It’s been another hectic few months, trawling through survey data and drawing out insights for the latest Rev Ops Barometer research.
What’s different this time?
Well, there are a few things that seem fairly unanimous across the industry and then some things which seem to be felt most keenly in niches.
Let’s start with the big one – life beyond the cookie. The number of respondents who are confident that their businesses are well prepared for the end of cookies is plummeting. This is particularly apparent for anyone working in a ‘high programmatic’ business (where >50% of revenue is generated programmatically). Three-quarters of those in high programmatic businesses say Google Chrome sun-setting cookies will have a significant or critical impact, whereas just one-third of those in low programmatic businesses feel the same.
The different view for high programmatic vs low programmatic businesses seems intuitive, especially as we’re talking about a practice founded on cookies. Yet, when we ask where ‘solutioning for the end of 3rd party cookies’ sits on the priority list, it's right at the bottom for everyone (including high programmatic). Why?
One theory is that it’s hard to prioritise solutions that aren’t immediately actionable. Beefing up first-party data is not a quick fix and is often not fully in the control of revenue operations teams. So, it is logical for rev ops specialists to focus on things within their control, such as proving the quality of inventory and optimising campaigns. These are basic but essential tasks that help solve the immediate need to maximise revenues, whereas solutioning for the end of cookies is treated more as an industry problem, with no clear consensus.
Another growing issue we see is in resourcing – especially growing and retaining knowledge and skills in an industry that is changing fast. A noticeable difference between businesses we classify as high versus low ‘maturity’ (in terms of their revenue operations capability) is the sense that management and sales are both conversant in rev ops issues and opportunities. Rev ops in low maturity businesses tend to point to similar issues:
“Lack of knowledge and retention [is preventing] sales to sell technology properly.”
“Sales is not knowledgeable enough to talk about the deprecation of 3rd party cookies.”
“Lack of focus on rev operations from the C-Level.”
When we look at businesses reporting a high-level of management buy-in, we see a marked increase in confidence across the board. For instance, respondents reporting high management buy-in are 60% more likely to have confidence in the business’s identity solutions than those with low management buy-in.
We think insights like this point to an interesting challenge for the industry. Clearly the C-suite needs to understand and support revenue operations better to ensure the team is equipped to drive the business forward, but perhaps revenue operations teams need to get better at making management understand and care?