B2B Expert Roundup:Top RevOps Trends to Watchin 2022

The top trends in RevOps to watch for in 2022 are increased business agility, more ownership over the client journey, and moving from multiple data sources to a single source of truth.

Given the current market environment, companies need to be more agile than ever to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. RevOps must be able to change direction quickly and get key stakeholders across leadership, marketing, sales, and client success aligned.

The ownership over the client data goes hand-in-hand with having a single source of truth. At many companies, different teams use different systems that do not always talk to each other. Having a single source of truth is critical to providing actionable insights into the buyer journey and enabling exceptional client experiences.

All roads lead to AI. Leveraging technology to accurately predict outcomes in every area of the business cuts cost whilst driving revenue and innovation. If you can find a way to be more agile and anticipate client needs, you will find an edge over those holding to the status quo.

Aggregated information and analytics encompassing larger data sets will assist those looking to embark on their own digital transformation journey.

Data synchronisation and overall software application consolidations are going to become increasingly put in the spotlight as we transition into a more established technology-driven world. Especially given the apparent reality that remote work is not going away; we will see more need for technology to help maintain and grow businesses’ core operations. With more technology, however, comes more technical debt.

Many businesses have an issue with adopting too many applications that overlap in functionality because there is a disconnect between departments. This puts a strain on an organisation's operations team to maintain and manage the tech stack for its employees and clients. If an operations team is not capable of running lean, there is increased risk of technical debt adding up beyond a manageable rate.

Many organisations are still trying to grasp what RevOps is and how it benefits their organisations. There is a lot of opportunity for it to be adopted simply. For some teams, the biggest move will be away from RevOps-as-SalesOps and to expand its impact across the entire revenue organisation. Additionally, I'm seeing some teams shifting RevOps into a more DataOps or business analysis function with the goal of improving overall company performance.

Reporting structures (under COO/CFO)—an effective RevOps function must not sit under the head of sales, instead this should perhaps sit under a client relationship professional (CRP) that owns sales, marketing, and CX/CS. Else the team likely needs to be under the CFO or COO. The team's operational and strategic impact will come from both excellence and independence.

Another trend would be RevOps leaders becoming more strategic and setting goals (quota, compensation, pricing, etc.). Same with reporting; a cleanly executed data, analytics, and definitions regime will lead to good reporting of the metrics/topline.

However, the strategic influence of the RevOps team comes from using the unique insight across the entire GTM value chain to influence key changes that make exponential growth happen via changes to key value-drivers.

More and more companies are realising the value of having a holistic approach to the client lifecycle that has streamlined processes that identify key client touchpoints from end to end.

Due to this, I foresee a re-alignment of senior leadership teams to include a RevOps function throughout 2022. Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, & Experience Ops will be restructured to report through the RevOps department for better alignment between the GTM teams.

There will also be a larger market for GTM products/RevOps tools for better forecasting and GTM alignment to allow for more scalable business solutions across the organisation.

One of the biggest trends to keep an eye out for in 2022, and beyond for that matter, is an increased focus on hiring RevOps personnel. Historically, Ops teams have either been severely understaffed and have never grown at the same rate as the business or they have been completely disjointed and allocated across various departments. The challenge RevOps teams have always faced is keeping up with the workload and priorities for rapidly growing businesses.

With an increased focus in hiring, I also think you will start to see an increased supply of RevOps workers—team members who are no longer solely focused on administrating tech stacks, but team members who have administrative skill sets, whilst also bringing to the table industry knowledge and departmental acumen that will become extremely valuable to businesses going forward.

In the post-COVID environment, businesses are moving to either a remote or hybrid work model, so leveraging systems and processes will be even more vital than ever before. This need will continue to grow the supply and demand of RevOps positions and workers.

The rise of the client data platform (CDP). The CRM used to be thought of as the single source of truth. That is not necessarily true. We have in some cases half a dozen to a dozen platforms producing valuable data on our entire Buyer Journey.

Marketing automation, Sales enablement, product data from your internal platform. All of these tools need somewhere to bring their insights together. By the end of year, we will all be ripping data out of our systems using no code software platforms like Syncari, Bloomreach, or Segment and managing reporting in a BI tool. Less custom coded APIs, and more CDPs!

