Draft:Revenue Operations

There is no consensus on the definition of Revenue Operations (commonly abbreviated as RevOps). In 2023, Forrester defined Revenue Operations in their blog as “a highly configured, iterative commercial execution strategy designed to maximize customer value and company performance” by unifying and optimizing data, processes, technology, and talent to better improve the customer lifecycle.{{cite web |author=Forrester |title=Revenue Operations: Driving Better Customer Experiences and Growth |url=https://www.forrester.com/blogs/forrester-decisions-for-revenue-operations/ |website=Forrester Decisions Blogs |date=2023-06-04 |access-date=2025-04-28}} Gartner defines it as "an end-to-end model that unifies customer engagement across functions and integrates people, processes and technology across the business," but acknowledges that Revenue Operations has had "multiple definitions." {{cite web |title=Revenue Operations (RevOps): Best Practices to Grow Your Business |url=https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/topics/revenue-operations |website=Gartner |access-date=28 April 2025}}

In 2021, Oliviero Mottola at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology published a master’s thesis in The Revenue Operations (RevOps) Framework: A Qualitative Study of Industry Practitioners, and points out that definitions amongst Revenue Operations practitioners that were interviewed ranged "from the increased collaboration of the three job functions to an all-out creation of job functions within organizations," and that nearly all practitioners interviewed agreed that “RevOps is a mentality or culture, more than it is a function.”{{cite thesis |last=Mottola |first=Oliviero |title=The Revenue Operations (RevOps) Framework: A Qualitative Study of Industry Practitioners |url=https://digitalcommons.harrisburgu.edu/isem_dandt/1 |publisher=Harrisburg University of Science and Technology |date=2021-06-16 |access-date=2025-04-28}}

There is no definitive attribution for the origin of Revenue Operations, but the need for better coordination across revenue-generating functions in a company was already a well documented problem: a 2009 peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing described the lack of alignment between marketing and sales, and proposed a solution to migrate from a "transactional approach to a customer-centric approach," to address this misalignment.{{cite journal |title=Marketing and Sales Alignment for Improved Effectiveness |journal=Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |year=2009 |doi=10.1057/palgrave.dam.3650089 |url=https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/palgrave.dam.3650089 |access-date=28 April 2025 |last1=Patterson |first1=Laura |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=185–189 }} In 2018, one of the earliest known references to "Revenue Operations" appeared in blog post by RevOps.io titled "A Brief History of Revenue Operations," which discussed the need for aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams to drive revenue growth.{{cite web |title=A Brief History of Revenue Operations |url=https://www.revops.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-revenue-operations |website=RevOps.io |access-date=28 April 2025}}

Oliviero Mottola's 2021 master’s thesis proposing a standardized framework for implementing Revenue Operations, based on qualitative interviews with industry practitioners.{{cite thesis |title=The Revenue Operations (RevOps) Framework: A Qualitative Study of Industry Practitioners |url=https://digitalcommons.harrisburgu.edu/isem_dandt/1 |publisher=Harrisburg University of Science and Technology |date=16 June 2021 |access-date=28 April 2025}} In July of the same year, Forbes proposed five forces driving the emergence of Revenue Operations, including more informed, digitally enabled customers and the widespread adoption of cloud-based sales assets that require sales, marketing, customer experience, and support teams to collaborate.{{cite web

| last=DiOrio

| first=Stephen

| title=What Is Revenue Operations and How Does It Create Value?

| url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephendiorio/2021/07/14/what-is-revenue-operations-and-how-does-it-create-value/

| website=Forbes

| date=14 July 2021

| access-date=28 April 2025

}}

A Harvard Business Review report on Revenue Operations adoption in high-tech and software industries found that organizations implementing RevOps practices achieved higher revenue growth, improved net retention rates, and reduced go-to-market costs.{{cite journal |title=The State of Revenue Operations in High-Tech and Software |url=https://hbr.org/sponsored/2022/09/the-state-of-revenue-operations-in-high-tech-and-software |journal=Harvard Business Review |date=27 September 2022 |access-date=28 April 2025}} Consulting and research firms such as McKinsey & Company and Gartner had identified Revenue Operations as a distinct discipline by the early 2020s.{{cite web |title=The Digital Reinvention of Enterprise Tech Go-to-Market |url=https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-digital-reinvention-of-enterprise-tech-go-to-market |website=McKinsey & Company |access-date=28 April 2025}}{{cite web |title=Revenue Operations (RevOps): Best Practices to Grow Your Business |url=https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/topics/revenue-operations |website=Gartner |access-date=28 April 2025}} Gartner later predicted that by 2026, 75% of high-growth companies would adopt a Revenue Operations model to unify their commercial functions.{{cite web |title=Revenue Operations (RevOps): Best Practices to Grow Your Business |url=https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/topics/revenue-operations |website=Gartner |access-date=28 April 2025}}

