The Digital Revenue Organization: Data
Revenue growth is enabled by targeted data insights.
The whitepaper, The Digital Revenue Organization: Defining the Modern Marketing, Sales and Service Model, examines how the new Digital Revenue Organization is guiding the buyer journey. The first article in this series introduced the three foundational elements that make the Digital Revenue Organization.
- Data
- Process
- Systems and Tools
This article summarizes the path to leveraging cross-functional, democratized, data to propel more impactful customer engagement.
Data is no longer “owned” by IT. Cloud-based platforms have enabled enterprise hubs for data to be created and curated. As these platforms mature, they are increasingly being owned directly by aligned business functions such as marketing, sales and service.
Consequently, IT is more integrated with operations. They serve the business as a data “crossing guard,” taking a collaborative approach with finance, sales, marketing, customer success, pricing and others. They enable the flow of data across the organization.
In practice this means marketing, sales and service partner with IT and data science to build cross-functional data products that serve the entire organization. Insights are mined and propel customer engagement. Campaigns and plays are tested and refined, and models are tuned in real-time.
Survey the Data Landscape
To get started, map and evaluate the data ecosystem. Not all data is needed or accessible. Answer a few baseline questions:
- What type of data is required to better understand and serve customers?
- Is the needed data stable and accessible?
- What investments are needed to access and maintain the data?
- How will we turn data into insights?
- How will the insights propel marketing, sales and service motions?
These questions will produce foundational observations as you scope the data environment.
Target Four Data types
As you survey the landscape, target the following data types often used to propel customer engagement:
Intent: Marketing automation, social media, customer portal, contact information and the like flow into a centralized data source, providing insights into buyer behavior and intent.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Meetings, quotes, deal size and velocity, and service inquiries help predict customer interests and potential offer responses.
Enterprise: Transactional purchase data, pricing, contract terms, renewal rates and data from core systems provide valuable insights, predicting what customers are likely to purchase or when they will renew.
Telemetry and IoT: Data from smart systems help provide context as to how customers use products.
Architect the Data Infrastructure
A necessary dependency is a modern data architecture. Data lakes allow for the storage of massive amounts of data. Cloud-based data platforms allow data to be architected in a manner that business users and data scientist alike can consume. As the “crossing guard,” IT must build the data crossroads that enable cross-functional work.
Ideate Applications of Data
Once the environment is developed it is time to get creative. Marketing, sales and service teams collaborate with IT and data science to explore how data will propel customer engagement. The cross-functional team meets on a regular base to imagine new applications, evaluate in-flight tests and determine what to scale and what to abandon. Outcomes include data driven leads, next best actions, messaging, sales and service “plays,” and more.
Getting Started
Whether it is with the data, architecture or application of insights – start small. Find a function – like Marketing – that is open and ready to adopt data driven motions. Demonstrate the impact of data and promote across functions. Integrate data driven motions with internal workflows and tools. A step-wise approach creates organizational pull – from other functions and budget holders – and promotes adoption.
Digital Revenue Organization Expertise Sets the Stage for Future Growth
Alexander Group is a revenue operations leader assisting leading companies as they navigate a fundamental shift in how they grow revenue. No matter what the industry, creating a Digital Revenue Organization is a mandate for future growth.
For more details, download the whitepaper, The Digital Revenue Organization: Defining the Modern Marketing, Sales, and Service Model or contact us.
