Answering questions about the newest brewing function in SaaS. Get to know about all things Revenue Operations.
Revenue Operations is the function in your organization that aligns revenue generators (Marketing, Sales, Success, and Finance) across the revenue cycle, in order to plug inefficiencies existing between them and thereby maximize revenue.
When revenue drivers are siloed with their tools, processes, and goals, there exists a misalignment that causes leaks in your revenue cycle. A SiriusDecisions study concluded that companies that aligned their revenue-generating functions had a 19% faster revenue growth and 15% higher profits. RevOps is the unification of Marketing, Sales, Success and Finance so that they work on the same page.
No, SalesOps focuses only on the sales function of the organization by refining processes and reducing friction in the sales cycle. Whereas, RevOps is a more holistic end-to-end approach which is implemented to manage operations across Marketing, Sales, Success, and Finance to increase and retain your revenue.
There are four building blocks of RevOps
People: The RevOps team is the center of all revenue-driving processes. They channelize requests from different teams and prioritize them, reduce friction in onboarding new processes, looking at KPIs that matter and making the right decisions.
Tools: As you scale you need to migrate data, unplug and plug existing tools and processes, etc. Henceforth you need a solid infrastructure that lets you handle these requirements as and when they arise without being a cog in your process.
Processes: Processes are required to reduce friction and eliminate practices that hinder revenue growth amongst and between your revenue teams, so that it doesn't impact your revenue cycle.
Analytics: End-to-end visibility across data is required to function without chasm and uncertainty. Complete visibility of your revenue metrics is required to supercharge your growth.
Finance plays a pivotal role from an annual operations angle and focuses on controlling your costing, expansion, payback period and growth of your recurring revenue. In SaaS, the lines where sales ends and finance begins are blurry. Most of the metrics like LTV: CAC and OTE (On-target Earnings) coincide between these functions. Therefore, alignment across these teams is important to meet your revenue guidelines.
Ideally, there is no right time to build a RevOps function. If you face similar problems like the ones listed here, you should start thinking RevOps
Learn more about the key contributors to an anti-fragile RevOps team
By incorporating a RevOps function in your organization, you get
Your revenue cycle merges with your prospects' journey at different stages. In subscription businesses, happy customers have a longer LTV. More specifically, happy customers are 74% more likely to stay for one more year. The only way to achieve sustainable revenue growth is by aligning all your revenue-driving functions to deliver a stellar customer experience so that every revenue opportunity can be ready to be cashed.
Here's a detailed account of how customer experience is just another side to RevOps
Your revenue operations team should consist of a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) / VP of RevOps leading your Marketing Head, Sales Head, Finance Head and Success Head. As your company grows your RevOps team keeps evolving depending upon your requirements.
The Chief Revenue Officer of a company is the guardian of all things revenue. The CRO's role is to look at ways to generate and retain revenue across multiple channels. A CRO should take a unified view across all the teams and arrive at long-term strategies for steady and positive revenue growth.
A CRO
A CRO aligns your revenue-generating departments to harness sustained growth. They ensure there's uniformity in messaging across your organization for prospects to have a seamless user experience throughout their buying journey, creating an environment conducive to sustained growth and minimal churn.
To define revenue strategy, execute GTM activities, construct and optimize revenue systems, pipeline management, ROI on spend, churn.
In most organizations, the Chief Revenue Officer directly reports to the CEO and the board.
A CRO is responsible for the alignment of revenue-generating functions and ensuring sustainable revenue growth by successfully executing GTM strategies. A CFO is majorly responsible for raising and managing capital needed to make a business function.
A revenue analyst tracks revenue data of the company over a period of time, determines the direction of the revenue trend and works across functions to develop new strategies for growth and retention. They're responsible for analyzing large sets of numerical data and extracting valuable information for making data-driven decisions.
