What is RevOps?
The most common question faced to organizations struggling to optimize or build out their commercial teams operations is around the latest incarnation popping up everywhere: RevOps.
But what is RevOps? What is the common structure and scope of the team?
One thing that is important to clarify is that RevOps is NOT just another name for Sales Operations.
The most simple way to explain what RevOps is all about is this: Revenue Operations’ mandate is to reduce friction and risk while increasing efficiency and effectiveness of performance in revenue generating activities across the various go-to-market teams including sales, marketing, and customer success.
What does RevOps do?
RevOps is accountable for managing the processes and systems that enable commercial teams involved in the entire customer lifecycle to effectively and efficiently engage with customers and manage their accounts.
In partnership with Marketing, Product, Product Marketing, IT, and Finance teams, a fully functioning RevOps team optimizes business functions and allows the GTM engine to scale via automation, integration, tooling, process controls, enablement & training, source data validation & cleansing, data production, workflow management, resource planning, and reporting.
Bear in mind that RevOps is not just in place for reporting insights or revenue, but also operational performance and health metrics that allow for proper management of the various business functions.
As is the case with most Operations Teams, the scope and structure of Revenue Operations is highly variable from business to business. Its structure depends on a number of factors including industry, company size, and the age of their Sales and Ops leadership.
RevOps appeared as “a thing” when the complexity of modern day digital marketing, sales, and customer service highlighted the need for centralized data management and systems integrations to support the flows of information between teams and tools.
As the CRM ecosystem evolves at breakneck speed, the silos between Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Finance are being broken down. An increasing number of businesses are recognizing the need for the commercial IT and operations strategy to be managed by one team.
Key benefits of having a properly structured RevOps function:
● Predictable Business Growth: Through accurate and consistent measurements and forecasts accessible to front line sales, marketing and customer success team members.
● Revenue Growth: The efficiency gains you can expect as a result of implementing RevOps will allow:
○ Marketing campaign performance to be better measured and optimized
○ Sales reps to generate more revenue on an individual basis
○ CS reps to retain and expand more of our customer base
…resulting in overall revenue growth without increasing expense and resources
● Adapting to Market Changes: As your business grows, it requires major changes. RevOps provides communication, process adaptability, and training & project management, making internal transitions seamless.
Teams: What is RevOps composed of?
Typically RevOps is made up of 3-6 main teams:
- Marketing Operations
- Sales Operations
- Customer Success Operations
- Billing Operations
- Enablement (sometimes this function is a standalone function, sometimes it falls under the various ops teams)
- Data Analysis and Insights
For more detail on the scope and function of these teams, check out this article
RevOps Tech Stack
At the center of every RevOps team is the CRM stack. The ecosystem of tools that connect to support all the various functions is massive. Luckily we are here to help! Check out our various category pages for more detail on the types of tools being leveraged by the various teams that make up Revenue Operations: