In this week's episode of the Enterprise Monetization Podcast, Sandeep Jain sits down with Rudy Wilson-Evans, Director of Revenue Operations at impact.com to discuss best practices when setting up a Quote to Cash stack at a company and what some of the struggles businesses will face at different stages of growth.
Hi, welcome to the 14th episode of “The Enterprise Monetization Podcast”, and this is your host Sandeep Jain. In this podcast, I talked to thought leaders from the monetization space that is CPQ and Billing so that you can learn about challenges, opportunities, and best practices in enterprise monetization. Today, I'm super thrilled to have Rudy as my guest. Rudy has deep expertise in the field of revenue operations spent several years. Rudy is currently director of revenue operations at impact.com and prior to that, Rudy was at 8x8, TalkTalk and several other companies and Rudy joins us from UK as well. So welcome Rudy to the show.
Thank you very much for having me after all. Genuinely honored.
Awesome. So let's first start with a quick background, I just talked about the companies that you worked with, but could you just give a trajectory of how your career has spanned over several years to our listeners?
Yeah, of course. So, I guess, like, from a standard kind of career path, I've definitely not had that. I left school at 16, 17, and moved out and I had to find myself work. So I've, I've done pretty much every job you can possibly imagine. I've been a cleaner. I've done painting, I've done collections on the phones. I've done basically anything working away. Eventually, I kind of, I ended up working doing collections during around the 2008 financial crash. I ended up doing my collections on the phone for a credit card company trying to collect money, which was great when no one has any. And then kind of moved through, I ended up falling into TalkTalk, started doing processing of payments, working and learning loads of stuff around bank reconciliations and how direct debits and, or a CH in the US, how that all kind of works. And from there kind of moved on to do sort of audit, internal audit and control. So making sure processes and money was moved around. So it was kind of looking after around 1.2 billion I think in revenue and making sure that all lined up. Then I moved to 8x8 because kind of for a next step of progression, I took over a small, very small building team 8x8 and a by a is a, is a platform, I guess competitors with like Ring Central and Zoom. And from that point, I kind of grew and had billion collections work to moved across into business systems, took kind of a sideways step into business applications and looked after salesforce managed all of that for customer support as well as building on finance and moved back into finance to do revenue operations and kind of build out building platforms. And then I've taken the leap to move into more traditional robots, impact.com and frankly, I've, I've kind of, I guess grown a little bit more there. I'm currently responsible for quite a small team in the mayor, but global responsibilities for, for projects and and I guess I have kind of just grown with that with, with a more focused around like the revenue technology and kind of stuff really. So it's been a, been a weird path to get to where I am, but it's certainly one that I've enjoyed and hopefully I've been able to pick up a pretty well rounded view of how everything kind of works. So hopefully that takes me on.
There's a very interesting story really. We'll talk more about impact.com in a second. But before that, could you share just a fun fact about yourself? I think we've heard a little bit of your trajectory, but anything specific you want to share.
Yeah. I mean, I like to think of myself as a fairly, like, interesting person but maybe, like, not necessarily doing lots of interesting thing. But I guess, like, from my, something that I guess is, interesting is that I've kind of had dyslexia as I've grown up. And so I've kind of struggled with, with writing and reading and stuff until it was quite, quite a lot older than the standard. And so, whilst it's maybe not your traditional kind of interesting fact, I thought I'd go with that one and kind of, I guess also show a little bit that kind of doesn't really hold you back if you can kind of go go with it. Thank you.
Thank you so much for sharing that actually. Cool, let's talk more about impact.com. Can you just share what the company does? And a little bit about the revenue operations, like how many sales people you have?
Yeah, of course, of course. So if you don't know who impact.com, then you're definitely missing out. So firstly, if you do anything around affiliate marketing, then you'll know kind of the traditional issues with networks and attribution and management of I guess just your general partnerships and marketing and so impacts offer a pretty good platform whereby you can basically sell and manage all of your affiliate networks in one place. Oh, sorry, your affiliate marketing in one place you can do all your attribution and we've got a market place for you to be able to share, and contract with new brands or new influences together. And I think that's something that's, pretty comprehensive with thousands of publishers on there at any given time. Also being able to automate and drive those strangers. We've, we've got around 100 115 sales people in total. So it's, it's been growing over the last sort of 5 to 6 years, quite substantially. And then in, in addition to that, we've within the kind of str organization, we've got around 110ish as well. So it's about the same number. I guess from a rev up side, we've got a fairly small team. So there's about eight of us globally. There's two in two in a media. Then I think it's five in the US. And then one out in, in Australia. So we've got a fairly distributed team. And so we're covering a very wide range of regions, market segment, all sorts of things at this point.
