The question of who RevOps should report continues to be a hot topic of debate.
We believe there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Reporting lines and structures are inherently delicate. The culture and size of a business will play significant roles in shaping its hierarchy and reporting structures. Each business has its own unique dynamics, guiding policies and overarching objectives.
So whilst we believe there is no definitive right or wrong answer, we do recommend you consider these critical questions before deciding what is best for your organisation.
The Questions To Ask
- Role Definition: What role do we want RevOps to play in driving sustainable growth in our organisation?
- Scope and Authority: What scope, authority, and accountability will RevOps need to fulfil this role?
- Empowerment: To what extent are we empowering our RevOps team to exercise that scope and authority?
- Metrics for Alignment: What metrics have we agreed to use as a leadership team to measure our revenue operations? (e.g., CAC, CLTV, Sales Velocity)
The answers to these questions should largely determine the reporting line for RevOps in an organisation.
The leaders in our organisations are faced with different challenges and the role of a revenue operations team is to understand, prioritise and put order around the way in which these challenges are addressed. One thing should be unanimously agreed across all leaders: fuelling the revenue engine requires skilled architects and builders — they must be empowered to design and build aligned processes, data and systems.
The things that keep a CFO awake at night are going to be different to the CRO – e.g. a CFO may be trying to reduce the time to contracting or reduce time from revenue to cash. They may be considering which ERP system best suits their needs and/or want to look at a more robust CPQ solution. A CRO’s burning issues might currently be centred around developing an accurate, clean forecasting methodology. Their priority might be to first get a better understanding of pipeline health e.g. they want to be able to see early warning signs when the pipeline is too low. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter in this case where RevOps reports —be it the CFO, CRO, COO or CEO.
What is crucial is that :-
a) RevOps is tasked with understanding what is important to each function
b). RevOps is empowered and encouraged to think across the divide and consider all sides and perspectives.
This task naturally becomes more complex in mature, matrix organisations with defined structures and hierarchies and requires exceptionally strong leadership to succeed. But, no one said it was going to be easy!
Reporting lines may change over time, but answering these critical questions on role definition, scope, empowerment and metrics will set or reset the foundation for a resilient and high-performing revenue operation that can adapt and thrive in a dynamic business environment.
For further reading, check out the articles linked below. We found these perspectives interesting to read!
https://www.revopscoop.com/post/who-should-revenue-operations-report-to#:~:text=To%20serve%20in%20a%20true,teams%20in%20achieving%20strategic%20goals. RevOps Co-op
https://www.revopscoop.com/post/how-should-your-revenue-operations-organization-be-structured
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/revenue-operations-who-reports-whom-mudit-garg
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/where-should-revops-report-what-you-think-haris-odobasic
https://www.elevate.so/blog/who-should-revops-report-to
https://www.everstage.com/revenue-operations/who-should-revops-report-to
