If you’ve spent any time in or around B2B sales organizations over the past few years, you've likely encountered the term Revenue Intelligence. While various companies vie for credit in coining the term or defining the category, its emergence seems to have organically taken root around 2019-2020. In November 2021, Gartner published its first market guide for Revenue Intelligence, defining the category as follows:
Revenue intelligence platforms are third-party solutions that enhance the activity management, deal insights and pipeline analytics offered by sales force automation (SFA) platforms. Predominantly used by B2B sales organizations, revenue intelligence platforms facilitate the capture of sales interactions and coach sellers to quickly anticipate buyers’ needs. They use AI/ML technology to amplify the value of commercial data, accelerate sales cycles and provide better visibility and insights on pipeline performance.
Against this backdrop, a number of innovative and valuable solutions emerged, many of them bringing a large change to the way that B2B sales professionals work. However, it’s clear that in terms of category creation, we’re just getting started.
Current State of Revenue Intelligence
To understand the current state of the Revenue Intelligence category, it's helpful to look back to when it first emerged. That period was characterized by easy access to capital, a focus on rapid growth, and a short-term execution mindset for go-to-market (GTM) teams.
During this time, most revenue org software investments were directed towards:
- Scaling personalized outbound activities
- Improving deal and pipeline management
- Automating key workflows in the sales rep process
In short, the technology that marked the beginning of the Revenue Intelligence category was focused on moving fast, scaling wide, and improving near-term revenue predictability. This was a perfect fit for the “growth at all costs” environment that many SaaS companies were operating in at the time.
To be clear, the solutions that defined the beginning of the category continue to be vital -- but today’s environment has changed. “Growth at all costs” is out and “Efficient Growth” is in. In this new operating climate, Revenue Intelligence must evolve.
Revenue Intelligence in the Efficient Growth Era
GTM teams and their Finance leaders are now seeking best practices and solutions to help them manage optimally in this efficient growth era. Whether it’s a young and growing startup, or a company that survived (and even continued to grow in) the economic transition of the last 3 years, revenue leaders are being asked to ensure teams and plans are built for the economics of productive goal achievement with clear paths to profitability. In order to do this, leaders more than ever must have the best insights to help them properly plan, execute, adapt, and optimize in real-time. In essence, the questions shown in the slide become top of mind in the efficient growth era:
You’ll note that the management-level questions span the lifecycle of your revenue strategy, from planning (“How many sellers do I need?”, “What will it cost to hit plan?”) to managing the ongoing execution (“Were my plan assumptions correct?”, “Is my hiring on track to still hit targets?”) and then optimizing based on current realities (“What if I shift resources differently?”, “Where are the newest risks?”).
The problem for these leaders is that there is little to no support infrastructure in place to help them chart this path. Existing playbooks mostly point at the growth at all cost model, and the sales tech stack that GTM teams have come to rely on is firmly rooted in this same model.
Today, planning is done in spreadsheets. In all fairness, spreadsheets aren’t bad - when used for the right purpose. That said, spreadsheets can’t (shouldn't) be used as a revenue operating system, especially so in an efficient growth era. Spreadsheets fall down on a number of fronts:
- They are prone to human error
- They are not good vehicles for cross-functional collaboration
- They do not offer real-time insights or optimization suggestions
In the absence of a proper solution, understanding progress against a revenue plan and adapting in real time to new trends, risks, and opportunities is hardly done at all. The best teams do this quarterly, most semi-annually or annually, using a resource-draining mix of spreadsheets, manual data analysis, and a lot of human time. This approach worked fine in the days of free-flowing capital – after all a lot of problems can be solved by throwing money at them. However, things have changed and the approach to operating a revenue organization must change as well.
Revenue Plan Management That Drives Intelligence and Agility
Revenue planning, including its execution and active management, and revenue intelligence should be closely intertwined. Insights about how your revenue plan is performing in actuality is vital information to chart your path to reach revenue targets. Those insights have impacts on hiring, sales enablement investments, how you organize your headcount and assign managers, pipeline generation budgets, and more.
We built Revcast to help revenue leaders navigate this era, which means replacing the spreadsheet as the current operating system of the revenue organization in favor of the solution that’s truly needed. Our platform helps leaders to create better plans, deliver ongoing updates of progress to plan, and automate insights that optimize revenue production.
Revcast is revenue intelligence in the real sense - helping you to answer “If I invest $1 to grow my company, where should that be?” Our team is made up of former revenue leaders and RevOps experts who have long wanted a solution like this for ourselves.
We’ll continue on our mission and look forward to expanding the Revenue Intelligence category. Schedule time with us to see a demo of the types of insights we can bring to your revenue intelligence goals.