Got it. And could you also talk about your quote to cash stack? Like what is the, what are the different systems that you use internally?
Yes. So where we use sales sales force primarily, we've got Salesforce CPQ. You, we also have we have Ironclad as our kind of CLM and contracting. We use an in house kind of billing platform and then to provide invoices and finance we've got next week.
Understood. And what is your primary sales channel? Is it just a sales people selling or do you have any cell service or do you have any utility based pricing?
Yeah, so we, so we have got some level of channel. So we've got quite a good focus on channel, but most of it is coming in from, from our marketing and sales teams. We have got a small but growing PLG function and the plan is to go quite big on that this year. So we're expecting to do that, that kind of PLG transition this year.
Understood. And could you talk about some of the challenges that you have currently with this global team, different markets, I'm assuming different currencies.
Yeah, different currencies.
So I'm pretty sure most companies aspire to grow their like you have so many sales straps, different markets, different currencies, like how do you manage everything?
So I think this is gonna be an interesting conversation. So yeah, I mean like most businesses are based currencies in dollars. We operate in any currency pretty much that you can name at this point. So we do, we do have and there are intricacies and the differences between, I guess how we manage looking like generally operating because we, we have like a model of payouts. So as we sell, if you as a brand set, like want to charge or provide commissions out to your affiliates, we essentially take a percentage of that. So we have that fluctuation of currency and then we also have the actual, just the baseline currency of how we report in. And it's quite tricky frankly, but we've, we've got a pretty good a good kind of process to manage currency at this point.I think. So we, we kind of fix it at the beginning of the year will review. And if it goes over a certain tolerance, we'll look to adjust, but as a rule that's just a fixed currency for valuation over the entire year in terms of a conversion from dollars. And then, and, and it makes it slightly simpler because it is based on a percentage of payouts opposed to being like a general traditional fixed fee within each kind of products and, and country. So it's generally a case of like $500 or £500 or whatever. It's not, it's not a case of its $500 and then it's actually like £422 or whatever, it's, it's a fixed value and then we just report everything in dollars.
Got it. And so what would you say Rudy are your, let's set up three challenges that you see in terms of revenue operations.
So they are kind of biggest challenges that we, we have our obviously generating pipeline for our teams, making sure that we've got that kind of tracks and specifically as well is trying to onboard different parts of the business on to CPQ. So making sure that our products all exist, having the right kind of visibility and into each of our accounts for being able to do ourselves. Because whilst we have CPQ, we don't really have assets and products like licenses listed within the account today. So it's quite tricky to know exactly who owns what products without looking at the building platforms
Understood. So is your amendments then pretty hard to do because as a sales rep now, I need to figure out what this customer has bought over a period of years.
Well, because we've only like considering the size of our business, we only really introduced CPQ last year. So we're not even a full year into having a CPQ. So thinking about having like a sales order of what 100 plus people, not having any kind of like not a fixed proper CPQ model. It was all built pretty much out of a spreadsheet before with the brains of someone much bigger than me kind of coordinating all of that. And doing that transition in means one, the migration of all the customers, all of the contracts we had before was really, we did, did a pretty good job and our business seemed very amazing, but you're not gonna get 100% right when there's custom stuff here and there and everywhere. So, knowing what people have is tricky for amendments, trying to make sure that we've got a good clear understanding of, line of sight into renewal's, those kind of things have been much easier since we've implemented CPQ. And I think impact.com is probably a really good example of why you should have a CPQ like the, I guess like the level of data that we've got since before is night and day, but it does mean that some of the transition of cost of existing customers has been difficult. So yeah, we have the sales people doing cross sales are up, sales have not always got the best data to work from.
Do you do pricing changes often Rudy in your catalog? Like how often?
So I would say probably not as regularly as we could and given that we've only had CPQ for less than a year. It's not really been through that kind of big change as of yet. But I know that those kind of as renewals come in, we'll be doing that. There's not been a fixed price increase across the board yet.
No, got it. You also mentioned that self-service a priority for this year. Is that one out of salesforce CPQ? Or are you building an alternate system for that?
