Sales Ops Data Governance Guide salesbenchmarkindex.com
Sales Ops Data Governance Guide Determining data availability, access and reliability Step 1 – Ask the following questions What problem am I trying to solve? What data do I need to analyze? Who “owns” the data I need? Who has access to the data I need and how is it managed? Step 2 – Identify who will serve as your Data Steward Do you have the skill set on staff or do you look outside? Must be fully competent at data management, data warehousing, analytical tools and user communities. Cross- functional project leader with strong business / sales acumen Primary responsibilities include: Defining data access, updating, storage and transfer policies Ensuring control of all data access points and alteration capabilities for Sales? Coordination of data delivery and access efforts? Communication of data policies to Sales user community, gathers and implements improvement ideas from user community Resides within the Sales Ops group
Sales Ops Data Governance Guide Determining data availability, access and reliability Step 3 – How will Your Data Steward interact with other stakeholders? For user communities that cut across function, each function needs a designated Data Governor. For example, Finance may own the “Order-to-Cash” data, but many others rely on a common view of that data. Sales needs to understand what is billed, when, credit’s issued, customer hierarchy, etc. Sales Ops needs Order-To-Cash to set revenue recognition guidelines for compensation recognition and payout and to build performance scorecards, etc. Sales Ops needs hierarchy data to build one common definition of a customer within the CRM Customer Service needs customer level transactions to support customer retention. Marketing needs activity, customer hierarchy, etc. to ensure the right message gets to the right customers at the right time Cross-functional Data Governance team responsible for building and implementing regulations for data access, transfer, adjustment and access
Sales Ops Data Governance Guide Determining data availability, access and reliability Step 4 – Who Can Support Your Sales Ops Data Governor? Internal support from: Information Technology – IT must be structured to align with the commercial functions. Project managers in IT should have a portion of their incentive compensation aligned to meeting Sales revenue goals. Chief Sales Officer – Educate your CSO on how you currently access data, how it should be defined and the benefits of a common approach across functions Chief Marketing Officer – Support Marketing in their quest to drive demand generation among customers and prospects. Having a common approach to data and access will build an alliance and encourage shared performance measurements External support from: 3 rd Party Data Owners – Many 3 rd party companies can assist in data aggregation, cleansing and augmentation Sales Effectiveness Consultants – Many sales consultancies can directly support your efforts to either a) build for the long-term or b) take intermediate steps to get closer to the end-results