Andy Rudin is the Managing Principal of Contrary Domino, a management consulting company that improves financial performance by optimizing internal operations. Tom Fox welcomes him to this week’s show to talk about revenue risk management and revenue governance, and what they mean for the sales officers within organizations.  

Contrary Domino

Risk management is not often factored in the sales and marketing funnels of organizations. Andy founded Contrary Domino to answer this need. The percentage and likelihood of revenue opportunities closing or coming to fruition aren't often thought of as risk management problems. "I saw that opportunity and wanted to bring more process rigor to that, more mathematical rigor and bring the risk management principles into the realm of revenue generation," he tells Tom. Contrary Domino's client base is mainly information technology firms with sales forces of ten or more. "Helping organizations establish that culture and then establish processes and mechanisms to prevent ethical problems from occurring or at least minimizing their likelihood is central to what I do," Andy says. 

Revenue Risk Management

Tom asks Andy to define revenue risk management. "Revenue risk management is taking the fundamental risk framework that you might find in any other discipline and bringing the same principles into risk management," he explains. It entails going through risk identification, risk polarization, and other activities where you're considering various outcomes. "You're looking at your worst case, your best case, and then you're most likely case, and then running through your scenarios iteratively and then determining what are we most likely to achieve," Andy remarks. 

Revenue Governance

"The involvement and oversight of revenue generation activities by others in a cross-functional, a cross-departmental way in an organization," is Andy's definition for revenue governance. In the past, companies left the revenue engine in the sole hands of the sales department. Presently, revenue operations have been spread out to where even customer support can be responsible for it. The governance aspect relates to all entities in the organization having visibility into the activities of the sales department, and what they are doing. "Coupled with that is the opportunity to take action if something is not compatible with corporate strategy or if certain processes or activities that are occurring in generating revenue bring risk into the organization," Andy adds. 

The Future of Revenue Risk Management

Tom asks Andy to shed some light on what role revenue risk management will play in the coming decade. Risk management in the realm of sales is going to become more dominant. Even though most organizations haven't put the formal risk management rigor to their sales department, they are thinking along those lines. There will also be a greater role for financial planning in the sales operations as more businesses become integrated. 

Resources

Andy Rudin | LinkedIn | Twitter 

Contrary Domino