8 Business Drivers You Don’t Know About RevOps
Business leaders understand that technology drives massive change. But did you know that revenue operations serve as the tip of the spear for business drivers and growth? It’s essential to get familiar with the concept if you haven’t heard about revenue operations (RevOps). Doing so will give you a distinct competitive advantage. And when your competitors realize it, it’s too late and costly for them to catch up.
Problem: One of the main problems in business is aligning strategy with results. Even relying on measurement and technology, processes often get too complex. Unfortunately, more processes or tech isn’t the answer for effective business drivers.
Opportunity: Of course, it is fundamental to realize you have what it takes to succeed. Awareness, as we know, is the first step toward action. The next step for business leadership is to obtain a holistic system to align goals with the actual outputs for growth.
Solution: Revenue operations, or RevOps, is an emerging discipline. At its core, it centralizes everything within a central nerve center. Like an airplane pilot, business leadership gets all the information to make informed business decisions.
Why is Centralization of Processes Essential?
Technology is essential for your business. Everyone probably agrees with that idea. As we know, we live in the data and information age. Data information, metaphorically speaking, is the lifeblood and at the core of your business drivers. Every business leader wanting to drive revenue growth understands the value of data and tech. At present, 97 zettabytes exist globally, and it’s projected to double in fewer than 3 years.
So, why does RevOps serving as the central nervous system for the business drivers matter? The answer is simple. RevOps provides you with a way to align your team and simplify tech. It also eliminates complexity, which inevitably drives revenue. When you make RevOps the core, you fundamentally shift your position. Meaning you operate with a systemic approach that’s measurable, repeatable, and sustainable.
RevOps becomes the heart of the central nervous system of your company. In the process, business leadership gets the whole picture of all business units and not simply fragments of the puzzle to piece together.
What is Revenue Operations?
Revenue operations is a centralized approach to serving the core business drivers of your company. In short, everything gets centralized. For instance, you align everything from the software platforms to the systems and processes. A way to think of it is as a wheel. Consider every area of your company as a spoke on a wheel. RevOps becomes the center or hubcap of the centralized nerve center. Ultimately, RevOps works to serve your marketing, sales, human resources, finance, and operations.
Ultimately, you’ll grow sales with a revenue operating system by having a centralized system. Why? Because you eliminate the silos within your company. Inevitably, organizational fiefdoms become the most significant challenge for companies. As we know, humans like to protect their turf. Inevitably, silos and invisible walls develop. As a result, business leadership doesn’t get the entire picture.
Because information is power, the control of that data becomes powerful. But, businesses don’t have time or use for that nonsense. By leaning into RevOps, the walls disappear. The information (and, yes, power) gets centralized where it belongs—with c-suite business leaders.
8 Things Most People Don’t Know
The reality is that the concept of revenue operations is emerging. Data, technology, and engagement are the fundamentals for success in the 21st Century. But data and tech lead to complexity. RevOps is the solution as everyone undergoes the digital transformation. The complexity and ever-increasing tech stacks create the severe risk of becoming overwhelming. Continuous change, threats, opportunities, and tech lead to frustration. But, there’s no need for all the drama. It’s simply a matter of creating a nerve center for the business.
Revenue operations serve as the hub of the business drivers. It optimizes processes and centralizes the view for everyone. It allows information to get viewed in its entirety by business leadership. Candidly, it also helps to ease the anxiety of people. Let’s face it; not everyone’s a data or tech scientist or strategist. So, let a central team of people support the units. And, let the ‘people’ persons, such as your sales team, do what they do best, develop relationships.
So, let’s explore what most people don’t know about RevOps.
1. RevOps is an Emerging Discipline with New Frameworks and Vocabulary
The area of revenue operations is a leading-edge discipline. With the immense disruption brought on by technology, leaders quickly find themselves with new challenges. For instance, business units don’t communicate with other areas in the same company.
As a result, information gets fragmented. C-suite executives make decisions but realize they don’t have the entire picture. The idea of centralizing isn’t new. But, the centralized framework and vocabulary of RevOps are new. In short, it’s intended for modern leaders dealing with high complexity.
