In this article, we will go over why every business should have RevOps in their operations and some tricks on how you can fully harness its power.
Revenue operations or RevOps can be thought of as a support role that focuses on the back-end functions that keep revenue flowing into your business. Those who work in this position are responsible for making sure invoices get sent out and paid within an appropriate amount of time and keeping track of past due accounts.
They also manage billing processes (for example, updating accounts when there are changes in services), oversee the collections process (collecting past due invoices and negotiating payment plans with customers who fall behind on their bills), investigate customer complaints about billing issues, and provide support to other departments.
More importantly, RevOps is a cross-functional role. It's supposed to improve the visibility of revenue flows across a company's multiple departments such as marketing, sales, and customer service. The purpose? To improve the efficiency of the revenue process throughout the company. After all, revenue efficiency leads to revenue growth.
The way enterprises conduct business today is very different from how they did a decade ago. This is simply because consumers interact with products differently now. Previously, a company was only concerned about the sale; after that, it didn't matter.
Today, companies offer subscription-based models and consumers do way more research before buying a product. Unlike a decade ago, after-sales services are as important as the pre-sale marketing process in today's business world.
This means that all departments within a company must always work in tandem. Never before was this level of coordination ever needed across a company's departments.
It used to be like marketing, sales, and customer success worked independently of each other. It just can't happen that way now – there's just too much at stake. High competition can lower your customer retention and you might just end up losing a major chunk of your market share.
The revenue of a company, especially for an enterprise with thousands of customers, is never stagnant. It's always on the move, ebbing and flowing as different economic factors come into play. If you don't have someone monitoring those changes within your business' revenue stream, it can take a serious toll on profit margins.
There are two different ways that RevOps can be structured in an organization. It can either be a part of finance or embedded in operations. The most common place we find RevOps being implemented is in Finance because after all, it is a finance-related role.
What makes it stand out from other roles is its focus on managing money flows rather than just reporting financial performance analysis once everything has already happened. This involves accurate forecasting even when business climates are uncertain.
The goal here is to avoid letting such issues happen at all by having someone with a keen eye keeping track of things like billings, collections, overdue accounts, etc. before they spiral into something bigger and costlier for your company down the road.
The other structure involves placing it within a company's operations team. As the name suggests, this role focuses more on ensuring revenue flows smoothly throughout an enterprise by managing operational processes that directly affect money coming into and going out of a business.
This kind of oversight ensures timely invoicing and billing while keeping track of collections efforts to minimize bad debt in the long run. This structure is more suitable for smaller companies that don't have dedicated finance or accounting departments, which is why it's also called a "revenue cycle analyst."
If you've been a business owner or manager for a long time, then you must know that financial acumen is probably one of the more important skillsets to have in your company. And this is where the RevOps role fits in.
The revenue operations position offers something critical and valuable – it's able to provide insights regarding how money flows within an organization. This information can be used as actionable strategies by other departments.
In fact, we'll go out on a limb here and say that no matter what role someone plays in an enterprise (marketing execs, customer success managers), their job would become easier if they had access to data showing them where potential problems could crop up when it comes time to generate revenue from customers.
This kind of insight allows employees across departments within companies to make better decisions about how to build and maintain a profitable business.
More importantly, revenue operations' main focus is on saving money for the organization rather than focusing on maximizing profits or growing revenues quickly at all costs (which can lead down some dangerous paths).
Having someone with this mindset ensures that your company's resources are being utilized effectively – not just how much of them you have but also what they're intended to accomplish in the first place!
With RevOps, the marketing department has the right tech and tools to understand where they're going wrong and where they have to improve. For example, if their marketing campaigns are generating lots of leads but failing to convert them into paying customers, then they can use this data to get a better understanding of what's going wrong.
When it comes to sales, a RevOps professional would know exactly what's going on in the sales department. For example, if the sales team is struggling to close bigger deals, that should be a red flag for other departments like marketing and product development. It means they need better leads or messaging because consumers are not picking up traction.
All of this requires business owners and managers working with RevOps professionals to take an active part in their organization's revenue operations by having regular check-ins about how each department is performing as well as when something isn't going right. It takes some effort and time from everyone but ultimately pays off very well down the road!
You already know RevOps is important, but how do you get on the right track? For that, you need an organized dataset that guides your RevOps strategy.
HubSpot is all about reducing friction in the flywheel. What their software does is break down all your company's data so you can understand where things are going wrong and steer your RevOps strategy in the right direction.
Some of this data is about monetization and retention, brand affinity and dollar retention metrics, how integrations are affecting your customer retention, and customer acquisition costs, and so much more. At the end of the day, it's all about reducing friction in your operations so that RevOps becomes more beneficial.