Structuring a RevOps Department

Even though there's a common definition of what RevOps is and that it usually oversees the process, systems and data from the revenue related departments (Marketing, Sales and Customer Success), Revenue Operations Departments are structured and focused on slightly different things from company to company. While some companies have Revenue Operators focus more on the systems and act more as technocrats and project managers, other organizations have it focus more heavily on data and strategy.?

There is no right or wrong and it all depends on the company stage and - specially - culture and current structure. Ideally, the 1st RevOps hire should be a more generalist person who has both technical and business/strategic views. However, not only these people are hard to find, but as the area grows and scales, looking for more specialists may be the most efficient path to follow.

• System Management

These are the technocrats. People who are tech savvy and can handle the integrations and manage softwares. Ideally, this person should also own the CRM administration and management, along with the rest of the tech stack, which would involve sales/marketing automation and customer risk management tools. Besides that, this person should also be responsible for implementing all the improvement requirements coming from the process manager.

Another important thing that this person should be responsible for is auditing and looking for new solutions to be implemented. Along with the Process Manager, the System Manager should understand the main gaps and needs in the process and research potential solutions to address those. On top of that, this person should also be aware of potential redundancies in the current tech stack and always look for optimizing it. Having less tools that do more things makes sense once the company starts growing, since there will be less platforms to manage, integrate and pay for.

• Process Management

This person would act like a Project Manager. Gathering and shaping requirements coming from leadership, managers and reps. It's really important for the Process Manager to have a clear understanding on how the systems work both separately and integrated with each other and also - even if this person won't be the responsible one for actual implementation - have a good sense of how simple or complex a task is.

Another crucial skill that this person should have is a business oriented mindset. Ideally, the Process Manager should have worked as a rep and understands the day to day activities and pain points. That's important not only for prioritization of each request, but also to digest the requirements in a way that makes sense systematically and shape them in the most efficient way for implementation.?

• Data & Insights?

And then we have the data person. The person who will get the data, analyze it and gather insights from it. It's important to highlight that this person is not necessarily responsible for keeping the data clean and accurate. This should be a combined effort with the couple of roles mentioned above and also - and most importantly - with the sales team. The data is only as good as the sales reps input it in the system. Sure, the process should be built in a way that makes it as easy as possible for the reps to input the data and the technology stack should - among other things - automate part of the process and data input. However, ultimately the end user (= sales reps) will need to do some manual data entry in the CRM.?

There are different ways of building reports and dashboards. From the out of the box charts from the CRM to complex data visualization tools, the skills that this person will need are different depending on the company stage. However, no matter the size and complexity of the organization or quality of the data, this person should always be willing to be scrappy (spreadsheets are enough!) and use whatever tools are available to get the most amount of insights for strategic decisions.?