Something very exciting is happening in the B2B space today. Companies finally realize that in order to deliver a truly great B2B buying experience, which their customers expect and receive everyday in their personal lives through companies like Amazon, Uber, and more, they need to break down the silos between marketing, sales, customer success, and partner channels to deliver a seamless experience across all touch points.
SiriusDecisions describes revenue operations as a significant emerging paradigm bringing the operational work of sales, marketing and customer success together under one roof—and a potential game-changer that will fundamentally change how businesses align themselves internally to drive growth. It is no longer a handoff from marketing to sales, and then from sales to customer success. The customer journey isn’t a handoff, it takes place on a continuum.
LeanData has had the pleasure, over the last six years, of working with our early customers who have been thought leaders in pushing the envelope in improving the buying experience and improving sales and marketing productivity. They have helped us build the platform that we have today. Our customers, whether they called it revenue operations or not, have been looking for solutions that help them tear down the silos between marketing, sales, and customer success to accelerate revenue growth by matching the customer journey they create to the one that customers actually experience. With this, we’ve seen a lot of traction in the marketplace. LeanData had a breakout year in 2018, with over 170 new customers and revenue doubling.
Earlier this week, we announced our Series C funding in the amount of $27.5 million by investors Tenaya Capital, Industry Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, and Correlation Ventures. Investors, analysts, and businesses are taking note of this emergence of revenue operations—or the shift in organizational structure that brings marketing, sales, and customer teams under the umbrella of revenue operations. They are seeing the value in investing in this as the new standard for doing business.
LeanData is committed to solving real problems for its customers. The latest round of investment will help us accelerate this trajectory, and most importantly succeed in partnership with our customers in the fast-emerging new market category of revenue operations.
2019 and Beyond
As we move further into the year and take a look at what lies ahead beyond 2019, we see technology continuing to support these organizational changes with full transparency into go-to-market planning and execution, getting the right data to the right people at the right time, and leveraging automation to enhance the customer experience.
Structurally, organizations are starting to unite their ops teams from marketing, sales, and customer experience under one roof. Some companies are employing a dedicated revenue ops leader, while others are uniting the operations functions from each team under the function of revenue operations. A critical function in accelerating growth, we anticipate more companies hiring a CRO (chief revenue officer) to oversee the function of revenue operations. Eventually, it will be near impossible to compete without true ops alignment and transparency across the customer lifecycle. It simply cannot be overlooked as the customer experience continues to improve.