The digital economy is undergoing a massive shift, dividing organizations into two starkly different camps: the AI-Ready and the AI-Fragile.
We addressed this head-on on our recent webinar, “Building the Foundation for Revenue Excellence”, co-hosted with James Hayes, SVP of Revenue Operations at Sales Empowerment Group. We explored how companies can strengthen their operational foundation to thrive in the AI era. The core, straightforward truth presented in that session is this: your investment in artificial intelligence is only as good as the operational foundation beneath it. If your RevOps structure is weak, your data is fragmented, and your AI will be worthless.
Here is a comprehensive analysis of why Revenue Operations is not an operational choice, but the necessary structure for predictable, future-proof revenue growth.
Why Fragmentation Is a Financial Crisis
The webinar was clear about the cost of disconnected revenue systems. While the possibility of achieving “36% more revenue growth” and becoming “15% more profitable” through RevOps is compelling, the real requirement lies in stopping the costly revenue leak caused by fragmentation.
- The Predictability Problem: Organizations lacking RevOps alignment struggle to forecast accurately. Aligned companies are 3.2 times more accurate. Predictability is the priority of the executive team, and without a single source of truth, quarterly projections are guesswork, not certain planning.
- The Efficiency Drain: A fragmented system means sales representatives spend an estimated 70–79% of their time on non-selling activities such as data entry, system hopping, searching for content, or fixing bad data. RevOps fixes the system so your highest-paid employees can focus on the job they were hired to do: sell.
- The Investor Mandate: As Heather explained, private equity firms now view RevOps as a required mechanism for value creation. They see a 30% reduction in go-to-market expense and a 10% to 20% boost in sales productivity by standardizing processes and data. This leads directly to a faster exit time and an increased valuation.
Traditional, siloed structures, where Marketing "owns" the top of the funnel, Sales "owns" the middle, and Customer Success "owns" retention, are inherently designed for blame, not collaborative growth.
RevOps unifies these into One Team, One System, One Growth Engine.
Explaining the R.A.I.S.E. Framework
The most practical insight from the session was Sales Empowerment Group's R.A.I.S.E. Framework. This five-step methodology functions as a definitive AI maturity checklist, prompting leaders to focus internally before spending on external technology. The principle is "garbage in, garbage out": clean, predictable data is mandatory for effective AI. Readiness (The Strategy Check)
Readiness focuses on strategic clarity. This step requires defining how your company creates, retains, and expands revenue. This includes:
- Validated Go-to-Market (GTM) Strategy: Can you articulate exactly how your product is sold and to whom?
- Disciplined ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): This must be defined, agreed upon across all departments, and actively implemented in the CRM.
- Realistic Plan of Record: The GTM math must logically support the revenue targets.
Alignment (The People & Process Glue)
Alignment is the operational merging of the entire GTM team (marketing, sales, success). The essential operational component often overlooked is Compensation and Quota Execution.
Sales representatives need to fully execute and understand their compensation agreement. An ambiguous comp plan is a direct source of employee turnover, friction, and lack of trust. Alignment ensures the incentives driving the marketing team (MQLs) feed predictably into the incentives driving the sales team (SQLs, Closed-Won).
Intelligence (Data to Truth)
The Intelligence step is the heart of AI preparation. It is the process of transforming raw data into Trustworthy Truth. RevOps must own the generation of actionable insights, including:
- LTV/CAC Ratios: Knowing the true cost of customer acquisition compared to their lifetime value is necessary for sustainable growth.
- White Space Visibility: Finding opportunities for expansion, cross-sell, and upsell within the existing customer base.
When this data is clean, your AI models can make precise recommendations, moving from general insights to genuine revenue acceleration.
Systems (The Single Source of Truth)
The goal is simple: The CRM must be the single system for sales reps. Every time a representative has to leave the CRM for a core task, selling time is lost and data fragmentation is introduced.
RevOps must also implement Hygiene Dashboards. These monitor the quality of the data being entered, checking for completeness and adherence to established protocols. Clean data is a discipline, and these dashboards enforce it.
Enablement (Strategy in Action)
Enablement ensures the strategies defined in the earlier R.A.I.S.E. steps are successfully deployed by the GTM team. It covers:
- Contextual Playbooks: Delivering the right content and talking points to the sales rep at the exact right stage of the funnel.
- Territory Alignment & Value: Defining and ensuring the value of territories is understood by both the sales representatives and the marketing campaigns supporting them.
- Continuous Improvement: Enablement is a constant loop of feedback and refinement, ensuring the RevOps system remains a dynamic growth machine.
The Blueprint Is Ready
The webinar (available on-demand), Building the Foundation for Revenue Excellence, made it quite clear: the companies that will lead the next stage of growth will not be those that purchased the most AI, but those that built the strongest RevOps foundation to support it. To explore these insights in full, you can watch the webinar replay here. About the Author
Heather Holst-Knudsen is a distinguished figure and expert in the events, media, marketing and technology sectors. Using her extensive experience, she guides clients in adapting to structural economic and market changes, seizing the chance to innovate and evolve. She specializes in digital and data disruption and opportunity, exploring how these overarching factors can impact revenue growth, customer-centricity, operational efficiency, profit margins, and the overall valuation of companies in both public and private markets. Her journey began at her family business, Thomas Publishing Company, where she honed her skills. She further expanded her expertise by holding positions at early industry giants Miller Freeman, Reed Elsevier, and IDG. Returning to Thomas Publishing, Heather founded and spearheaded Manufacturing Enterprise Communications, an integrated media portfolio connecting buyers and sellers in the manufacturing and technology sectors. Starting in 2015 and spanning the next seven years, she leveraged her expertise as a revenue and business leader in various SaaS businesses, including Feathr, Gleanin, Brella and Edflex.
Heather is deeply passionate about digital innovation, data monetization, and AI and how these strategies fuel revenue growth, profitability, and company valuation. To serve and create value for clients in these areas, she launched H2K Labs, dedicated to generating and leveraging value through data for media, business information, events, and adjacent technology and service markets.
