What Are SAAS Revenue Operations?

Software as a service (SaaS) businesses have a unique operational model compared to many other merchants.

Providing ongoing access to a service, along with hosting, maintenance, and support, is much different than selling products. Instead of focusing on discrete transactions, SaaS providers continually interact with their customers.

That’s not to say customer relationships aren’t important to merchants outside the SaaS space. However, SaaS businesses must constantly keep their offerings functional, available, and ready to use.  

In a similar way, SaaS businesses can benefit from taking a unique approach to managing revenue. Revenue operations for SaaS companies (SaaS RevOps) is an exciting new strategy for managing and aligning business functions related to revenue. This strategy takes a concept that can be applied generally across many businesses — revenue operations — and specifically gears it toward the needs of SaaS companies.

Keep reading to learn more about revenue operations in general and the specifics of SaaS RevOps.

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As you learn more about the holistic approach of SaaS revenue operations, keep the importance of efficient, cost-effective payment processing in mind. Ready to learn more about how Swipesum can help your business? Book your free consultation now.

What are SaaS Revenue Operations?

SaaS RevOps takes the business management concept of revenue operations and applies it specifically to the SaaS industry.

Let’s briefly define both terms to have a common foundation for better understanding SaaS RevOps.

What is SaaS?

Foundationally, software as a service (SaaS) involves offering software through a subscription-based model. Salesforce points out a key benefit for users is dependable access via the internet while avoiding potentially complex hardware and software management.

SaaS businesses deliver a solution instead of a product to their customers. Along with the software itself, they provide services related to hosting, maintenance, development of new features, troubleshooting, and customer support.

Those additional services make the subscription-based SaaS model viable. Clients know they can count on dependable SaaS providers to provide support across the entire experience of accessing and using the software.

What is Revenue Operations?

Revenue operations (RevOps) is a strategic and intentional approach to managing and improving revenue-related activities across a business.

TechTarget explains a key goal of a RevOps integration is to bring together a variety of departmental functions related to revenue for better oversight and management.

Instead of these departments operating separately from each other and with little or no visibility, they can share information. That supports better customer insights and relationship management, as well as improved results in terms of revenue.

RevOps often brings together processes and functions from sales, marketing, and customer service (and similar departments, like customer support). However, it can include any team or department that directly influences business revenue.

Understanding SaaS Revenue Operations

With these definitions, SaaS RevOps becomes a relatively straightforward concept. It simply means applying the holistic, revenue-focused strategy of RevOps to SaaS businesses.

Why is RevOps in the SaaS industry especially important?

SaaS companies depend on subscriptions, ideally through both maintaining strong relationships with existing customers and attracting new ones. Convincing an individual or business to agree to a long-term, ongoing cost can be a complex goal.

A SaaS RevOps strategy can help every department and team involved focus on the common goal of maintaining and improving revenue. The Revenue Operations Alliance points out that it’s all too easy for individual departments within a business to focus on their specific, short-term goals. Marketing teams may prioritize building out and launching a specific campaign more than the big picture of revenue generation, as just one example.

RevOps helps to connect these teams and make revenue and enduring and high priority. A strong SaaS RevOps strategy encourages collaboration and data-sharing. With the right guidance from company leadership, that can mean more focus on efficiently and effectively generating revenue.

Working from shared data is another key concept within SaaS RevOps. By breaking down barriers between different departments, more complete and useful analysis and review can be performed. It’s easier to paint a complete picture of a client, for example, and identify upsell opportunities as well as warning signs of churn.

What are SaaS Revenue Operations Agencies?

SaaS companies can and do manage RevOps functions internally. This could mean putting a dedicated RevOps team in charge of ensuring cross-departmental collaboration related to revenue. It could also involve designating a RevOps leader within each department to support these efforts.

Revenue operations agencies for SaaS businesses are another option. The best SaaS revenue operations companies are experts in this unique field. They bring experience and knowledge, along with dedicated management tools, to the table.

Working with a SaaS revenue operations agency can be a good decision if internal resources or bandwidth are limited. It’s a form of targeted outsourcing that leverages a specialized skillset that may not currently exist within an individual SaaS company.

Focusing on Truly Complete SaaS Revenue Operations

SaaS RevOps centers on a connected and informed approach to all activities related to generating revenue for a business. There’s no doubt that the bulk of that work involves moving prospects through the funnel and maintaining high-quality relationships with existing customers.

Efficient and easy payment processing is important for new and existing customers alike. A simple and secure workflow for payments helps create a consistently positive experience for clients.

Swipesum can help your SaaS business deliver that kind of experience. We deeply understand the needs of the SaaS industry as they relate to payments. That means we can suggest a card payments solution that works for your business, your customers, and your SaaS revenue operations strategy.

Start on the path to more efficient payment processing by booking your free consultation now.