What Is RevOps and When Should You Start It? | Carol Chen, VP Revenue Operations at Flywire

The shift followed a change in commercial leadership. As sales heads became Chief Revenue Officers, their remit expanded beyond sales across the revenue cycle. That remit covered activity before an opportunity, its progress and events after signing. Operations broadened alongside it to support that responsibility.

RevOps examines marketing returns, sales execution and whether signed customers perform as expected. Its reporting line depends on the organisation. Carol has seen it report to finance, a president, marketing and a CRO. Leadership structure and responsibilities should determine its home, not a universal hierarchy.

A revenue threshold alone does not trigger the need. Carol recommends assessing growth rate, intended scale and operational requirements. A handful of sales representatives and a CRM are enough to warrant RevOps capability. Without ownership, poor inputs create unreliable outputs, while teams fail to capture useful business information.

An early start builds the data foundation for defining ideal customers, calculating win rates and understanding deal outcomes. The company does not need a separate department initially. CRM administration can sit elsewhere temporarily. The business can add RevOps functions as it grows and requirements become more complex.

Carol prefers a Salesforce administrator as the first hire for a growing company. Reliable CRM administration creates the structure and data quality needed for later analysis. An analytics specialist is a logical second hire. That person can address headcount, growth pace, run rate and year-end performance. RevOps can guide resource planning by connecting revenue targets, representative quotas and capacity.

The sequence should reflect company gaps. A sales manager can initially own forecasting, informed by knowledge of individual deals. Enablement becomes urgent when representatives struggle with product demonstrations or negotiations. A strong analyst elsewhere can fill the gap temporarily, while team members handle several responsibilities.

Company size offers a useful starting blueprint, but commercial complexity also matters. At a small start-up, one or two people can cover sales and Revenue Operations because volumes remain limited. Territory planning and quota setting apply to a small sales team. As the organisation grows, RevOps can divide into specialised functions supporting more people.

Size alone does not determine workload. Numerous products, complex contracts and pricing can demand substantial support because sales groups make different requests. That complexity affects CRM configuration, compensation and analytics. Each product can require a distinct operational path. The right design reflects organisational scale and the difficulty of its revenue motions.

External support suits a small company that cannot justify full-time hires and needs a few weekly hours. Contractors or agencies also suit finite projects, such as rebuilding Salesforce or implementing CPQ. After completion, the company no longer needs the temporary capacity. This makes external expertise economical.

For continuing RevOps work, Carol favours an internal team. Turnover among part-time external resources can create recurring knowledge gaps. The organisation then trains replacements instead of pursuing deeper improvements. A hybrid model follows this distinction. Keep ownership and institutional knowledge internally, while adding specialists for one-off overhauls or short-term demand.

In Carol’s experience, pre-IPO and post-IPO operations differ substantially. Earlier processes can be less organised, consistent and governed, with more flexibility. As an IPO approaches, formal processes and controls must replace that flexibility. The business needs validations and named approvers for discounts and opportunity changes.

Reported numbers must be clean, defensible and auditable because they face scrutiny. Meeting that standard requires an operational expansion before the IPO, not an abrupt change afterwards. The stakeholder environment also changes when the company becomes public. That shift reinforces the need for clear rules, reliable data and repeatable approvals throughout the revenue process.

Existing business deserves sustained attention because retaining a customer generally costs less than signing a new one. When new accounts arrive while existing ones cancel, the company cannot sustain growth. Carol calls this a leaky bucket. RevOps must look beyond pipeline creation and sales conversion to events after signing.

This focus reflects the shift from reactive account management towards customer success. Instead of waiting for customers to raise needs, the organisation helps them succeed, preserve the relationship and grow the account. That approach matches the expanded revenue remit. RevOps should provide visibility from activity before an opportunity exists through customer health after closing.

Tool ownership should cover adoption and ROI, not purchasing alone. Initial enthusiasm can fade after implementation. RevOps should check whether people use the tool and whether it solves the original problem. If not, the company should remove or replace it. Platforms covering more uses can reduce security, legal, implementation, onboarding, training and adoption work compared with disconnected tools.

The same discipline helps align teams. Marketing, Sales and Customer Success Operations can convert strategy into campaigns, tests, process changes and actions, then measure results. Carol describes alignment around shared goals, including pipeline and closed revenue. Regular reporting reduces conflict. RevOps provides the visibility and execution needed to turn a shared commercial objective into coordinated work.