Revenue growth proves to be one of the most significant performance criteria for SaaS companies. A fast-growing organization that is capable of generating consistent customer flow and respectively, higher profitability, is the key to a healthy and successful SaaS business.

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it. Unfortunately, though, this seems easier said than done. Barely one out of eight companies have recorded yearly growth rates above 10 percent in the past ten years (pre-Covid 19) according to McKinsey & Company. The same study shows that an average firm, during the ten-year period, marked a growth percentage of barely 2.8 a year.

This has resulted in more and more SaaS companies seeking a revenue operations framework that can navigate them to sustainable and profitable growth. Business professionals are often talking about transition to RevOps, or revenue operations, which enhances the revenue engine through alignment of the separate go-to-market teams under the shared goal and strategies for revenue optimization. Gartner goes even further and predicts that by 2025, 75% of the highest growth companies will adopt and run a RevOps model.

So, what is revenue operations exactly and what are the advantages of employing such strategy to your SaaS company? This article will answer these questions and help you embrace the RevOps concept as a revenue-driving force.

Table of contents:

1. What is RevOps?
2. Advantage #1: Long-term perspective to revenue growth
3. Advantage #2: Optimized process down the funnel
4. Advantage #3: Improved metrics
5. Advantage #4: Stronger company culture

1. What is RevOps?

Revenue operations, or in short RevOps, is a strategy that is gaining well-deserved popularity in today’s fast-paced, digital business environment. It is centered around the alignment of all revenue-related processes like marketing, sales, customer satisfaction, and finance to ensure coherent end-to-end service. The incorporation of the processes aims at minimizing data silos and operational frictions, which, respectively, allows for faster growth and higher revenue generation.

What revenue operations does is it unifies all your teams responsible for a successful customer experience, from the consideration phase through the actual sale, and to a possible upsell or reoccurring purchase. It allows for easy and fluid data flow between people and processes through optimized technology solutions with the common goal of boosting your overall profitability and growth.

Let’s dig deeper into the concept and see what actual advantages it will bring to your SaaS company.

2. Advantage #1: Long-term perspective to revenue growth

Longevity and consistency are the key turning points when discussing revenue operations vs. sales operations. The sales operations model targets fractioned sales boosts that, however, are not necessarily as profitable. That doesn’t take into consideration the whole customer-experience journey and neglects the prospects of creating a long-term relation with the buyer.

Such strategy is not optimal and relatively outdated when we are discussing SaaS companies due to the constantly changing demands of the market and the fluctuating customer expectations. Luckily, this is where RevOps fills in the gap and lays the foundations needed for a more holistic approach to CRM.

By aligning your marketing, sales, customer experience, and even finance departments, RevOps build an ecosystem where data flows easily and the different teams can work together towards establishing long-term and strong relations with your customers. Which, on the other hand, results in a more consistent revenue generation over longer periods of time.

“In particular, a business with recurring revenues is worth more than one that must sell their offerings to their customers one at a time repeatedly.” – Forbes

Just to add some numbers here – according to Boston Consulting Group, organizations with tightly aligned go-to-market teams see 100-200% increase in ROI for digital marketing initiatives. Forrester adds to this by stating that companies that integrate their processes, people and technology achieve 36% higher revenue growth and 28% profitability raise.

And yes, there’s more to it. Since RevOps removes silos and data loops from one process to another, it makes your revenue growth easier to predict and forecast. How? Now, with all the teams working together towards a common, attainable revenue goal, there won’t be several data sources and report results from each and every department.

3. Advantage #2: Optimized process down the funnel

Quite naturally, when you removing silos, inter-operational frictions and data inconsistency you also optimize the overall working process.

Revenue operations not only aligns your marketing, sales and customer success teams but optimizes the communication, work flows, data transparency and information sharing between them through coherent tech stack.

If in the past your marketing team used one software tool to record lead generation and the sales department collected all their data in vast spreadsheets, RevOps addresses such ineffective, and time-consuming frictions, so that on your next monthly report meeting you can have both teams present together validated results without using the time to compare data sheets.

Revenue operations allows teams to share data, collaborate and reach revenue-driven decisions more efficiently and in accordance with a shared strategy.

The lead role in this optimization process is given to creating a tech stack ecosystem and the automation of various processes.

RevOps leverages the automation of any manual process which can interfere with the smooth flow of data. Just so you don’t need to run to the customer support manager every time you need the contact of the buyers who have chosen to unsubscribe. Automation of such manual tasks can save you hours and hours of repetitive and unproductive work. Instead, you can invest the gained time in boosting your customer experience, for example which will directly result in greater revenue.

4. Advantage #3: Improved metrics

Regardless of all the sweet talks, eventually we all need to knock on Finance’s door and check if the budget allows our ideas to come alive or not.

Well, let’s put it that way, RevOps is the smooth, sweet talker that makes the negotiations a way easier and fruitful than they used to be.

Miscommunication, inconsistency and even duplication of tasks between the marketing, sales, and customer success departments is not something new to any company. This, however, can end up costing quite a lot, not only time-wise but also in terms of budget. Your expenses can prove grater than the revenue you generate if you invest in non-aligned efforts.

For example, HubSpot pinpoints that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. Additionally, the inability to align processes, teams and technologies, costs companies more than 10% of their yearly revenue.

Now you understand why the guys sitting at finance were a bit hasty cutting off your new marketing campaign. But fear not, this is why you employ your “smooth-talking” revenue operations.

RevOps bridge the operational and budget gaps between your go-to-market teams and effectively cut costs resulted from siloed efforts. At the end of the day, you will get better ROI, higher ARR (annual recurring revenue) and overall improved metrics because your teams are working in sync.

5. Advantage #4: Stronger company culture

Company culture can easily get overshadowed by all the numbers and statistics but it is just as important of an advantage as the others. Centering your different teams around a common set of strategic revenue goals brings them closer together, and the individualistic approach towards solving a task is replace by a collaborative mindset.

The monthly report meetings will no longer be focused on divergent data sheets and statistics, finger-pointing, and different departments basically working against each other. On the contrary, heading to the same growth targets, unifies these departments in a data-driven, transparency-fueled performance engine.

RevOps create stronger teams which, naturally, contribute to a faster revenue growth, and through that, enhance the company culture. Think of the Three Musketeers but a slightly more modern read – you get both the collective attitude and the shared objective, or more poetically, “one for all, and all for revenue”.

There are numerous advantages to employing revenue operations to your SaaS company and just a single article cannot enlist all of them. The whole essence of RevOps strategy is already one of the core benefits, namely to help your company grow faster and enable a predictable, sustainable revenue engine. Nonetheless, just like all good things, the process of transitioning to RevOps requires patience, planning, and constant optimization. Once adopted and running, though, the revenue operations model guarantees a lean, progressive and successful business structure.