How IT & RevOps Partner to Drive Efficient Revenue Growth

Is there inherent friction between IT and RevOps?

Whether it’s Tom and Jerry fighting over control of the house, Ron Burgundy battling rival news anchors, or Mario and Bowser feuding over the Mushroom Kingdom, power struggles are simply part of life.

And the workplace is no exception. Common rivalries like Marketing vs. Sales, Design vs. Development, Leadership vs. rank and file,  and many others exist across all industries. 

So what about IT vs. Revenue Operations (RevOps)?

RevOps may see IT as a barrier, blocking them from automating things that improve processes and productivity. IT may see RevOps as potentially breaking things that IT needs to fix. 

But it certainly doesn’t have to be this way. 

When IT is viewed as a revenue enabler and silos are removed, IT and RevOps have the potential to drive more efficient revenue growth together.

Reframing IT as a Revenue Enabler

The IT department often gets stigmatized as those people in the basement fixing computers and  responding to service tickets. Technically, IT is a cost center, a department like HR or accounting that doesn’t directly contribute to profitability, but still costs money to operate. 

However, when IT is managed under the lens of efficiency and ROI, it can easily become a revenue enabler. Whether they’re optimizing processes, reducing downtime, improving security, or implementing cost-effective solutions, the IT department can not only save a company money, but also create opportunities for revenue growth.

This works best when IT partners with RevOps, but first, silos must come down.

Removing Silos

In larger organizations, IT tends to own the customer relationship management (CRM) platform. RevOps owns the processes, sales stack, and data of sales, marketing, and customer success departments to drive revenue growth. Putting IT and RevOps in silos is a common mistake. There’s a lot of crossover — significant overlap in the responsibilities and duties of these two departments.

Because of all the technology in an organization’s tech stack, IT is very much embedded in the daily lives of employees. So while IT can help process the technology, they also need to know how the business functions in order to support employees better. 

That’s where RevOps comes in. RevOps can share the results of technology and processes with IT through analytics. 

Removing silos and creating alignment means that the data, processes and key metrics that drive growth and profitability are shared.

Simplifying Processes

The IT and RevOps departments are the perfect partners for simplifying processes and building a more efficient tech stack. RevOps can tell IT what is wrong with the processes and share the issues that employees complain about most. Then, IT can correct the technical issues, identify opportunities for automation, and make the selling process straightforward and easy. 

Stas Daszkiewicz, Senior Director of IT at Sisense, said in a recent RevOps Rockstars podcast, “Every click I can take away from a sales rep, every last little field they had to type in, is another minute or second that they’re on a phone with a possible client or customer.”

When sales reps are enabled to sell without having to think about the systems they are using, their focus becomes satisfying the prospective customer and closing the deal. This efficiency mentality, driven collaboratively by IT and RevOps, builds revenue.

IT & RevOps, A Revenue-Driving Partnership

The IT department and RevOps department don’t need to compete for turf. When a mid-market company uses an average 185 apps, while an enterprise company uses 288, it just makes sense for IT and RevOps to join forces and determine what processes and technology move the revenue needle forward.

When IT and RevOps partner to facilitate the go-to-market processes, this ultimately helps the revenue team be more efficient and achieve growth objectives in a financially responsible manner.

It’s like PB and J, beer and pizza, or coffee and chocolate: better together.