What’s the Difference Between RevOps and Revenue Intelligence?

The global pandemic caused many functions – especially sales – to fast-forward digital transformation. This rapid acceleration of digital transformation in sales has placed buyer engagement insight at the top of business technology priorities.

Today, most sales, marketing, and customer service professionals interact via casual collaboration – and the systems and data they work with are siloed. These separate islands of information stand in the way of their working together in concert – and working from the same data and drawing strong correlations necessary to drive revenue effectively.

Revenue Operations or RevOps emerged as a means to remedy misalignment across the revenue funnel. The approach was then popularized by early adopters of the new ‘Chief Revenue Officer’ title in the early 2010s.

While exact definitions vary, a RevOps approach comprises the people, processes, strategy, and systems of an organization’s go-to-market (GTM) and sales operations. The goal of RevOps is to centralize and synergize sales, marketing, and customer success operations across the entire customer lifecycle.

Anthony McPartlin, principal analyst at Forrester, describes RevOps as something that enables businesses to “optimize the performance of the revenue engine by centralizing data and analytics across opportunities, accounts, and pipelines for sales teams. These insights enable robust management of forecasting and revenue performance, while also providing greater transparency and accountability.” He notes that RevOps is not a tech category, but rather “an aligned operation model for managing the revenue engine.”

Another industry expert, author Chris Hummel, in Revenue Operations: A New Way to Align Sales and Marketing, Monetize Data, and Ignite Growth, explains that RevOps has become imperative as today’s sales environment is a data-driven team sport. To succeed, leaders must connect the dots across their sales and marketing technology ecosystem to optimize every step of the buyer’s journey. “At its simplest, RevOps is a system for growth. Systems combine things that work together as a united whole to achieve a common purpose.”

Revenue Intelligence is an essential piece of the RevOps puzzle. Revenue Intelligence is the practice of collecting sales and product usage data across leads, prospects, and current customers with analytics to derive critical insights. This effort identifies trends and metrics that lead to increased revenues by leveraging the data that already resides within your business software.

Forrester describes Revenue Intelligence solutions as those that capture human engagement activity between buyers and sellers, and automatically update that data to CRM platforms. The AI engine analyzes the information to uncover actionable insights, provide dynamic guidance, and supply inputs on deal management, forecasting, and other revenue-generating activities.

This is a critical tool for modern sales teams as Revenue Intelligence combines the power of customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI), and pricing optimization software. It removes obstacles to business growth such as siloed data in multiple places or formats, paving the path for teams to target, market, sell, and cultivate positive customer experiences.

The integrated platform enables a better understanding of customers and prospects. It keeps deals moving forward with automated sales and marketing workflows. Sales teams can identify and act on trends to grow business with existing customers and create pricing strategies that minimize overrides and maximize profits. Distributors have a competitive edge when their data, analytics, and workflows all cross-collaborate to share information among teams for improved sales processes and synergy that keeps everyone laser-focused on driving revenue.

A solid RevOps strategy doesn’t work without the Revenue Intelligence piece. While RevOps provides the operational framework for your go-to-market efforts, Revenue Intelligence translates data into insights to drive improved performance.

When looking for a well-built Revenue Intelligence platform, look for an offering designed specifically for the distribution market. Your technology partner should have deep roots in your industry with an optimized platform to connect your critical CRM, BI, and Pricing modules to one another while also integrating with your ERP solution. Next, look for built-in automation and workflows that create efficiencies and make the most of your employees’ time and talents.

The White Cup Revenue Intelligence ecosystem consists of proven, distributor-specific solutions that are simple, sophisticated, and intuitive to guide your team to take action and move marks for revenue improvement immediately. Our software captures data across critical business systems, reveals industry-specific analysis, and provides the tools necessary for revenue improvements. Solutions within this leading platform include:

• White Cup CRM: This comprehensive set of distribution-focused features and functionality is designed to drive sales, automate marketing activities, and keep deals going toward a close.
• White Cup BI: Brawny business intelligence combines ERP and sales data into reports and dashboards that uncover customer insights and buying trends and provides next-level visibility into the sales process to steer success.
• White Cup Pricing: This analytical powerhouse facilitates complex product and customer segmentation and pricing analysis in a matter of minutes instead of weeks of manual work.

As distributors navigate the “new normal” era of hyperinflation and supply chain challenges, the need for RevOps and Revenue Intelligence is crucial. Industry analyst firm Forrester is advocating the need for Revenue Operations and Intelligence solutions to leverage buyer signals and interactions to produce insights that allow go-to-market functions to continuously improve execution performance and optimize the revenue engine across multiple areas. The time to rev up your RevOps is now with a Revenue Intelligence platform that’s easy to use, integrates smoothly with your existing systems, and is purpose-built for the distribution sector.