Role
Sales operations
Who is accountable for the data in your CRM being true? If the answer is "everyone", it means nobody - and the report built from it goes to the board and looks exactly like a report built on complete data.
Intro call
Four questions we would start with
Sales operations is accountable for an order it does not create. The questions below are there to establish how much work goes on making up for somebody else's imprecision.
Who corrects the records after the salespeople?
If it is one person, that is a person whose time has quietly been renamed a data quality department. Nobody calls it that, because the job description said something else.
Where does a record created outside the agreed process go?
Usually nowhere - it stays in the database and starts living its own life until somebody stumbles on it in a report or at a client handover. The question is whether you know how many such records appear in a month.
What do you not do, even though you know you should?
Usually: merging duplicates, clearing out dead records, updating company data. All of them important and never urgent, so they lose to every request for a report by tomorrow.
How many times a month do you fix the same kind of gap?
If it is often, the gap arises faster than you make up for it - and fixing it by hand is work without end. The question then is not who will fix it but why it arises at all.
We take over the making up, you keep the deciding
Detecting gaps, duplicates and divergences between systems is done by the machine. What to do with a discrepancy found is settled by a person - because it is usually a decision, not an operation.
- We merge nothing on our own. - The system points out candidates for merging and says what would happen. Which record is primary and whether to merge at all is your decision.
- Gaps go back to the source. - Instead of filling them in quietly, the system reminds the salesperson of what they did not enter, before the gap spreads into a report.
- The database is ready before anybody asks for it. - Gaps, duplicates and records with no owner are caught as you go, not on the eve of a period close.
Scope
What can be taken off sales operations
Twenty example tasks. Each one has a human approval point. Below is a selection, and the scope we fit to your process.
Data hygiene
- Detecting duplicate companies and contacts with a proposed primary record (merged by: a person)
- Pointing out records with gaps in the fields needed for reporting
- Flagging data that looks out of date - a changed name, address or company status
- Detecting opportunities with no activity and no close
- Records created outside the agreed process, set out
A complete database before reporting
- Pointing out records that will drop out of a report because of gaps in fields
- Detecting records assigned to people who no longer work here
- A signal about opportunities with no owner after changes in the team
- The fields the team fills in least often
- The list of records needing manual closing before the period close
The processes around a deal
- Checking an opportunity is complete before it moves to the next stage
- A reminder about the consents and documents required
- The price departures needing approval, set out (approved by: the manager)
- Detecting deals closed without the required data
- Monitoring the dates arising from contracts
Supporting salespeople and onboarding
- Answers to repeat questions about the tool and the process
- Preparing a starter set for a new person on the team
- A list of onboarding tasks with dates
- Detecting which features the team does not use despite the rollout
- Collecting bug reports and grouping them
A day's work
Today
- Monday goes on assembling a report from three sources that do not agree
- Ad hoc data requests arrive by email and interrupt everything else
- Duplicates get merged when somebody stumbles on them
- You discover gaps in records at the moment the report is already finished
- A new person on the team learns the tool by asking you
- The definition of a metric exists, but in your head
With AI assistance
- The report assembles itself from recorded definitions; your work is the commentary, not collecting numbers
- Ad hoc data requests go to ready views, not to your inbox
- The candidates for merging wait on a list, you decide what to join
- Gaps are known before you close the period - and they go back to whoever left them
- A new person goes through the starter set, and the non-standard questions reach you
- The metric definitions stand next to the numbers and are read by everyone looking at the report
- A report you can rely on
the numbers going to the board have a recorded origin
the definition of a metric stops being one person's knowledge
- The salesperson's time
less chasing and less catching up on entries
gaps come back straight away rather than in a batch before a review
- A repeatable process
the same stage looks the same for everyone
the completeness check is in the process rather than in somebody's habit
- Resilience to turnover
a sales operations person leaving does not stop the reporting
how a number is produced is written down
We start with one report, not with putting the whole database in order.
- Step 1
We take one recurring report
The one that most often causes an argument. We write down where every number comes from - and it usually turns out two people count the same thing differently and both are right under their own definition.
- Step 2
We write the definitions down
The definition of a metric stops being spoken knowledge. That is the moment when divergences stop being a grievance and become a fact to settle.
- Step 3
Detecting instead of correcting
We add detection of gaps, duplicates and divergences - with feedback to the source rather than quiet correction.
- Step 4
Extending
Further reports and completeness checks at the stages. Only here does it make sense to talk about automatic summaries, because earlier they would rest on data nobody trusts.
Common questions
Questions that come up at the first meeting
Who is accountable if contact history is lost in a merge?
The person who approved the merge - and that is why before merging they see exactly what will happen to every link. Whether it can be undone depends on your system's capabilities and that has to be settled at the outset, before anybody clicks for the first time.
Will this role stop being needed?
No, although what it is will change. Today sales operations largely retypes and assembles; tomorrow it watches over order in the data that cannot be ordered by an automation - merging records, completeness at the stages, what the salespeople did not enter. That is harder work and more needed than assembling a report on a Monday morning.
Does this fall under the AI Act?
Putting sales data in order is not a high-risk use. The point to watch is elsewhere: the records contain contacts' personal data, so the rules on processing it apply - the scope, the legal basis and the retention period.
Still have a question that is not here? Book a call
Next step
Which report in your company causes the most arguments about the numbers?
We will show you what that report looks like when every number has a recorded origin and a divergence between systems can be pointed at.