The Marsden Marketing Digital Marketing Blog

A Guide to Choosing the Best Revenue Operations Software

Written by Marsden Marketing Team | Mon, Oct 09, 2023 @ 09:00 PM

Today's companies acknowledge the pivotal role of Revenue Operations (RevOps) in driving business growth. RevOps integrates marketing, sales, and customer success to streamline operations and boost business growth. A robust RevOps tech stack is the foundation for this alignment, ensuring each department can collaboratively and efficiently drive revenue. It's also one of several Revenue Operations best practices.

Selecting the right RevOps tools calls for a keen balance of functionality, ease of implementation, and system integration. However, with the various RevOps software available today, navigating all the RevOps software options can take time and effort. Finding the right fit involves weighing software capabilities against your specific business needs and goals, understanding their integration potential with your existing systems, and assessing their long-term benefits.

This is where the value of a knowledgeable partner comes into play. Over the years, we’ve helped several clients audit, implement, optimize, and streamline their tech stack to maximize their investment returns. In this blog, we’ll provide the seven tools you need to build your RevOps foundation and the best Revenue Operations software out in the market today to support your RevOps strategy and goals.

 

CRM Platform

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform is simply a must-have, whether you are setting up a RevOps function or not. For Revenue Operations specifically, it is the backbone of your RevOps strategy. It centralizes customer data, making it easier to manage customer interactions, streamline processes, and enhance customer success/support — all vital for driving revenue growth. Think of it as your single source of truth for all customer data.

For your CRM platform to live up to its expectations as a single source of truth, you must explore integrations with other vital tools in your RevOps tech stack to capture the necessary information. If you’re in the market for a new CRM platform, here are some of the top tools to look into:

  • HubSpot CRM: Known for its user-friendly design, HubSpot offers contact and deal management and integrates smoothly with the rest of the HubSpot ecosystem. It's perfect for small to medium-sized businesses looking for a versatile, intuitive CRM.
  • Salesforce: Renowned for its wide-ranging features and extensive customization options. It offers comprehensive contact management, opportunity management, workflow rules, and automated processes, making it suitable for larger and more complex businesses.
  • Microsoft Dynamics 365: This CRM offers deep integration with other Microsoft products, providing a robust solution for businesses already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem that want to maximize the impact of their investment.

Revenue Attribution Tools

Understanding which marketing efforts drive revenue is fundamental for RevOps. Revenue attribution tools help track the performance of your marketing efforts by attributing revenue to specific channels, campaigns, or customer touchpoints. Here are some leading revenue attribution tools to consider.

  • HubSpot's Revenue Attribution Reporting: This tool stands out for its multi-touch revenue attribution reports, which allow you to trace revenue back to specific marketing activities, helping determine the effectiveness of each.
  • Salesforce’s Pardot: Pardot excels in offering advanced ROI reporting. Its ability to pinpoint the success of marketing efforts and its advanced Machine Learning (ML) attribution system, known as Einstein, makes it ideal for organizations looking to optimize their marketing strategies.

Sales Enablement Platform

For a RevOps team focused on enhancing sales performance, it’s essential to arm sales teams with tools to improve efficiency. Sales enablement platforms empower sales teams with the tools, content, and information needed to sell more effectively. They also provide additional insights into the efficacy of sales strategies and how to improve them to drive optimal results. Some tools that stand out in this arena are Showpad and Seismic. Get a closer look below to see why.

  • Showpad: Showpad shines in content management and sales training. Its powerful search capabilities, dynamic content suggestions, and advanced analytics make it an ideal choice for businesses aiming to boost their sales efficiency.
  • Seismic: Featuring robust analytics and personalization tools, Seismic’s content automation and predictive content features make it a powerful tool for sales organizations that prioritize personalization and efficiency.

Business Intelligence (BI) Analytics Tools

Data is king when it comes to RevOps. It will ultimately enable your team to make informed decisions that generate revenue. BI tools are essential for transforming raw data into meaningful insights. Some of the best BI tools in the market you’ll want to look into include:

  • Tableau: Known for its robust data visualization capabilities, Tableau allows users to create interactive dashboards, making complex data more digestible. It's a top pick for organizations looking to make data-driven decisions.
  • Power BI from Microsoft: This tool integrates well with other Microsoft services, offering powerful data visualization and reporting features. It's an excellent choice for businesses already using Microsoft services.
  • Looker (by Google): Looker offers robust data modeling and customizable data exploration, making it an ideal tool for businesses looking for in-depth data analysis.

