Chapter 5: RevOps Principle #3: Tools
One of the research questions answered in this chapter is:
Do you think RevOps owns the tech stack?
Answers:
Yes -- 22 people
It depends -- 11 people
No -- 1 person
A few of the "Yes" answers, with shared responsibility discussed:
Alana Zimmer said that in addition to ownership of the tech stack, they also own the data strategy or flow of information through the tech stack, the rollout of and/or subtractions from it. Documentation.
Lorena Morales talked about how it would be ideal to have a single budget and single approver (such as the head of RevOps) to approve tech purchases and stack instead of each team buying whatever they want from separate budgets and not communicating.
Sylvain Giuliani said, “It used to be tools did lots of things, now there are lots of specialized tools that need to talk to each other...with great power comes great responsibility.” He also said, “Yes. Especially if you want to have an impact and deliver more value to your (internal) customers.”
Julia Herman agreed for budget reasons. “When that budget sits within one department, they can be a lot more flexible, rather than saying, ‘Okay, I want this, this team wants this, this [other] team wants that.’”
Maggie Butler said, “Part of delivering on the customer experience is the technology ...it's part of the heart of RevOps, it's part of creating that really smooth, friction-free runway for your operations teams.”
Karen Steele said the overall tech stack and budget for the tech stack should live in RevOps, though they definitely shared ownership with some of the other teams.
Nicole Smith said, “RevOps should be responsible because they are regularly aware (if not helping to facilitate) the strategic direction and should be proactive in putting any changes necessary in place and ensuring tools are optimized based on the current or future workflow.”
Matthew Volm said, ”You need a complete end-to-end view of the tech stack in order to determine upstream or downstream impacts of any new system implementation.”
Alison Elworthy said, “Yes. It’s important to centralize tech stack ownership so you don’t create or reinforce silos that slow you down. Traditionally, marketing or sales each have their own ops teams who are in charge of their own systems. A fragmented tech stack like this leads to key customer data and history becoming spread across multiple systems, leading to disjointed handoffs between teams -- a terrible customer experience. With RevOps as the owner, you can better centralize the customer experience with one owner of the tech stack, and a one systems strategy.”
Rosalyn Santa Elena said, “It's a partnership in different organizations depending on how big you are. If you're lucky enough to have some IT support, then obviously, you'd be partnering with IT. And if you're lucky enough to have a PMO… [same rule applies]. Going back to the fact that you're closest to the team, and the day-to-day in the business. I think who better than the RevOps team to manage the tools that the team is using.”
Virinchi Duvvuri said RevOps owns it in collaboration with marketing because marketing has had more tools budget at the organizations he’s led.
A few of the "It depends" answers:
Jeff Ignacio said for companies that move fast, you can’t wait for a centralized owner to manage it, so sales ops and marketing ops each need autonomy. “When you have that high level of autonomy, you can stick your head in the sand and just focus living in a cave on these technologies, but it's hard to extract value when you're also being very tactical when your company grows up, and you hand those keys over.”
Hilary Headlee said, “There's a point in a company's growth where I'm not the person you should call when Salesforce is down...I own the tech stack from a rep-usability level, and for business requirements design so it's efficient and effective. Absolutely. Do I own it from a user satisfaction level? Absolutely. Do I own it from a technical level? No, I don't, I need to partner with my IT teams on that...I think at an earlier stage company I have owned more of the tech stack. Once you're nearing $100 million... in annual revenue and/or really getting close to pre-IPO, then the keys of the kingdom move...I don't necessarily have to own the home and turn the light switch on or off on it, I can own the business requirements to try to ensure if you will [get] end-user satisfaction. Easier said than done.”
Adam Tesan said it is very situational to how an organization is set up. “Some people have a real strong, centralized IT function and others don't...I'm excited about that tech stack evaluation and optimization [instead of] duplications all over the place.”
Jenna Hannington said, "Yes and no. I think RevOps owns the ecosystem and is responsible for maintaining and streamlining connecting tools, but there may be disparate tools that operate outside the “connected ecosystem” that surrounding teams will maintain. Often your super users will sit in other parts of the organization, so working closely with these team members will help ensure you’re developing the right roadmap to support their needs."
Briana Okyere said, “It's definitely something that has to have development involved in it. But I think it's more of a bridge. So I think operations needs to own the tech stack, as much of it as engineering does. And I think it needs to be a joint effort.”
