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A Revenue Operations (RevOps) team is responsible for business processes or functions driving revenue. Utilizing strategies, data, procedures, resources and tools such as change management systems, data and software, they work to align and improve efficiencies across all departments that impact revenue growth with the goal of maximizing profit.
A key reason that RevOps is becoming a widely used strategy in the business world is to improve the customer journey. RevOps accomplishes this by aligning pigeon-holed teams such as marketing, sales, product and customer success.
If you are interested in the strategy but know you simply can’t speak RevOps into existence, where do you begin? It may be helpful to utilize an org chart to spell out who has the authority to make strategic decisions, implement changes and direct other team members, particularly when these decisions and changes impact functions across revenue-generating teams.
Perhaps you believe RevOps is a strategy you want to consider for implementation at your business, but you don’t have the time to invest in the strategy, reach out to us. Bridges offers free RevOps consultations. As RevOps pros, we can make some great recommendations for your revenue operations structures to help you build the correct foundation.
As there are multiple ways to structure revenue operations org charts, we’ll look at some of the nuts and bolts of putting one together.
Why are business leaders shifting to a RevOps team structure?
Business leaders recognize that revenue is a result of the complete end-to-end process of sales, marketing and customer success. It has become more evident that when these teams are siloed, the gaps between the departments are reflected in the customer experience. Customer handoffs between the teams are often incomplete leaving the customer stranded mid-process and revenue opportunities incomplete.
By having a revenue operations team structure, business leaders are intentionally connecting marketing teams with sales operations and customer success teams under a revenue team umbrella. These connections are necessary to eliminate silos, deliver on key metrics, and achieve revenue goals and growth through the improved customer success operations.
Who makes up a RevOps department?
There are no hard and fast rules about who makes up a RevOps department or where they live on an org chart. However, the revenue operations framework should centralize goals and improve the customer experience by streamlining these key areas: Operations, Enablement, Insight and Tools.
- Operations management - this team manages resources ensuring that the operations’ outcome aligns with the business’ needs. They focus on the big-picture by taking care of strategic issues and making sure everything is running efficiently with customer outcomes aligning with the business’ needs.
- Enablement team - the enablement team focuses on bringing the professional development, content, training, and tools to your sales, marketing and customer service processes to help your company improve its revenue-driving functions.
- Insights team - this team (which can also be the analytics team) provides insight and context into the data and key metrics of your business’ operations. Using their data analysis, a business can make better decisions and optimize sales, marketing and customer success.
- Tools team - the tools team oversees and manages all the technology that your go-to-market departments use. The team is responsible for unifying tech stacks with robust integrations, automations to align processes from beginning to end, systems administration and maintenance.
Does company size impact RevOps implementation?
It can. If your company is small, you may be thinking that the RevOps strategy doesn’t make sense as there are too many roles to be filled. But regardless of your company’s size, you can still institute some formal structures to drive alignment.
Smaller Companies
Consider distributing RevOps-related functions to current ops managers and/or appointing a RevOps committee. The committee will work with shared goals and can look for ways to improve efficiency, share resources and align the teams. Another possibility is to create a position on each team to handle all four areas of RevOps responsibilities.
The drawback to each of these options is there is no specified head of revenue operations so someone will need to have final decision making authority.
Medium or Midsize Companies
With more resources comes more options. These companies can expand on the small company options by placing someone to handle each, or any, of the four key roles into their sales teams, marketing operations and customer experience departments. These team members can work to align the teams by improving communication and processes while setting cross-functional goals.
The drawback to this option is still the same: there is no specified head of RevOps to keep the functions driving revenue on track and accountable.
Large Companies
Generally speaking, companies with 1,000 or more employees will have the resources needed to implement a RevOps team. They may choose to make RevOps a separate team in addition to marketing, sales and customer success. Or, they may restructure marketing, sales and customer success under a RevOps division.
Most likely there will be a specified head of RevOps who is responsible for the overall customer experience while providing oversight of the four key roles of RevOps strategy.
Does a RevOps org chart help me scale?
When first formed, companies are typically divided by functional areas with each area having separate accountabilities and key metrics. As the company grows, teams become siloed and customers may become dissatisfied with having to deal with different areas, often receiving varying answers from the different departments.
By implementing a RevOps org chart, you will be adding a RevOps team or assigning team members to the sales, marketing and customer success teams. These team members are tasked with centralizing data, streamlining functions, technology stack management, and looking for operational gaps that can be improved. As each team has a key role in driving revenue, it’s logical to align their strategies, planning and execution.
It will take time and work to set up the RevOps structure. However, when properly aligned and operating efficiently, the RevOps structured team should help drive growth and keep teams accountable to revenue.
Challenges of Implementing RevOps Teams
Arnold Bennett wrote in The Great Adventure that any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts. And that can be true when implementing new processes and structures such as RevOps. Some of the problems you may encounter include:
- Budget: While leadership may approve of the RevOps structure, they may balk at budget requests for new staff or the technology to support it.
- Organizational Politics: Management may not want to share resources or relinquish control. Marketing doesn’t really want to share control of the message or sales doesn’t want to try new tactics, it’s to be expected.
- Operational Alignment: Upper management is recognizing that functional silos that shift clients from one to the other, with different people, processes and technologies, are a barrier to revenue growth. But tearing down the silos isn’t done overnight and requires a lot of work and a company culture change.
- Uncertainty: RevOps is a relatively new concept which brings with it uncharted territory. Revenue teams or employees are focused on the big picture as opposed to individual functions within the business. Management may struggle with how to structure RevOps due in part to limited examples and the lack of available assistance from consultants.
Are org charts even useful anymore?
Org charts have typically existed in the past to show who reports to whom and what each department is responsible for, such as sales, marketing, products, and so on. How high your name was on the chart was indicative of your level of responsibility and importance within the company.
That is not necessarily true in the RevOps world. The RevOps org chart will reflect the role’s function and how they relate to other roles. It will show how each role supports the overall operations of the business with each having individual performance metrics. Core processes are mapped with individual accountabilities recorded for each process. Some processes will cross functional divisions with a specific position ensuring alignment and success.
Intrigued? Learn more about revenue operations.
You are welcome to keep reading. We have much more information about the RevOps structure and how to make it work for your company.