Marketing Automation Platform (MAP)

Efficiency in marketing processes directly impacts revenue, making automation critical for RevOps success. MAPs help automate repetitive marketing tasks, freeing time and resources while increasing efficiency and campaign success rates. HubSpot and Market Engage are great MAPs to explore, and here’s why:

  • HubSpot: HubSpot's comprehensive feature set and seamless integration with its CRM make it a strong contender for businesses seeking an all-in-one platform.
  • Marketo Engage: Marketo stands out for its lead management and B2B marketing capabilities, making it an excellent choice for businesses with a strong focus on these areas.

Customer Success/Support Management Platform

Maintaining customer satisfaction and ensuring success is a revenue-driving strategy that must be addressed under the RevOps model. These platforms track customer interactions and satisfaction to improve customer retention, a crucial factor for steady revenue growth. Consider the following customer success management platforms for your operations:

  • Gainsight: Gainsight offers comprehensive features for customer health scoring, NPS tracking, and more, making it a top choice for businesses keen on improving customer success and retention.
  • Totango: With robust features for segmentation and customer health tracking, Totango is ideal for businesses looking to enhance customer satisfaction and maintain high customer retention levels.

Data Integration Tools

Data hygiene, consistency, and accessibility across platforms are crucial to a unified operation. Data integration tools facilitate data sharing between different software systems, enhancing operational efficiency and data accuracy. Here's a list of reliable data integration tools to help bridge your software systems to create that unified view of your customers:

  • Talend: Suited for various data integration tasks, Talend excels in ETL (Extract, Transform, Load), real-time data integration, and data quality management, making it a suitable choice for businesses with diverse data integration needs.
  • Boomi: Known for cloud-based integration, API management, and Master Data Management, Boomi is a solid choice for larger businesses needing robust data integration solutions.
  • Informatica: With powerful enterprise-level features, Informatica's data integration, data governance, and master data management solutions make it a popular choice for large corporations.

Project Management Software

To ensure alignment and collaboration across functions, it's wise to consider a project management tool. A project management solution can help create a centralized place for teams to work cross-functionally to achieve specific goals. It also makes it easier to plan and organize initiatives. Some tools to consider include:

  • Asana: Asana offers robust features for managing complex projects. It includes timeline views, advanced insights, and integration capabilities, making it suitable for larger teams with complex projects.
  • Trello: With a simple and easy-to-use visual interface, Trello excels in task and project management. Its intuitive design makes it suitable for small teams and straightforward projects.
  • Jira: Developed primarily for software teams, Jira supports agile project management, making it a top choice for tech teams running scrum, Kanban, or mixed methodologies.

Selecting the Right RevOps Tools: What to Consider

Finding the right tools comes with its challenges. Before getting started, you’ll first want to evaluate your current tech infrastructure to determine how suitable they are in helping you achieve your goal, whether or not it enables you to gain a clear view of the customer, and how easy it is to integrate with other tools to ensure you are building an effective RevOps tech stack.

This step will provide insights into what tools you need and what you can consolidate to reduce tool bloat. As you build your RevOps tech stack, remember the importance of aligning your tool selection with your business objectives.

Each Revenue Operations software you evaluate should serve a defined purpose and offer value to your Revenue Operations. Also, integration capabilities across your tech stack should be a priority to ensure data flow and process alignment across different areas of your operations (sales, marketing, and customer success/support).

But the most critical consideration is your team's ability to use these tools effectively. The best RevOps tool in the world won't deliver value if your team struggles to use it or doesn't match your business's operational style. This is where training and support play vital roles.

Given the complexity and strategic importance of building the right RevOps tech stack, leveraging the expertise of a partner like Marsden Marketing can be invaluable. As a B2B marketing agency with a deep understanding of RevOps, we bring years of experience helping businesses like yours choose the right tools, streamline tech stacks, and maximize ROI.

 

Want to learn more about RevOps? Check out our guide on Revenue Operations best practices to learn more.