Services for Organizations

Using our research, best practices and expertise, we help you understand how to optimize your business processes using applications, information and technology. We provide advisory, education, and assessment services to rapidly identify and prioritize areas for improvement and perform vendor selection

Consulting & Strategy Sessions

Ventana On Demand

    Services for Investment Firms

    We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

    Consulting & Strategy Sessions

    Ventana On Demand

      Services for Technology Vendors

      We provide guidance using our market research and expertise to significantly improve your marketing, sales and product efforts. We offer a portfolio of advisory, research, thought leadership and digital education services to help optimize market strategy, planning and execution.

      Analyst Relations

      Demand Generation

      Product Marketing

      Market Coverage

      Request a Briefing


        ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives

        << Back to Blog Index

        Why Revenue Planning Should be Continuous and Year Round



        With the emergence of multiple selling channels and the rise of the subscription model, the need for a unified approach to revenue planning and execution should be a priority for every organization. As I have written about in my analyst perspective Revenue Management: The Opportunity for Innovation and Optimization, this need to unify the approach and focus on alignment across all revenue supporting teams in furtherance of an organization’s objectives and targets is of key importance to ensure that teams handle different aspects of a customer’s journey and experience. And, as I will further discuss, this alignment between groups is rarely a happy accident but rather the result of forward-looking, continuous planning.

        Our research has shown that to support revenue targets, sales, customer service, account teams and marketing need to work in concert to ensure that each hand-off point results in continuing a positive customer experience. This leads to satisfied customers who not only remain customers but also represent opportunities to grow revenue through repeated purchases or new purchases of additional products and services.

        VR_2021_Sales_Assertion_14_SquareAt Ventana Research, we believe that by planning and aligning incentives alignment to ensure that all teams are working together, organizations can ensure the desired outcome of retaining, expanding existing and gaining new customers. We call this Revenue Performance Management or RPM. And by 2025, we believe the category of Sales Performance Management will evolve to become Revenue Performance Management and help one-quarter of organizations focus on supporting the CRO’s efforts across all channels. This is the natural successor to Sales Performance Management, or SPM, but targeted at a broader group of departments and employees and an expanded number of selling and buying channels. As part of this evolution, we examine the need for incentive compensation, and territories and account panning to extend to customer service teams, account teams and marketing.

        But this is not just an annual exercise performed prior to the start of a new fiscal year; it’s a continuous process that relies on continuously monitoring and reporting against actual results and progress, and from projections and forecasts. To enhance this approach, organizations should be looking to supplement judgment with data-driven analysis and predictions to ensure that forward-looking projections are based not just on judgment but are augmented by dispassionate machine-based learning.

        By continually comparing actual and projected outcomes to targets, organizations can ensure that incentives, processes and programs can be adjusted in real-time to make course corrections that result in an improved probability of hitting objectives, what we call, continuous planning.

        But for this to happen, the process and technology employed needs to provide for this notion of a feedback loop in support of the need for continuous planning. If you are undertaking incentive design and territory planning on their own, or opportunity scoring and improved forecasting on its own, you will lower the probability of being able to respond quickly and positively to shortfalls and over time will exacerbate misalignment between teams. It’s imperative that organizations wanting to improve overall revenue management recognize that data on its own is not the answer. If you are unable to act on the information in a timely and coordinated manner, reports and dashboards will remain just that, numbers and graphs on a page.

        Regards,

        Stephen Hurrell

        Stephen Hurrell
        Director of Research, Office of Revenue

        Stephen Hurrell leads the Office of Revenue software research and advisory expertise at ISG Software Research and guides leaders in the applications and technology for buying and selling products and services to maximize revenue. His topics of coverage include digital commerce, partner management, revenue management, sales engagement, revenue performance management and subscription management.

        JOIN OUR COMMUNITY

        Our Analyst Perspective Policy

        • Ventana Research’s Analyst Perspectives are fact-based analysis and guidance on business, industry and technology vendor trends. Each Analyst Perspective presents the view of the analyst who is an established subject matter expert on new developments, business and technology trends, findings from our research, or best practice insights.

          Each is prepared and reviewed in accordance with Ventana Research’s strict standards for accuracy and objectivity and reviewed to ensure it delivers reliable and actionable insights. It is reviewed and edited by research management and is approved by the Chief Research Officer; no individual or organization outside of Ventana Research reviews any Analyst Perspective before it is published. If you have any issue with an Analyst Perspective, please email them to ChiefResearchOfficer@ventanaresearch.com

        View Policy

        Subscribe to Email Updates

        Posts by Month

        see all

        Posts by Topic

        see all


        Analyst Perspectives Archive

        See All