Sales Ops Data Governance Guide

1. Sales Ops Data Governance Guide salesbenchmarkindex.com

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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: • 3rd Party Data Owners – Many 3rd 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