Because cell service, you need to have a product catalog transactions. And what happens when this customer on self serve wants to be a bigger company. That's the entire goal of productivity growth.
So how are you guys thinking about this is, I guess what I'm asking.
So I'd like to think we're thinking of it quite sensibly in the sense that we've got. Most of our like, I guess product itself will, will send the information through into salesforce CPQ or then basically create or to create the opportunity and account essentially or the account and then the opportunity. And it will, it will exist that the attribution isn't always very good at the moment. So trying to, but we've been going through those trials for a few months, the process is working okay. So we do have visibility of who, who is a PLG customer. And here goes, salespeople going up sell into these really high users and and see what other benefits we can provide them.
Understood. But if I'm a self-serve user, when I'm seeing the pricing on the web, is that coming from salesforce CPQ you or is it coming from some other system?
No. So that's coming, I don't believe that that is coming from our own system. Not, not CPQ.
Do you see any issues having your product catalog split between these? Because that's something that we hear often. That's why I was asking you.
Yeah. So I think I can see the long term issues with it, I think because we're still not quite in a maturity level of, of really seeing that growth and volume. It's quite tricky. So that's the one thing I guess, that we've not quite reached the maturity again to be able to see that problem come to fruition. I don't think at this moment in time, it's a problem because everything is essentially a fixed price is pretty new, it's limited in who it's available to. But yeah, as we kind of scale into next, into the next kind of half of the year, we're expecting that to be something that we have to keep a much closer eye on.
Understood. And besides self-serve, is there any biggest priority for you and your team in this year?
Essentially making sure that we've got enough data to be able to tell us where our problems are right and wrong. So, at the moment, the transition from being, I guess a signing a kind of contract with us and then everything else that happens afterwards, we're good at signing initial contracts and very poor being able to identify what you have. And when so again, going back to those, that's kind of the biggest thing is to make sure amendments have been updated and make sure that essentially the second phase of our CPQ project is up to date.
Understood. Do you see any friction between your CPQ and billing systems being separate? Does it add more work? Is it simpler in some ways or is it complex in some others?
I think because of how, so in 8x8, it was interesting because we kind of had, it had obviously was separate in the same model that we, we have now. And we tried to consolidate lots of different billing platforms into, into one. And frankly, I think it takes a lot of coordination to be able to make sure that everything in CPQ is being transferred across that something we didn't do very well. There and I think we're doing a slightly better job impact compared to where I was before. But again, I think the difficulty with billing, I think is that we because of the usage element of both of those two products, so impact product than 8x8. It does create quite a, I guess it's not a traditional building like SaaS building model. In which case, I think you could easily have those two things merge together. I think having that user, generated and those different kind of types of charges makes a lot more, makes it a lot more complex. So keeping them separate to some degree is probably easier, but it does run the risk of not being at attribute the right life into the right place and that kind of thing. So, yeah, I think in general it's, it's not too, it's, it's a tricky one to kind of balance. But I think we've, at the moment seem to not have too many problems within bidding as a result of CPQ problems. Anyway.
Got it. And they talked about usage-based pricing, any challenges that you see or any recommendations you have for businesses that are thinking of going usage. You guys are pretty big company, right? So any specific guidance on like one of the some of the challenges that I've heard is look, it introduces a lot of variability. How do I manage my revenue? Should I have a minimum commit. Do we take it upfront at the period or do we have it monthly? People have all these sorts of questions with usage I don't know if you have any thoughts or comments on how do the best practices, I guess on usage?
