A few weeks ago, on Slack (where all good RevOps back-alley discussions happen), I was having a side discussion with a Marketing Operations leader around this question being posed in the webinar we were both attending (he was moderating).
“Is the current direction of RevOps moving down the right path?”
The unanimous answer, for me and for all who were presenting, was a resounding NO.
In its current state, the Revenue Operations (or “RevOps” for short) role has been defined as one of many tactical/technical operational worker-bee roles for an organization. For most, it is likely Sales Operations given a shiny new brand. However, I have seen Finance Operations (billing management), and Lead Operations (management of LeanData routing) taking this title on. I suppose that the rebrand, because “RevOps is sexy,” allows roles to feel more important and marketable, even if the scope of work or span of influence hasn’t changed.
We intuitively **know** that Revenue Operations, by nature, both is and should be strategic and the need is greater than this scope.
So what are most organizations missing?
Let me first present a North Star vision for what it looks like when Revenue Operations is fulfilling its purpose and mission. Here’s the statement.
RevOps is the Process Owner in your company for all things “revenue.” It is the organization that manages to and reports on “the truth” for process, measurement, KPIs, and performance for the entire revenue supply chain, which includes:
- Acquisition marketing
- Demand generation
- Lead management
- Pipeline management
- Quote and order fulfillment
- Customer Experience
- Customer onboarding, success, and renewal
Essentially, anything that produces or touches revenue for the organization.
RevOps doesn’t own the detail for what goes on in these pockets of revenue processing within your company, but it does own how things move consistently and predictably through these stops in the customer experience.
Revenue Operations owns the process that connects the chain and tells the whole revenue story. This includes the data definitions, data flows, and KPI definitions that define “success” for each group in terms of how it drives value for the company, which means there is a level of governance in each stage of the process, but ownership of none (that’s why Marketing Operations, Sales Operations, and Finance Operations exist, to own the detail of the “how” within each stage of the customer journey).
The best analogy that I heard, from a member of this webinar, is that of the Independent Press. In a functioning Republic like the United States, you have rival political parties with their agendas that they bring to the table. You have Republicans and Democrats who govern and influence how policy is made and executed. The independent press is there and is not part of a political party and not holding to the agenda of any of the political parties, but is there to hold the governing parties accountable and to report on the unbiased truth.
A well-functioning revenue operations function is operating in the same way with your company’s leadership. They work to align and report on the performance of marketing, sales, customer success, etc… but they don’t report to these functions and thus can be a governing and unbiased “source of truth” for the organization on the revenue flow, inclusive of the revenue organizations but independent of them. This independence allows them to be positioned as the trusted advisor to leadership to provide an unbiased view of revenue performance.
Having this unbiased source of truth and governance over the process of revenue is what companies need to understand “how are we really performing?”
Otherwise (and this is because budgets are tied to such reporting), each function will report the truth as they see it, which is usually colored in that organization’s view (which can be colored with bias or muddied by disconnected processes). This is the nature of self-reporting. You report the version of the truth that you most want leadership to see. It’s not that it isn’t true… it just isn’t complete and it’s told from a specific point of view.
The result of this creates a dissonance that muddies the total revenue picture.
As a result, organizations tend to “guess” more than they want to admit when it comes to forecasting key financial items like leads, pipeline, orders/bookings, order fulfillment, advocacy, etc. We want to be scientific, but the data created by disconnected processes usually creates a scenario where leadership says…
“Well, hell, let’s just say we’ll increase revenue by 10%.”
That’s doesn't seem like science. It looks more like betting. Good businesses, however, don’t forecast based on luck, but based on reliable and actionable data.
This is why organizations need to take steps to remove as much bias as possible out of these strategically important reports.
Hence, why a function like Revenue Operations is gaining traction in the operations conversation.
However, this change management is hard and requires strong leadership to put into action. This leadership is present, and those who lead will find that the work to transform and create this “independent press” organization in revenue, as it exists in Corporate Finance, will be ahead of the curve.
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