Several sources have proposed distinct frameworks for structuring Revenue Operations within organizations:

• SiriusDecisions RevOps Charter Framework: Introduced in 2019, this maturity model outlines four progressive stages—from isolated, function-specific operations to a fully integrated RevOps organization. It correlates higher maturity with a 19.5% revenue uplift and a 15% increase in profitability among S&P 500 companies.{{cite report |title=Align to Win: The Rise of Revenue Operations |url=https://www.leandata.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/The-SiriusDecisions-Revenue-Operations-Charter-Report-eBook.pdf |publisher=Sirius Decisions |date=2019 |access-date=28 April 2025}}

• Gartner RevOps Maturity Model: Describes a three-tier progression—(1) functionally aligned sales, marketing, and customer success operations; (2) centralized RevOps with shared processes and KPIs; and (3) fully orchestrated, technology-enabled RevOps governed by unified dashboards and predictive analytics.{{cite web |title=Revenue Operations (RevOps): Best Practices to Grow Your Business |url=https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/topics/revenue-operations |website=Gartner |access-date=28 April 2025}}

• Practitioner-Derived Framework (Mottola 2021): Based on interviews with senior RevOps professionals, this master’s thesis presents a standardized implementation roadmap encompassing governance models, cross-functional collaboration mechanisms, and continuous improvement cycles.{{cite thesis |last=Mottola |first=Oliviero |title=The Revenue Operations (RevOps) Framework: A Qualitative Study of Industry Practitioners |url=https://digitalcommons.harrisburgu.edu/isem_dandt/1 |publisher=Harrisburg University Digital Commons |date=2021 |access-date=1 May 2025}}

• Integrative-Device Theory (García-Muñoz et al.): Applies integrative-device theory to RevOps, positioning it as the connective mechanism that aligns marketing, sales, and customer-success functions through shared processes, data flows, and decision rights.{{cite web |last1=García-Muñoz |first1=R. |last2=Peters |first2=K. |title=Revenue Operations (RevOps): An Integrative Device in the B2B Technology Industry |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377300189 |website=ESCP Business School |date=2023 |access-date=1 May 2025}}

• Analytics-Driven Systems Approach: Emphasizes embedding advanced analytics—such as predictive modeling and automated reporting—into every stage of the revenue cycle to drive scalable growth.{{cite journal |title=Revenue operations: A systems approach for turning analytics into growth |journal=Journal of Applied Marketing Analytics |publisher=Henry Stewart Publications |year=2022 |url=https://www.revenueenablement.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Revenue-Operations-Journal-of-Applied-Analytics.pdf |access-date=28 April 2025}}

• Vendor-Guided End-to-End Model (Salesforce 2021): Presents RevOps as the orchestration of product, marketing, sales, customer success, and finance operations through centralized data pipelines and automated workflows, with clearly defined handoffs at each stage.{{cite web |title=What Is Revenue Operations? A Complete Guide |url=https://www.salesforce.com/sales/revenue-lifecycle-management/what-is-revenue-operations/ |website=Salesforce |date=2021 |access-date=28 April 2025}}

• Technology-First RevTech Perspective (BCG 2022): Casts RevOps as a RevTech ecosystem, advocating the deployment of AI-driven automation and integration platforms to recover up to US$2 trillion in wasted SG&A spend by breaking down functional silos.{{cite web |title=The $2 Trillion Opportunity to Boost Sales and Lower Costs with RevTech |url=https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/boost-sales-lower-costs-opportunity-with-revtech |website=Boston Consulting Group |date=1 August 2022 |access-date=28 April 2025}}

• McKinsey Digital Reinvention Framework: Highlights key go-to-market pivots—such as unified account planning and cross-functional playbooks—enabled by integrated RevOps teams to drive retention and predictable growth in enterprise tech companies.{{cite web |title=The Digital Reinvention of Enterprise Tech Go-to-Market |url=https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/the-digital-reinvention-of-enterprise-tech-go-to-market |website=McKinsey & Company |date=23 February 2022 |access-date=28 April 2025}}

• Sales operations
• Customer success management

:Category:Business operations

:Category:Sales

:Category:Marketing

:Category:Customer experience

:Category:Revenue management