2. Answer to the Disappointment of Leaders by Turning Strategy into Results
As previously stated, one of the critical problems in business is turning strategy into results. In other words, the execution of deliverables is where the game falls apart. Moreover, top leaders get only information fragments, which is not workable. Instead, RevOps centralizes all the systems of your business. As a result of implementing RevOps, you eliminate that challenge. In short, c-suite executives get the entire picture, unfiltered, through one central lens.
3. Many Companies Don’t Yet Have RevOps
The reality is that many organizations don’t yet have RevOps. But just because that’s a present reality, it doesn’t mean you don’t want to lead on the innovation. In fact, you should. Why? As the emerging idea of RevOps grows and more leaders learn how it fully aligns with the business drivers, more companies will make the switch.
The reality is that competition in the modern era is brutal. You must be the first out of the gate, and to the victor go the spoils. If you see dysfunction or only part of the data you need to know, you can’t afford not to create a RevOps team.
4. Your Tech Stack’s Spinning out of Control
The data and tech revolution is excellent. Inevitably it will achieve things we never thought imaginable. And the reality is that’s already the case. For instance, a COVID vaccine got developed in less than a year instead of four or five. There’s a technology solution for everything. And while all the shiny new toys are great, you don’t need everything.
A RevOps team allows for strategic decisions in a coordinated approach. For instance, they serve the marketing, sales, and financial units. When they decide on the technology, they do it with knowledge of the whole picture.
5. RevOps Allows for Frictionless Data, Architecture, and Analytics
Because technology companies understand the landscape, they realize tech is complex. Thus, one of the central ideas for tech is frictionless processes. Meaning, technology must integrate with tech from other sources and companies, and its management must be fluid. If you have a RevOps team, they bring all integration and complexity together.
In other words, as architects of your company, they understand how the pieces fit. The result is that business leadership gets synthesized data information—not a patchwork.
6. With a Centralized System, You Eliminate the Silos
As mentioned earlier, office politics, power plays, and egos inevitably play into companies’ goals. As a result, business leadership ends up getting partial pictures. Sure, they get the data information from all their units, but is it all the information they need? And even if there’s no ill intent, is the data the correct information?
With revenue operations, that gets eliminated. There’s one central hub of information. And that means leaders get the complete picture of the business drivers essential to grow revenue.
7. Revenue Operations Needs to Know the Business Drivers
RevOps could become the core and nerve center of your business. However, as we know, every company aims to make a profit. Therefore, when you position RevOps as the heart of your business, the team needs to possess information. In short, they must know all revenue influencing functions, business growth strategy, and data information.
That team must, like business leaders, have a complete understanding of the company as a whole. In doing so, they could make proper decisions about tech, processes, and systems.
8. You’ll Get a Big Competitive Advantage With RevOps
As noted in our third point, RevOps isn’t integrated—yet—into many businesses. However, you’ll get a substantial competitive advantage if you decide to do it. Why? Because you align all areas of your company. Moreover, your business drivers become systemic, measurable, iterative, and sustainable.
The chances are that your competitors deal with the exact misalignment that you do. But, when you centralize your operations through RevOps, you get the entire picture. This shift is mainly undetected by your competitors—until it’s too late and expensive for them to catch up.
With revenue operations as the hub, your team, systems, and measurements get viewed holistically. What does that mean in practicality? It means everyone’s reading and operating off the same playbook. No one’s out in left-field by themselves. Moreover, business leaders have one central place to get the entire picture.
Inevitably, everyone using the same language, supporting company-wide goals, delivers full-funnel accountability. Moreover, the ecosystem (like a human’s central nervous system) is iterative, measurable, and sustainable.
Ben Stroup is Chief Growth Architect and President at Velocity Strategy Solutions where he helps leaders design, develop, and deploy smarter business growth strategies. Ben is a futurist, disruptor, and data champion. He leads a team that takes a structured learning approach to business challenges, which allows them to assist leaders in bridging the gap between ideas, innovation, and revenue—taking ideas from mind to market.
Velocity Strategy Solutions is an on-demand, next-generation business strategy and management consulting firm which provides clients with a relentless focus on data, execution, and results that positively impact the bottom line. Velocity delivers integrated people and revenue strategies combined with a disciplined approach to growth architecture that elevates the capacity of leaders, teams, and organizations to succeed and win more.