[Research Round-Up] Recent Studies Reveal the State of Revenue Operations

(This month's Research Round-Up discusses the major findings of two recent surveys addressing the current state of revenue operations. Revenue operations, a/k/a "RevOps," is a management system designed to align the activities of a company's customer-facing revenue teams to accelerate growth. The RevOps model has been gaining traction in B2B companies for several years, but it's still a relatively young management approach.)

Source:  Openprise

2024 State of RevOps Survey by Openprise in association with MarketingOps.com and the RevOps Co-op

• The survey produced 152 responses from operations professionals
• 47% of the respondents described their job role as "marketing operations," while 40% said "revenue operations"
• 37% of the respondents were at the "manager/senior professional" level, and 30% were at the "director" level
• Respondents were drawn from over 11 industry verticals; 44% were affiliated with information technology companies
• 47% of the respondents were affiliated with B2B companies, and another 19% worked at hybrid B2B/B2C companies
• 38% of the respondents were with companies having 100-499 employees, and 21% were with companies having 500-999 employees
• The survey report does not indicate when the survey was fielded

This survey explored a wide range of issues relating to revenue operations. Regarding RevOps implementation, 35% of the survey respondents said their company had a formal RevOps department, and 32.5% said their company had a functional RevOps team but not a formal department.

An overwhelming majority (89%) of the revenue operations survey respondents said their RevOps team supported all three of their company's go-to-market teams - marketing, sales, and customer success.

There was less agreement on who the RevOps team reported to. Forty-one percent of the revenue operations survey respondents said they reported to the chief revenue officer, while 21% said the chief financial officer, and 10% said the chief operations officer.

One particularly interesting finding in this survey was that organizations with formal RevOps departments did not experience better alignment among go-to-market teams than the overall average. This finding suggests that having a formal RevOps department won't in itself produce better alignment among revenue teams.

The Openprise survey also produced several interesting findings on other topics related to revenue operations, including how companies are managing data and technology and what skills are in high demand.

Source:  Revenue Operations Alliance

State of Revenue Operations Report 2023 by the Revenue Operations Alliance

• A survey of revenue operations professionals from all seniority and experience levels
• The survey report does not indicate how many responses the survey produced or when the survey was fielded
• Three-fourths (74.3%) of the survey respondents were drawn from two industries - software and technology information (53.6%) and technology and services (20.7%)
• Almost two-thirds (65.9%) of the respondents worked in North America, followed by 28% in the UK and Europe

Like the Openprise research, this survey provides data on a wide range of topics relating to revenue operations.

Six in ten (59.8%) of the organizations represented in the survey have only had a revenue operations function for 1-2 years, and nine in ten (90.3%) have had a revenue operations function for less than five years.

When survey participants were asked to identify the main activities they are responsible for, the top three activities selected were:

• Metrics and KPIs (89%)
• Pipeline strategy (81.7%)
• Tech stack management (79.3%)

Go-to-market strategy was a strong fourth at 78%.

When survey participants were asked which of their activities made the most business impact, the order changed slightly. the top three selections were:

• Metrics and KPIs (65.9%)
• Go-to-market strategy (51.2%)
• Pipeline strategy (43.9%)

Here are some of the other headline findings from the survey.

• Recurring revenue was the metric most frequently used by survey respondents to measure the success of their activities.

• 41.4% of the respondents said their RevOps team consisted of 2-4 individuals, and another 22% said they were the only person working in the revenue operations function.

• Four in ten (40.2%) of the respondents said their RevOps function has no dedicated budget allocation.

• Among the respondents with a dedicated budget, four in five (81.6%) said their budget is mostly spent on software.

• Three in ten (30.4%) of the respondents said they report to their company's chief revenue officer, and 25.6% said they report to their company's CEO.

This survey also produced findings regarding the value and influence of the RevOps function and the skills needed to be successful in revenue operations.