RevOps in SaaS has grown far too important to companies who give two hoots about their revenue. Why? It’s a role that strategically plans out and optimizes processes/ technologies to make their revenue strategy more powerful and of course, successful.
However, instead of doing that, RevOps is often caught up in an unbroken time loop of recurring work.
“Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”
You are burying your head in a spreadsheet trying to make sense out of messed up data for hours together when you could be building processes to accelerate revenue growth.
Luckily, the solution to this utter waste of precious Ops time (and brains) is quite straightforward. Any task you repeat, you automate. I am talking about process automation, the holy grail of all operations professionals.
Automation is not yet another fad. Automation tools such as task schedulers have existed for a while now but the pandemic has pushed the envelope on automation to a whole new celestial level. Teams working remotely with access to limited resources have acted as the springboard to push new automation strategies.
Every single one of us has had the pleasure of interacting with chatbots or phone menus when trying to reach customer support. And, it’s a brilliant show of automation that works! But, dealing with systems and numbers is when automation tools really shine.
There is an abundance of processes for RevOps to automate but in terms of priority, sales commissions processing is an area that is perfectly suited for automation. They are based on predefined rules and in most organizations calculated using data available from their CRM and/or billing systems.
Why make the switch?
Automating any process has its benefits but some of them are not obvious unless you take a closer look. I am listing some of the impacts automating commissions can bring, some immediate while some may take more time to emerge.
More $ in your pocket + more time in your calendar
Every month some members in the sales ops team will spend a few days to a couple of weeks running commission numbers. This effort and time saving will be an immediate change that is observed when commission automation is out in place. You sense that kind of feeling you get once you finish a TV series binge with 10 seasons and 24 episodes per season. Only difference is that you’ll sense relief and freedom instead of a strong lack of purpose in life.
A common mistake made while quantifying the impact made is to take only the resource cost into account. The time we save with software is used by the team to work on more strategic challenges for the organization and hence, brings a lot more value. This is the true benefit that automation brings to the table.
De-risking dependency on humans
Have you ever just looked at a person in your team and wondered what would happen to the process without them? You could realise two things here: one, why star performers are crucial to the success of your business and two, you are depending way too much on them. Without them, things would just fall apart.
If you automate a process or even a portion of it, it cushions the blow during the fall. Let me give you something to think about: consequences of your RevOps person suddenly going on leave due to some emergency? Discover the problem and the solution in detail here.
An eye into the future
Now that we’ve established that Ops need to focus more on the planning aspect of commissions, they do need reliable data and insights to do an incredible job. By automating commissions, you now hold the power to forecast, project and plan for commissions.
Ops and finance teams can also better manage risks in payouts. A streamlined view of MoM Payouts will help you with identifying outliers both good and bad and figure out a way to mitigate them.
Amping up the reps
Give your reps complete transparency of their payouts and watch them push the pedal even harder to reach their quota. Reps get real-time access to commissions data and transparent processes which reduces a lot of uncertainty that comes with manual commissions.
This clarity of commissions allows them to see where they are currently, where they should be and how much they need to do to get there. It’s a clearly marked roadmap for them to cross that glorious finish line. This is the downstream impact and end user advantage of automation.
Ops is indispensable if high revenue is the goal. And, being smart is using them for their strategic capabilities instead of their tactical ones. Especially when it comes to Ops, you must prioritize brutally for the greater good of the business. Let Ops focus on things ONLY they can do. For everything else, there’s automation.
While we’re on the subject of automating sales commissions, would you like a demo of how Everstage can take the burden of commissions off your shoulders? Hit this link.
Acknowledgements : Thanks to Samra Taban for editing the blog and Aravindh Natesan for the visuals.
