Understanding the revenue operations chain and applying it inside of your organization can effectively reduce costly manual reconciliations, increase profits, provide 360° revenue insights, and allow your Sales, Operations, Finance, and IT teams to work more efficiently. In a recent webinar, billing experts from Simplus and Salesforce outlined three ways your organization can reduce manual reconciliations. Here are highlights from the discussion. To view the webinar in its entirety, visit this link.

 

What is causing so much manual reconciliation?

According to a recent PwC survey, 30% of finance’s time is spent on manual reconciliation. That seems like a lot. Why is that? Companies have to manage many revenue models and be ready to introduce more. The pressure to go to market fast outpaces good revenue operations design and execution. Finance can’t report inaccurate data causing them to spend time on manual reconciliation making sure the data that they have received from upstream processes or other systems they don’t own is accurate.

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What is revenue operations?

Simplus defines revenue operations as the people, processes, and systems that allow revenue to flow through your business from the moment something is sold to the moment it’s captured on a financial report. This process is often very complicated with complex rules around revenue recognition. The revenue operations chain helps explain how revenue is booked, delivered, and turned into cash. Sales, Operations, Finance, and IT all play a role in the revenue operations chain.

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Take a catalog-driven approach to revenue operations

Taking a catalog-driven approach to revenue operations means thinking about your product book and what you sell. Companies sell different types of products. Each type of product has its own revenue operations chain. Know what you sell, simplify your product set, and know how ERP looks at your product catalog and how your CRM looks at your product catalog. Getting control of your catalogs lets you know you have optimized your business and how money flows through it reducing the need for manual reconciliations.

 

Have as few systems as possible to reduce manual reconciliations

Having as few systems as possible can help you eliminate manual reconciliations. If you can eliminate systems or passing data from one team to another you can eliminate the risks of data being altered or lost on exchanges. At Simplus we recommend using Salesforce CPQ and Billing, now Salesforce Revenue Cloud, and your ERP to handle the revenue operations chain.

 

The benefits of Salesforce Revenue Cloud

There is a breakdown in priorities of sales vs finance, front office vs back office. Sales is working to close as many deals as fast as possible and finance needs to ensure 100% compliance on every contract detail. This can lead to friction points on data consistency, data quality, quote-to-order handoff, contract terms, and payment terms. The idea behind Salesforce Revenue Cloud is to transform the buying experience, accelerate new revenue streams, and improve revenue efficiency. To optimize revenue reporting there four different ways to connect Salesforce Revenue Cloud to your ERP system. Revenue Cloud drives success for the Finance team through the process of lifecycle completion and integration. 

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To view the webinar in its entirety, visit this link.

Simplus is a member of the Infosys consulting family and is a leader in Revenue Cloud consulting, guiding some of the world’s largest brands in North America, APAC, and EMEA.