Last month, demand management and attribution specialists LeanData launched a new revenue-focused platform supporting B2B enterprises. Yesterday in New York, they hosted OpsStars, part of a multi-city roadshow with talks mapping out a business’s journey to revenue.
Dana Therrien, practice leader, salesoperations strategies for SiriusDecisions, led off the day’s events with a keynote address on the “Emergence of Revenue Operations.” Revenue Ops isn’t just sales, but involves marketing and customer success, as well. He explained to me how he sees Revenue Ops as “an evolution” in bringing together separate teams within an organization. His read of the room during his talk was “very open…with a sense of urgency.” Business leaders want to get onboard with Revenue Ops because, as Therrien sees it, revenue is the means to bring together sales, marketing and customers, through tech. Siloed departments, “organizations” unto themselves, see “conflict” when they mull over past struggles. A comprehensive Revenue Ops platform enables “cooperation in the future,” Therrien stated.
LeanData CEO Evan Liang further expanded on the need for Revenue Ops in the B2B space. First of all, data on customers and prospects presents a “unique problem…with B2B sales averaging six to seven buyers.” How can you track the buyers’ journey when it’s disjointed with so many handoffs? Increasingly, Liang sees the rise of Director of Revenue positions as a call for this kind of solution. Karen Steele, LeanData’s CMO, sees Revenue Ops as “a culmination of different ops” or “streamlining…where businesses are seeking a common infrastructure between sales, marketing and customer ops.”
A key feature claimed by the LeanData revenue platform is its ability to integrate with other sales and marketing solutions. Above all, this recognizes an enterprise’s desire to draw from multiple vendors to build their stacks.
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Accenture Interactive this morning announced an agreement to acquire Droga5, which would be the largest acquisition in its ten year history. According to Accenture Interactive, the move reflects their mission ” build a new agency model, further disrupting the global advertising industry and its biggest market, with estimated spend for 2019 at 563 billion U.S. dollars.” Award-winning Droga5 most recently grabbed attention by dropping Game of Thrones content into a Superbowl Bud Light ad. — KD
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Last week, digital marketing and eCommerce platform Episerver hosted a “Customer Connect” event in New York featuring a guest speaker (Forrester’s Brendan Witcher on customer-centric tech investments), small-group discussions, some chat about the future of Episerver, and, yes, a cannoli for every attendee. At lunch, Justin Anovick seemed a little distracted. Pre-show jitters for his 1:15 presentation? No way. He was taking inventory of the cookie platter. When he spoke on the Future of Episerver, everybody’s future got brighter. We all got a cannoli, delivered from nearby Carlo’s. (We were at the Microsoft Technology Center at Times Square.)
The ability to make adjustments on the fly is just one kind of agility Episerver demonstrated that day. Episerver’s Digital Agility Model was another, enabling businesses to adapt internally to how far along their tech is. A business can be “crawling” with their analytics, while “walking” or “running” with their customer service. The goal is to get every facet “flying,” or firing on all cylinders. As a fine piece of customer engagement by Episerver, they released their own calculator tool, so enterprises can score their performance in CX and Digital operations. This helps the decision makers on marketing and sales teams to organize and understand their own position along the buyer’s journey, so Episerver can develop a customized solution for each client. What Brendan Witcher said in his talk applies across the board in B2B marketing: every business rep there was also a consumer.
