The Dawn of RevOps, Viability of Remote Work in 2023 & Much More

About Sarah Harkness Orell

1. As the CEO of Cattle Dog Digital and someone who has built teams from the ground up, how do you think RevOps can revolutionize today’s businesses?

I love this question. I think Revenue Optimization is critical for ensuring you get both the ROI on your tech spend investments, but also on your people! The revolutionary component is that it requires a paradigm shift to people, process investments and standardization and then you use the tech to underpin it. It’s not for the lazy or unmindful CEOs.

2. Do you think deploying a RevOps model is just as useful and crucial for SMEs as it is for big giants?

Yes, if not more so. Start-ups and scale-ups are my favorites because it’s here where you can set the standard for how you scale. I learnt from great CEOs like Mike McBride at GitLab. His philosophy was to align all of our revenue teams to the revenue goal, milestones and KPIs and then underpin this for individuals. Then the tech has to also reflect this. We had the luxury of agility at Gitlab pre-IPO.

3. What are your considerations when expanding your operations? How viable do you think remote work would be when looking to scale?

Incredibly viable. We have been remote working since 2015 so we know it works. Hybrid is good for maintaining organizational culture and collaboration. As long as you create ways for people to connect, you’re doing okay.

4. What is your take on the productivity and performance that remote teams can bring? What is your experience in this regard?

I think people are empowered and accountable when they care about what they are doing. Finding ways to reinforce that or align duties to interests is culturally critical. Systems by design should be the monitoring tools but people don’t need a clock in and out mechanism. They yearn for freedom and if you find people who value accountability with freedom (with great freedom comes great responsibility), then your dashboards naturally will help manage behaviors. Remote work is a challenge at all levels but teams expect to be able to work flexibly within their allotted time and not balance work with life. It’s unrealistic to expect people to give you 100% if you’re not showing up yourself. I take accountability seriously but I am also incredibly generous with giving people the freedom to make remote work truly work The gitlab remote work manifesto is our remote-based reference point for the same.

Wrapping Up

This brief yet elucidative discourse on the advent of RevOps and the viability of remote work in 2023 has given us plentiful insights as to what to expect in the coming year. RevOps is not just for the big giants but also for SMEs as we learnt above, with its benefits being equally powerful to drive better business outcomes. We hope you found this expert Q&A just as insightful as we did and had something to take away from it.