.
Map processes
First, observe and interview. Find out from members of each team what processes they use to move someone from lead to renewal. Then, map actions against a timeline and overlay who “owns” that step. Next, how do you know a prospect has entered or left a given step. Lastly, what are the micro conversions that move a prospect through the pipeline.
Then, RevOps works with the entire team to identify challenges that are slowing down or keeping clients from having a smooth experience.
Often, small changes in a process can result in significant improvement further along the customer journey. For example, changing a marketing-to-sales lead handoff process could speed up sales follow up, which would increase the prospect’s positive experience. Or, if customer success can only onboard a client after their initial invoice is paid, consider incenting sales to complete a post-close outreach before handoff to customer success.
Data governance
A RevOps professional knows how important data quality is to the smooth running of all customer-facing teams. Ultimately, data governance is an internal framework that manages the availability, usability, integrity, and security of data. It also establishes data standards and controls access to data.
Although there are many aspects to data governance, one of the most important documents that RevOps should build is a data dictionary. This document maps all fields in each system, integration across platforms, and identifies the platform of record for any given field. Building this dictionary will help identify data or integration gaps, or inconsistencies in data formats. A data dictionary also provides clarity on what data structure you can add or change, while understanding impact across the ecosystem.
Tech stack management
Although most companies rely on IT to implement new sales, marketing, or success technology platforms, RevOps should be part of that discussion (or leading it). IT is amazing at making technical solutions work, whereas RevOps works with customer-facing teams to identify *why* to use particular solutions.
First, RevOps should inventory all of the technology platforms teams use. Then look at each investment to see whether there is functional duplication, gaps, or inefficiencies.
Once the customer-facing teams have had an opportunity to review their unique technology requirements, your revenue operations wizard can work with each team to simplify and streamline their piece of the tech stack, validate integrations, and cross-train where needed.
Conclusion
Do you still view operations as a cost center? With a new lens of customer experience, the RevOps function is able to find revenue opportunities, protect valuable data, and find ways to save time and money through wise technology choices.
Want to learn more? Check out the services MRM offers in helping you adopt revenue operations at your company.
