The Power of Revenue Operations

By Jim Perdue, Director, Client Strategy

From product innovations to customer experience, most manufacturing firms prioritize market-facing strategies in the quest to maximize profits. It makes sense. But what about internal operations? The reality is that your firm’s internal activities represent an important opportunity to drive revenue in their own right. After all, the more efficiently and effectively your team works together, the higher your rate of profitability will be.

Bringing your cross-functional teams into alignment is about more than just agreeing to work toward the same goals. You must maintain and leverage that alignment by keeping your teams focused and supporting their cross-functional efforts with the right processes and procedures. In order to do that well, you need someone whose primary focus is driving growth through operational efficiency and cross-functional alignment.

Enter revenue operations.

What is RevOps?

The primary function of RevOps is to drive growth by improving a firm’s operational efficiency. To do this, RevOps acts as an interlock between the marketing, sales, product, and customer experience teams. Its goal is to keep the entire organization aligned and focused on corporate strategy, operations, and organizational priorities.

In addition to breaking down silos, RevOps seeks to optimize a firm’s internal processes, procedures and tools so each team can be as successful as possible. For example, most manufacturing firms use a tech stack to manage their marketing, sales and customer experience efforts. In many cases, ownership of the tech stack is blurry or misplaced and the tools themselves aren’t fully optimized or leveraged. In this case, RevOps would help a single team take ownership of the tech stack and ensure that all the key stakeholders are fully trained to use the tools. In addition, the RevOps leader works closely with the IT department to ensure the tools are kept current and that data is properly managed.

RevOps seeks to standardize a firm’s data and KPIs so the entire organization can make decisions and assess progress based on the same set of data and measurements.

Revenue operations is concerned with every aspect of an organization’s internal functions. That means it must work at both the macro and micro levels. It must be fully dialed into the overarching corporate strategy. And it must also have a granular understanding of the individual tactical approaches that make up the larger strategy.

When it comes down to it, RevOps is the hammer that brings down the walls of siloed departments. It owns the focus of the organization and is in charge of removing costly redundancy. And it does this through crystal clear reporting and data standardization.

Finally, many organizations will tell you that they already do these things. That may be true. But they often do so in a piecemeal, ad hoc manner, without the dedicated focus of a true RevOps department or leader.

Why Your Manufacturing Firm Needs a RevOps Leader

In order for revenue operations to make a real impact, firms must commit to the process. They must remain laser-focused on improving their operational dynamics, processes, and procedures. And they must do so while continuing to uphold their day-to-day responsibilities. Because the bar for success is high, more and more manufacturing companies are hiring or partnering with dedicated RevOps leaders.

The RevOps leader and their team focus on helping each division perform optimally and work seamlessly with other cross-functional teams to achieve a firm’s big-picture goals. They hold each division accountable to growth goals and maintain organization transparency with revenue performance readouts.

RevOps leaders and partners must have a deep understanding of the organization’s operating processes and procedures. And they must also know how each stakeholder’s responsibilities are impacted. By gaining a holistic picture of your organization as well as a clear understanding of how each program will be accomplished, RevOps leaders are able to clearly define roles and responsibilities for each initiative. And they are able to forecast revenue through functional performance.

In addition, RevOps leaders are key in overseeing the planning, budgeting, and resourcing of programs. It’s all too easy for cross-functional leaders to get off track on a company-wide initiative when a function-specific issue arises. If support for a program wavers, the RevOps leader stands prepared to bring the team back together. They do this by tracking and measuring each revenue activity. Readouts are key, and the cadence must be frequent. A strong RevOps leader uses this data to deliver key insights that keep your programs on track. Gut instincts don’t come into play.

The Benefits of Revenue Operations

Of course, the main goal of revenue operations is to maximize profits. But your firm stands to realize many additional benefits in the process. These include:

• A more holistic view of what’s happening. When all of your individual teams are in regular communication around shared goals, you get a more holistic view of what’s happening — in the marketplace and within your organization.
• The ability to identify and fix breakdowns faster. Improved communications and increased collaboration mean that your team is more likely to catch problems early enough to nip them in the bud.
• Consistency in measuring success: It doesn’t make sense for your sales team to measure success differently than marketing. Standardizing your data and KPIs allows your entire organization to speak the same language. Individual teams can still have individual scorecards, but the means by which success is measured should be consistent. Doing so aids your organization in making informed, smart decisions.
• Faster feedback loops. Through revenue operations, organizations can quickly understand whether or not key strategies are working. Understanding what is and isn’t driving success allows you to hit your growth goals faster.

When you invest in revenue operations, you ultimately invest in making your business better. Not only does this help you maximize profits in the short-term, but it also sets your organization up for success in the long haul.