Digital transformation and automation has increased dramatically over the past two years, with 73% of organizations accelerating their digital transformation due to COVID, according to the experts at Conga. Given the economic turbulence brought about by the pandemic, only the most agile, adaptive companies will survive. Moving from siloed, rigid, and antiquated departments and into a streamlined, digital-first RevOps model is a sure way to maintain the flexibility your company needs to stay above water in these uncertain times.
Why Should You Transform Your Rev Ops?
Transforming your revenue operations yields huge dividends by streamlining operations and eliminating friction points on the customer journey. As companies mature, they move away from flexible and adaptive “startup models,” into more rigid, segmented departments and programs. Inevitably, the departments establish their own KPIs, their own priorities, and their own culture. They will compete with other departments for budget and resources, while making unilateral decisions on how their tech stack.
Not only does this fragmentation reduce efficiency and increase cost — it negatively impacts the customer experience. Customers make purchases based on trust, and nothing reduces trust like getting handed back and forth between departments, receiving different answers for the same questions, and receiving product information that doesn’t align with real-world performance.
How Can You Start This Transformation?
There are two main components to a successful transformation: the technology, and the people.
The technology is, in some ways, the easy part. You will want to focus on applications that either encompass multiple functions across an organization, or seamlessly integrate with other systems. Machine learning, task automation, and digital contract management are specific functions that should be included with any type of tech stack transformation.
Meanwhile, you’ll need to reimagine the way your staff works and collaborates. This is the hard part. The first step is finding your “North Star” to align your team. This guiding principle should be centered around customer satisfaction. A satisfied customer will purchase your product, make recommendations to their peers, renew subscriptions, and provide opportunities for upselling. Everything flows from customer satisfaction. Here are some techniques to ensure that your team can prioritize this goal during a digital transformation:
- Break down silos and increase flexibility by hiring generalists. While expertise is valuable, it can also lead to a myopic view of the business. To a marketing expert, everything looks like a marketing problem. Instead of multiple groups of experts that struggle to communicate, you’ll want an integrated team that’s focused on problem solving and maximizing the customer experience.
- Unify your tech stack. As RevOps leaders at Conga have shown us, the benefits to creating a unified IT environment are massive. You will improve brand consistency, generate more accurate quotes, eliminate missed sales opportunities, stop revenue leakage, and reduce customer pain points.
- Eliminate gaps in the customer experience. For this one, you’ll want to assemble your team, and literally draw a map of your customer journey. Who is their first point of contact? How do they move between staff? What happens when one employee hands off a client to another? By creating a comprehensive diagram of your customer’s experience, you can identify the areas most in need of work.
Final Thoughts
Undertaking digital transformation is a difficult, yet necessary process for any business hoping to remain competitive in today’s economy. Fortunately, if you follow this advice, you can revolutionize the way your business functions, increasing revenue, reducing costs, and maximizing customer satisfaction.
Succeeding at digital transformation means you need to stay ahead of the competition. Make sure you don’t miss out on valuable insights by registering for our upcoming Spotlight On Revenue Leadership on March 16th.