Proper Data Flow is the Precursor to Optimising Business Success

Decision-makers within the enterprise ecosystem have never had access to more data.?Unfortunately, the true potential of that data often goes unrealised due to lack of proper data flow between organizational silos.

When you understand the flow of data, you are able to better understand why Revenue Operations (RevOps) has become such an integral part of business success.

What is Data Flow?

Data flow is the process in which information is communicated across a business.

There are three key types of data: customer, product & service, and performance.

Customer data

Customer data is any information that relates to a prospective or current customer.

This includes information such as:

• Name
• Email
• Job title
• Organization
• Location within the sales funnel
• Level of engagement with brand touchpoints
• Purchase history

Product and service data

Product and service data is any information related to the things you sell.

This type of data includes things like:

• Pricing structure
• Value offerings
• Target audience
• Terms and conditions
• Contracts

Business performance data

Business performance data is any information that indicates the success of your business.

At a high level, performance data might include:

• Average monthly and annual revenue
• Number of products or services sold
• Average lifetime value of a customer

At a department level, business performance data might include:

• Number of new leads generated in a month
• Number of sales meetings
• Conversion rate from lead to deal won
• Time to move a customer from lead to sales opportunity
• Number of emails, calls, referrals, etc.

When businesses are in their infancy, systems are relatively simple. Your staff is small and so is your customer base, which means data can be communicated using emails and spreadsheets.

As businesses grow, systems become more complex. New systems, tools, and processes are added. The new data creates new challenges. The most important question to answer becomes:

“How can we manage the flow of this data into a singular system to serve as our organizational source of data truth?”

Why Understanding Data Flow Matters

Department leads and C-suite executives are required to use data to ground all reports on business performance and future business predictions in tangible reality.

The data used in each report must be as true to life as possible. This hinges upon all data points required for reporting flowing into a single platform. Such a platform allows for 360 degree data visibility, which optimises the decision-making process in the C-suite.

Accurate reporting is not possible without all of that data in one place. You can’t predict the future success of a business if your forecasting models are based on incomplete data.

As a result of a substandard system to manage the flow of data, directors are unable to provide accurate data to shareholders.

How Revenue Operations Solves the Data Flow Problem

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the discipline of business dedicated to optimising systems, processes, and the people who operate them to work in harmony through 360-degree data visibility.

I will use an experience with a recent client for RevOps Automated as an example to illustrate how an automated revenue operations system, with HubSpot Enterprise at its core, solves the problem of inefficient data flow.

An enterprise software company in the utilities space received funding from investors to launch several new SaaS products to market.?

They required a Revenue Operations system that could effectively report on current business success as well as forecast the future success of the business.?

Oracle lacked flexibility and a smooth user experience, so they needed a new system that would allow them to increase revenue growth through streamlining the reporting of sales, marketing, and customer success data.

We analysed their business requirements and identified a need for a CRM that could provide tools across marketing, sales, and success, as well as attribution reporting. We concluded HubSpot Enterprise was the best solution and helped them implement it efficiently.

Our team interviewed theirs to get a deep understanding of the reports that were most important from both a director and team-level perspective.

Then we mapped out their data structures and internal processes to identify and address the weak points in data flow between marketing, sales, and customer success.

In partnership with the organisation’s internal teams and contracted marketing agency, we designed and built a system that coordinated data on customers, products, and performance.?

By implementing a Revenue Operations system across all departments, their directors now had full visibility of customer data across the entire sales funnel.?

Directors were able to understand the activities which had the greatest impact on revenue, and easily identify where the bottlenecks were occurring throughout the customer journey.?

Once bottlenecks were identified, automated processes were implemented to reduce administrative waste.

Where to Learn More About Revenue Operations for your organisation

There are some great communities focused on upskilling people in RevOps.

RevOps Co-op is a private Slack community founded by Funnel IQ. They have over 3,000 members who are employed by some of the biggest companies in the data space.

There is an expansive resource library of blog posts, AMA sessions, and video webinars. You can also get paired with a RevOps expert to serve as your mentor.

RevGenius is a free membership community founded in June 2020 that already has over 17,000 professionals across marketing, customer success, sales, and RevOps.?

The core conversation happens on their free forum, but they have a paid membership called RevLeague for $499 a year. This gives you access to a private slack channel, as well as weekly roundtables with RevOps experts.

Pavillion is a premium membership community that has membership tracks for executives, associates, and analysts. They have thousands of members across the globe.

In addition to a robust resource library, they offer dozens of professional development courses through Pavillion University.

It's also worth reading the Chief Martec blog by Scott Brinker, Head of Product ecosystem and thought leader in data Operations at HubSpot.?

Scott has written some great articles on the current and future state of data and revenue operations.

You can also gain insights from research published by RevOps Automated. We are building the world's largest open source resource of information on Revenue Operations, starting with a whitepaper on the future state of Revenue Operations.?

If you would like access to our RevOps report when it is published next month, follow us on LinkedIn at RevOps Automated .

Our website will be fully operational for customer enquiries in January, but you can reach out to me in the meantime for anything related to HubSpot or RevOps.