Yeah. So I mean, there are lots of potential issues, I guess like seven or eight that, that I kind of like general data accuracy is always much more tricky when you've got something that can vary and you've got different types of charges and depending on what you're selling, it can certainly be more complicated. So if you're in the Telco industry then or in the U S as well as we were before 8x8, you've got so many different things that you can charge for. You've got storage, you've got actual minutes, you've got transcriptions that you've got a number of call, like so many different things. And each one needs to have a license with something kind of linking to it. This belongs to this person and this is the unit of measure. And therefore how you link all those things together is, is it can get quite complicated and having that, that level of detail is, is hard, but you also have issues with potential for compliance and tax regulations if particularly again with the new cast. So there are lots of things you have to consider and seasonality being one, but you, you can quite easily, I think adapt to that as long as you've got a good model of a good product model and you've got your subscriptions kind of in order being able to attribute this particular my phone call to this place and my calls, my recordings are being stored here at this particular valley or this rate is not too difficult. But you've just got to break them down into each and each of the different components and making sure you've got a SKU or a different like product component for each of them, I think is pretty much vital. I don't think you can, you might sell it as a bundle, but you would need to expand all of those things and expose all of those things within your billing platform at the very least. Just so that you can actually have the right attribution. So I think that's like one of the biggest things that I would suggest and I mean, it can certainly help with our business is kind of revenue increase in different ways of, I could probably charge for these types of things. Maybe I've got a PI calls or whatever it is that we want to charge for. You can charge for those kind of limits. I think a minimum commitment in the lower SMB market probably is better just so you've got a bit more consistently. But I think you'd struggle and to get that maybe at the enterprise level for certain types of charges, where they kind of would expect that usage is often just included in the price. And so I think it's just trying to understand what works for your business and what types of, what types of usage is it? Because it's not a usage type thing that they can be very different depending on what industry you're in and, and that kind of stuff.
Got it makes sense. Rudy, and coming back to CPQ. Do you work with, do you have CPQ engineers in your team? Do you work with professional services outside? Like what's the model? That's another question that I get often.
Yeah, I mean, we've, we've got an incredibly tight small team. So whilst we, we do have people that work on our CPQ, they're not necessarily dedicated to it. Our implementation was run with consultants and, and salesforce partners which I think is perhaps not uncommon. But it did lead us to kind of some level of issues during the implementation because we didn't necessarily always have the right people involved in the conversation. And frankly, one of the biggest things that I can see is for success is not necessarily who is doing it because, but I think any good kind of developer can kind of do that. It's not belittling the difficulty of putting in CPQ here, but realistically, the biggest thing is making sure you've got business alignment and understanding of what the charging models and, and the contracting models are. And I think that's where I think most of the business like impact where we perhaps struggled the most is trying to get that engagement from sales. Seems that hadn't been in that, that kind of conversation before and really define what it is that our sales journey was intended to be. So yeah, I think that having someone in health sometimes helps because they've got that Catholic knowledge But I, frankly, I'm not in favor of either one.
It's whatever work understood. Any tips Rudy or any insights that you want to offer based on your experience, I think 8x8 and impact.com. Like these are the things people do or should not do or should think about before taking an action around when they were putting these tools together. Any insights that you wanna share
I think you have to start with the full journey. Like you have to understand exactly what is it that you're charging for? What is it, how is it you want to sell it? Who is it you're going to sell it to? And then how are you going to charge? What does an invoice look like? I know that like you have to break it from beginning to end and I think if you start by, you want to chunk it down and break it into phases, that's fine and, and probably advised. But I think some of the problem is you end up looking at CPQ and it's in kind of isolation and then you'll look at renewals and amendments in isolation and then you look at how you manage your billing and everything like that and its own kind of place and, and you're gonna end up with things that don't flow properly and then the customer experience and you're likely to increase the number of credits or just have poor data. And so from at least from my perspective, again, going back to kind of business alignment is really understanding what it is that your business model in, have that really well defined of exactly what products you're selling and how they should be solved and what your rules should be. Because if you don't have results rules, that doesn't deal with ambiguity, it has to have the fixed understanding of exactly what you should be doing. And Unfortunately going and saying we could do it this way or this way or this way, it doesn't really work very well. If it means you've got 15 flavors of one thing, even make those into 15 different things or you make them into one. Like what is it we do? I think that's, that's where we've suffered.
Got it, really that has brought us to the end of this conversation. So, thank you so much for your time. But before we leave, is there any recommendation of a resource like a book or a podcast or something that you want to share with our listeners?
Yeah, sure. So something that's always left quite a big kind of impression on me was rebel ideas by Matthew Syed. And it talks about how you develop a team with different kind of backgrounds and cultures and that kind of stuff. And it was really, it's got some really good examples around, how to kind of have a better performing team perhaps with less performing individuals. So you don't always pick the very best of the best because often they will look exactly the same one another and all that kind of stuff. And then you end up with people from the same schools, and you end up with big blind spot. And, one of the good things from that picking up people from so many different backgrounds and having a team now that's built with so many different people is, is always great. Getting those different opinions and those different kind of, I guess biases and different strengths and weaknesses is always good.
Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing this resource. I haven't heard about this book earlier, so actually, I'm going to read this one, so. Thank you.
Awesome. Thank you.