1. Time for a lineup change. Your pre-pandemic leadership team is likely not your post-pandemic leadership team. Either your leadership changes or you change your leadership. Every decision needs to be informed, supported, and driven by data.
2. Data is not a department; it is a leadership skill. It should be readily available to all leaders who can then make real-time decisions as new information is available.
3. Technology and AI are required to deliver mass personalisation. The client wants what they want on their terms—not yours. And it has never been cheaper, easier, or faster to deliver a customised experience.
4. Decentralised, interdependent, and interdisciplinary teams need to replace departments and functions. Speed to market, failure, and learning are essential for success.
5. A culture of learning is critical. If you are not pushing yourself enough to experience failure, then you are living in a limited reality on the tail of your previous successes. That "wave" will be shorter than most nonprofit leaders have ever experienced. The future will be built on the attempts and failures that lead to significant and substantial learning today.

Given the increased focus of organisations on RevOps due to the advent of distributed sales channels, RevOps is going to lean heavily on automation tools and integrations. A unified client view not only spanning sales & marketing but spreading across delivery, product, etc. It will also become important to drive the next GTM strategy and revenue expansion. RevOps will play a critical role in providing this unified view to functional managers and leadership.

Digital Asset Management and optimisation for the B2B sector when approaching an M&A conversation. If we have learned anything in the last two years, it is that the middle market is incredibly hot.

When approaching the sale of business, the seller is often looking into how best they can capitalise on their long-term investment; their business yet fail to realise that there are cost-effective ways that not only generate a positive ROI, but more importantly, a positive Return On Time (ROT) to have a direct impact on EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation).

Invest in your digital assets to prepare your business to be more attractive aesthetically, but also fill up the pipeline for new business opportunities that come in through digital marketing. If navigated correctly, your employees will feel like they are a part of the process and part of the team, increasing productivity. When looking for solutions, find a partner or team member that understands the true goal or intention behind your initiatives so that they can optimise the experience with the right client in mind—this is what matters the most.

In short, we will be looking at measuring the efficiency of the processes, adoption of new tools, and performance KPIs.

For the past two years, we have been running on quick new technology adoption. Remote work pushed us to buy, implement and adapt to new processes and tools. Things are slowly calming down, we are getting back to the office and this is the time to make sure that we can utilise all this new technology to its maximum.

Whether we are talking about CRM tools, BI software, or efficiency booster applications, we need to make sure they work for us and provide the much-desired data RevOps / GTM teams need. Reports, KPIs, dashboards, OKRs, data flow, and analytics, in general, are the topic of this year.

We are seeing an increase in the number of startups and scale-ups hiring Revenue Operations managers at an early stage. Historically, companies have waited until Series C or larger corporations to build out the RevOps function.

Startups and scale-ups are establishing processes, systems, and enablement at an early stage to ensure that the Marketing, Sales, and Success teams work as efficiently as possible from top to bottom of the funnel.

With RevOps becoming an established function across organisations in the tech-space, a common topic I see being discussed among the revenue leaders I speak with, relates to the problems created by continually adding new platforms (and their often problematic integrations) to the tech stack.

As a result, I believe in 2022, we will witness a new trend emerging. Start-ups and scale-ups will likely shrink their stack and optimise a more compact RevOps eco-system that is fully integrated, scalable, and cost-effective.

1. Rise of usage of CDP (Client Data Platform): I believe the need to build a 360º view of a client or accounts based on data points will be paramount as we move towards building CX or ABX (Account Experience) to ensure the right message is delivered via the right channel at the right time to the right person.
2. Data Governance and structure: As we move into a more data-driven world, the need to have strong data governance and schemas to ensure data is collected, stored, and processed for insights and analysis will be on the rise.
3. Rise of automation for all processes or workflows across an entire organisation: The use of iPaaS (integration platform as a service) will increase as organisations try to eliminate manual processes.
4. Transparency and Accountability at scale: This and the need for predictability from top to bottom will be greater than ever as we need to align strategy and GTM so that all the teams are working towards the same north star.

The recent need for accelerated digital transformation has caused changes to the technology stack at many companies. That change looks different for each organisation based on where they are in that process and their individual needs. For some, it is expanding by bringing on additional resources to dig further into data reporting or big data analytics. For others, it may be consolidation by moving to applications that can handle multiple business needs such as CRM and marketing automation platforms.

"Less is More." Right-size your tech stack deck to something that is manageable and operational. What does this mean? Reduce the stack to focus only on where your buyers are going to research and educate. Use the analytics for each platform to determine where to invest and divest. You cannot be everywhere for everyone.

Also, the need for maximising your CRM has never been more critical. Streamline the reporting by driving as much integration as you can to your CRM platform.

