Unlocking more revenue with accessible data and integrated tech tools 

Revenue inefficiencies can have a direct impact on the bottom line—in the form of higher operational costs, missed revenue opportunities, and revenue leakage. Yet 46% of business leaders lack confidence in their organization’s ability to effectively capture all revenue opportunities.  

This disconnect is the basis for a new report from Conga, in partnership with Ascend2 Research: The Revenue Imperative: Overcoming Inefficiencies to Maximize Growth. By analyzing responses from more than 600 business decision-makers across the US and UK, the report highlights the growing need to identify inefficiencies, automate workflows, and optimize revenue operations—despite current economic uncertainty.

Following are some key themes from this important and timely research. 

Organizations face many barriers to capturing revenue 

Identifying and capturing new revenue is a complicated endeavor, and companies face a multitude of challenges in their revenue journeys. When asked about the barriers to unlocking greater revenue, business leaders pointed to manual processes as well as several data-related difficulties: 

• 45% Time-consuming manual tasks
• 34% Difficulty integrating data across systems
• 32% Compliance and security risks
• 29% Poor collaboration between teams
• 28% Errors in data or forecasting
• 27% Limited ability to gain insights from data
• 23% Siloed data or technology 

These pain points vary by department, however. Manual tasks are a consistent issue across all teams, while ops professionals are more likely to struggle with data integration than other functional groups. And executives feel the brunt of poor data quality and lack of technology integration, given the critical role of data and visibility in making optimal revenue decisions.  

Lack of accessible data limits revenue optimization 

Survey results indicate widespread challenges in data accessibility and integration. More than half of respondents (55%) admit their organizations lack deeply integrated sales and finance data across teams.  

Data siloes contribute to inefficiencies by limiting visibility into revenue opportunities, increasing operational friction, causing miscommunication between departments, and hindering cross-functional decision making. Without accessible and integrated data, companies may struggle to align sales efforts with financial performance.  

Conversely, data integration plays a critical role in revenue optimization among top performing organizations. Business leaders with high confidence in their ability to capture revenue opportunities are 4x more likely to have deeply integrated sales and finance data (69% vs 17%).  

Revenue tech stacks are complex and lack integration 

Organizations rely on an extensive and multi-layered web of tech solutions to manage their revenue operations. When asked which tools organizations use to manage revenue, top responses include: 

• 70% Customer relationship management (CRM)
• 64% Data analytics tools
• 54% Enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• 46% Workflow automation tools
• 36% Configure, price, quote (CPQ)
• 35% Contract lifecycle management (CLM)
• 32% Subscription management systems  

Business leaders who reported the highest level of confidence in their revenue management abilities also have the broadest range of tools at their disposal. This could indicate that a more robust tech stack delivers enhanced visibility into revenue insights.  

While many organizations leverage a complex tech stack to manage revenue processes, the level of integration between these tools varies. Nearly half of survey respondents claim to have fully integrated revenue management tools and systems. Another 45% report partial integration and 7% have little to no integration between solutions.  

This lack of integration has a clear negative impact on successful revenue management. Business leaders with fully integrated tech stacks are 2.5x more likely to report high confidence in their ability to capture revenue opportunities than those with less integration (79% vs 31%). 

Get the report 

Download the full report, The Revenue Imperative: Overcoming Inefficiencies to Maximize Growth, for additional details and complete findings from this timely research.