The Need for Revenue Operations
Over the past 10 years, there has been an increasing shift to a more expansive view of revenue. Organizations are adopting mixed business models that include subscriptions, self-service e-commerce, usage- and milestone-based pricing as well as one-time purchases. With the differing economics of subscription models and self-service channels, operations teams are now more concerned with margin, not just revenue. This broadens the revenue focus to include customer retention and relationship expansion as well as new sales.
Workers who historically have not been engaged in direct sales are now supporting this wider view of revenue. Customer service and success teams are linked directly to customer retention. Account teams are tied to upsell and cross-sell opportunities in existing accounts. Marketing is now increasingly measured on revenue targets as well as playing an active role in communication that promotes cross-sell opportunities to existing customers. While many traditional sales operations teams are taking on wider responsibility with new roles in revenue operations. Many organizations have created a Chief Revenue Officer role to focus on all sources of revenue. Critical to the success of this role is the finance team’s ability to aid in these profitability and margin analyses by being able to access the relevant data, analytics and forecasts.