RevOps Co-op Weekly #9 - The Role of RevOps in Systems Administration
There's a variety of models when it comes to systems admin, and we've seen them all succeed and fail. What will work for you ultimately depends on, well...you.
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Revenue Operations’ Role in System Administration
Improperly monitored systems can present security risks for organizations. Users are often the source of breaches. They can fall victim to a phishing scam, use poor password management, or do some damage as a disgruntled ex-employee if you're not on top of user administration (or have a gap in your communication with human resources). An information technology department focusing on security may give more priority to monitoring usage (and have better access to human resources info).
It's essential to weigh the pros and cons of different administration models and commit to more rigorous administration practices or less control over the systems the teams you support use.
The Models
System administration models don’t have to be all or nothing. There are flavors in between, and some tasks may remain with your department despite a centralized model.
Centralized
Centralized administration can look different from organization to organization. Some organizations don't want people in various departments to have any administrative rights, even in a sandbox. Others manage systems purchases, renewals, and production administration while allowing operations to run point on major projects and configure changes in a sandbox environment.
ProTip: Do Not hire a system administrator in revenue operations until you are clear on what your team is and isn't allowed to do. Be certain to share those restrictions with anyone interviewing to ensure they'll be happy in a reduced administration position.
Decentralized
Decentralized administration allows departments to have unrestricted access to the systems they use and determine how they are protected. It may go a step further in some revenue operations teams who divvy up functions by supported department rather than by operational function.
There may be a Salesforce administrator who supports sales and marketing, and then another system administrator who supports customer success because of the volume of requests. You may also opt to have a revenue operations systems team with multiple administrators assigned to projects based on the level of complexity they can tackle.
ProTip: If there are multiple system administrators in any given system, they should regularly discuss their projects. This is particularly crucial if the project spans objects that multiple teams touch. If the change is cross-functional, the project team should reflect this as well.
Bonus ProTip: If you have multiple administrators in the same system, weigh whether you want them to specialize in a particular department's workflow. They'll naturally gravitate toward the work they're comfortable with if you don't push them to go outside of their comfort zone.
Delegated Administration
In a delegated administration model, IT is ultimately responsible for managing and maintaining systems with a focus on security. They often are the sole keepers of user administration, permission sets, sharing rules, and integrations and must sign off on major purchase decisions. Other departments are allowed to have designated experts who have restricted administrative access.
For example, the IT department may be responsible for shared objects but allow unrestricted changes in objects that are “owned” by a department or record types that are “owned by a department.” In a company using Salesforce across multiple departments:
IT: User administration, sharing rules, permission sets, integrations, flows, process builder, apps
Sales: Opportunities, Sales Tasks, Sales Events
Marketing: Pardot, Leads, Campaigns, Campaign Members
Customer Success: Cases, Entitlements, Milestones, CS Tasks, CS Events
Revenue Operations’ Goal
If you want to collect meaningful data, your focus should be on building a system that actually offers value to the end-user. The platform should make it easier for people to do their jobs. If not, they’re merely doing the bare minimum to meet a job requirement.
Whoever manages your systems should be empathetic towards whoever is using it. They should understand whether the team is on the road full time or dealing with a heavy workload before constructing a multi-screen process. Even revenue operations professionals sometimes lose sight of the need to balance system usability and management’s reporting demands.
Of course, we should care about metrics. Just don’t forget that user adoption is essential for data collection.
Before you commit to a new administrative model, weigh how essential the following factors are to supporting sales, marketing, and customer support.
If you're an agile organization used to changing things frequently, you'll want to retain some administrative rights. If your processes are well established, and you can envision sticking to a monthly or quarterly project cadence without much heartburn, less administrative rights may be a good thing. It may free up headcount to focus on things like analytics, commission plans, and breaking down silos.
Auxiliary Admin
While you're building out an administrative model, take into account auxiliary systems like chatbots, sales prospecting tools, third-party data sources, digital marketing tools, and direct mail add-ons. If you have a centralized administration model, it may make sense for IT to own the technical review prior to purchasing and integrating the systems. It probably won't make sense for them to own a lot of the workflows.
In examples given earlier, I mentioned Outreach and chatbots. This is because the workflows change frequently, and these changes aren’t integrated with the main systems. Outreach playbooks may generate emails and tasks that ultimately end up in Salesforce, but the structure of the workflow and email content shouldn’t live with IT. Chatbots allow for decision trees and data collection prior to a person being connected with an agent. Very little of this (if any) is logged in Salesforce.
If you’re giving up any administrative rights, make sure to be very detailed about what you’ll be keeping.
Parting Considerations
As someone who has seen consolidated, delegated, and decentralized administration models work well and fail, I can tell you the key to success in any model is how well departments work together.
Transparency, a shared sense of ownership (non-proprietary attitude), and flexibility have always struck me as more valuable than in-depth system knowledge. If people are respectful of guidelines and communicate well, you can make any model work.
The number one requirement for any model is that your team can still meet the needs of the departments you're supporting.
To see this full blog post on the RevOps Co-op blog, go here 👉🏻 The Role of Revenue Operations in Systems Administration
🐦 This week in #RevOps Twitter
💯 🙌🏻
Agreed - measure what matters = 🚀
🤭 For some laughs (also this tweet is VERY accurate, highly recommend you follow @morningbrew on Twitter)
📚 Your curated #RevOps reading list
Top 5 reasons to consider creating a revenue operations team, by Whitney Sales of The Sales Methods
Will cut straight to the chase, the reasons are:
The price point for fully online B2B purchases has increased over the last year
An explosion of marketing, sales, and customer support technology has lead to an increasingly complex tech stack
That age-old problem of misalignment between sales and marketing
An increased need for data-driven decision making
A customer journey isn’t departmental
How to make B2B buying as smooth as shopping online, from the Salesforce Blog
Forget about where you work for a minute, and think back on your last two decades as a consumer. The most important innovations were all about making it easier for you to choose — and buy.
Eighty-five percent of business buyers now say that the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services. That’s 6% more than consumers who say the same.
Salesforce bets big on revenue management. But what’s revenue management? It’s going beyond the initial selling motion to think about the entire revenue lifecycle. And it’s rooting out fragmentation — because wherever there’s fragmentation, it will show up as a bad buying experience.
In addition, there are 4 strategies you can use to make buying the new selling for your business:
Get personal
Let customers choose their own adventure
Always be helpful
Change how you sell by changing your metrics
How to tell a story - 3 steps to maximize impact, from Winning by Design
One of the most powerful sales skills you can master is storytelling - and regardless of your job or profession, you are ALWAYS selling something…an idea, yourself, a strategy.
When you share how you helped someone with similar challenges, you are more persuasive than just telling them you can help. A story helps plant an idea that can change their mind or open them up to new possibilities.
Three key steps to maximize impact of any story are:
Beginning - make it personal
Middle - describe the pain and negative impact
End - the solution and positive impact
Bonus fourth step - 3rd party references to build credibility
Funl is an operating system for your GTM team that provides end-to-end, full funnel analytics and insights that keep marketing, sales and customer success teams aligned and working seamlessly together to drive more revenue growth for your business.