RevOps is catching like wildfire with more and more companies seeing how crucial it is.

I am excited for 2022 and all of the trends it is bringing to the industry.
Here are the top six Revenue Operations trends I would say you should look out for this year:

1. Conversion rates throughout the sale process—checking conversions in marketing and from marketing to sales has become obvious. This year, we want to know all of that and more.
2. How well are our SQLs converting to clients? Where are they falling off the sales funnel and how can we improve the buyer journey?
3. Revenue\Sales forecast: Who does not want to know how much projected growth they will have? More and more of our clients are interested in building forecasting reports for revenue.
4. Marketing attribution: Our clients do not just want to see basic conversion reports. They want stats of which campaigns are driving their leads and what the quality of those leads are. And for good reason. How else will they know to allocate their marketing budget?
5. Retention rate: We mainly work with SaaS companies who sell on a subscription basis and we do not have to tell them twice that aggressive sales are only as good as the retention rate. We are seeing more and more sales departments aligning with client success to ensure higher retention.
6. Client lifetime value (CLV): We know how much clients cost to acquire, now we’re interested in seeing, how much is this client worth in the long run? How much value will they bring to our company?

Watch for the elevation of "Sales Ops" to RevOps in an increasing number of non-tech businesses in 2022 and beyond. Whilst the software industry may have been the first to prove the value of unifying GTM processes, other industries are taking notice. Moving away from legacy tech providers and spreadsheets to adopt a more modern approach is a daunting task to companies that were not born in the cloud, but it is increasingly viewed as a necessary one.

Verticals in Finance/Insurance, Logistics, and even Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) are ramping up their investments in RevOps tech and they need experienced professionals to make these initiatives a success. We may start to see some big names in RevOps leave the tech industry altogether to accept above-market offers in big-name traditional businesses.

Product-led growth (PLG) in B2B is becoming more and more common and with that, we will have a lot of technical challenges, including attribution and duplicate data in CRM.

RevOps has often been grouped along with Marketing Ops and Sales Ops, but a connection to product will need to be much tighter in 2022.

Easy targets before are now in more and more CRMs, and outbounding is becoming more difficult as audiences become more jaded. Because of this, messaging and marketing is becoming highly important in warming up audiences before the outbound even occurs. Partnering sequences between marketing and SDRs will be important in increasing revenue performance in 2022 and can give companies a leg up as this intensifies.

I believe, as we are already seeing, more companies today are recognising the need for having a RevOps team and with that I believe there will continue to be expansion in 2022. I believe we will continue to see a need for a more generalist type RevOp professional in the smaller and larger businesses, whilst in mid-size companies, a more specialised skill-set in operational professionals across the team.

In addition, I believe we will more widely see sales/client success having an increased focus around “new business” sales and retention as I believe this will be where the biggest driver is to increase revenue for companies. With that, I believe, we will see wider marketing funnels to create more lead opportunities. I believe we will also find an increase in AI System automation implementation adding to the current tech stacks already in place with a heavy focus on Reverse ETLs. If not within this year, definitely within the next few years.

2022 has to be the year when we draw the line on reactive work and move towards strategic initiatives. That is my (rather selfish) wish for us RevOps pros!

Aside from that, I think the biggest trend to watch for is CX Ops coming more and more into its much-deserved limelight within the RevOps family. Thus far, Marketing and Sales have been stealing the limelight, but it is time we start looking closely at CX needs and enablement.

1. Less is more in reporting: Using fewer but more powerful metrics of intent, such as relationship strength and customer usage, to better understand behaviour across the customer lifecycle.
2. Focusing on a more unified and user-friendly tech stack as a differentiator to retain and attract talent, as well as a way to better unify the customer journey inside the business, and therefore outside too.
3. The continued move towards a Product-Led Growth Strategy, impacting how we design and conceive our RevOps teams, and reporting structure—with Product as the Ops team for the developers, being rolled in under RevOps.

There is going to be a shift in focus towards CRM and data strategy, especially for businesses in the growth/scale mode. Once businesses reach a certain level, there will be a greater need for consistency, accountability, transparency, team alignment and data-driven insights which all depend on data and CRM.

Businesses in 2022 are going to realize the need for a central source of truth. They might already have that by manually pulling pieces of information from different sources and creating a conclusion, so I foresee a growth in businesses wanting to integrate as many tools/tech stack as possible to the CRM. It will help to save time, ensure everyone is on the same page using the same data, and that SLAs between teams are met and reportable.