Turning Data into Insight (Chapter 3: RevOps Handbook)

This handbook on Go-To-Marketing (GTM) Operations provides a roadmap on how to build a full-funnel Operations team.? GTM Operations is often referred to as Revenue Operations but, because that term can refer just to Sales Operations, I prefer the GTM Operations term which clearly includes all Operations teams that optimize customer-facing teams (sales, marketing, customer success, support)

If you are still wondering why you need GTM Ops, here is a great article.

While I am passionate about the value of having a single Operations team supporting all Ops functions across the customer journey (see Chapter 1) the practices in this handbook are useful for any flavor of Operations team and are written for four audiences.??

• C-Level: Who want to have strong Operations capabilities for the company
• GTM Leaders (Sales, Marketing, Customer Success):?Who want to know how to fully leverage Operations
• GTM Operations leaders:?Who desire to build a great Operations function to amplify their company
• GTM Operations teammates:?Who want a roadmap that can guide them in their role and career?

The theme that runs through this handbook is “Amplify”.?This concept is a core value at Culture Amp and is central to the role I see Operations playing in a company.?This handbook is broken into six articles to allow a deep dive into each topic.

• Chapter 1: Team
• Chapter 2: Systems
• Chapter 3: Data (this article)
• Chapter 4: Stakeholders
• Chapter 5: Capacity
• Chapter 6: Enablement

Bonus (two of the most comprehensive Ops deep dives I've seen)

• CSOPS : CSOps handbook from 'nuffsaid
• MOPS: MOPS handbook from MadKudu

Chapter 1 looks at the team, mission, scope, organizational structure, and leader you need in order to have a solid Operations team.

Chapter 2-6 focuses on each of the five core pillars of a successful Operations team.?Think of these as things “outside of your direct control” which you want to make sure you keep visible for your executive team.?Each quarter our team meets and rates how we stand on each of the following pillars and discusses what is holding us back from our mission of amplifying the company.??

Finally a few caveats.?This handbook is focused on:

• Operations foundations, not strategy: We have left the strategy for specific areas of GTM Operations for future articles around each area of the Go-To-Market motion.
• Scaling SaaS companies: ?This article is written with a SaaS / B2B perspective and focuses on how to scale companies.?We focus on companies that can budget for their first full-time Operations hire, typically a few million in ARR.

Chapter 3: Data

Data is the lifeblood of the customer journey.?You capture data about customer/prospect interactions and use that data to optimize conversion and the customer journey.??

Organizing for success

Every company has lots of data, but how you organize your teams and systems impacts how well you can use that data.

You can find many frameworks for how to organize your data infrastructure but here is a simple approach I have developed (see article for definitions).?As the article highlights, it is critical that these layers of the data pyramid work seamlessly together.?Otherwise, you will find that your teams can’t move quickly and you aren’t leveraging data to its full extent.??

To set your company up to leverage go-to-market data well, I see three key organizational decisions that are important foundations:

• Integrate your data layers into one function:?Tying the data, operational reporting and analytics together ensures all three functions work closely together towards a shared goal of amplifying the company.??
• Have one source-of-truth for GTM data:?Having a single team looking at conversion across the funnel and aligning on (and documenting) definitions and drivers will ensure all teams are working together.??
• Empower your data/Operations team to hold the organization accountable:?Make sure that the Operations team isn’t focused on making one team look good but instead on driving revenue and making the hard calls.??

Getting to actionable insights

The following section will use Sales data as an example but the principles apply across all GTM data.?There are three types of analysis you can’t do easily in Salesforce.??

Most Operations/analytics teams we have spoken to get these insights from Excel exports.?But if you are scaling and want to empower your team with deeper, real-time insights, you will need:

• Data Ingestion:?Taking data from GTM systems to a data warehouse.?You don’t need to hire engineers to write ETL, instead just get the right ETL tool like Fivetran.? An article is coming soon on this topic from Ben Lewinsky who has guided our team to a great foundation!?For now see this terrific article here.?
• Data Model: ?Tables in the data warehouse which allow deeper analysis.?For example, to answer the question of “how much pipeline did we have at the start of every quarter” you can’t pull this data direct from Salesforce fields but need to build a table with historical pipeline values.?Our team led by Ryan Salazar has leverage DBT to build an amazing data foundation.?
• Data Infrastructure Decision Framework: ?Most people hack the answers to questions with “stamped” salesforce fields.?It is important to have a strong data / field governance approach.?Have the hard debates on how to answer new business questions and whether to create these insights in the data model or in the GTM systems themselves.

As a rule of thumb, if it helps ICs with their day-to-day workflow, you can look to stamp/rollup/APEX but if its for KPIs, it probably belongs in your BI layer.?Ben Lewinsky, Marketing Operations @ Culture Amp

• Data Analysts: ?You need people that are skilled at taking business questions and guiding to the right solution both in the data model and in terms of dashboard design.?Make sure you invest in a great team otherwise you will struggle to get from data to insights (more to come on capacity in Chapter 5)

Helping your team leverage data

A common ask from stakeholders to Operations is “I would like to have all the data that I can play with”.?However, I have learned over the years that most executives don’t know how to use data.?This comment is not meant negatively but instead, as a lesson that simply handing your stakeholders access to a BI tool and data warehouse won’t drive effective action on data.?To help your team leverage data, you need to:

• Build an executive metrics cadence:?The muscle of reviewing key metrics weekly is critical to the success of your go-to-market execution.?My teams publish a metrics deck each week with key executive level metrics and commentary.?We lead a review of this deck weekly and each week update the deck with new insights.?While this deck is linked to live BI dashboards, I have found that if we want to build the cadence around metrics we need to put this in slide form to facilitate commentary and review.
• Understand the business question and guide to a solution:?I coach my teams not to just answer the question asked, but work with their stakeholders to frame the question, determine if it is a one-off need or an on-going question we want to empower the business to monitor.?If the latter, we have an intake and prioritization process for new requests.?For those questions deemed most impactful, we will assign an analyst and Operations teammate to work together to understand the question, ensure we have the right data foundatio,n and build the dashboard(s) needed.
• Empower teams with filters:?When we produce a new dashboard, we thoughtfully invest the extra 10% to add filters that allow stakeholders to pose new questions themselves and drill-downs to allow self-investigation on underlying data.?Our goal is to empower stakeholders with dashboards vs. making our team a roadblock to insights.

There is so much more we could write on this topic but hopefully this article provides a great roadmap to set your team up for data success.

The Future of GTM Data

I believe that GTM data will rapidly evolve from siloed in tools to leverage the power of data warehouses. Here is an article I collaborated on that discusses where the Future of the Modern GTM Stack is Headed.

Note: This is the third chapter of the GTM Operations Handbook. See above in article for links to the other 5 chapters.