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Forrester Research just published its report, The Forrester Wave™: Real-Time Revenue Execution Platforms, Q2 2024 , in which Invoca was named a leader. We are honoured to receive this recognition, especially from a research firm that has shaped the evolution of this category, from the AI-Fueled Speech Analytics Wave in 2018, to the Conversation Intelligence for Sales and Marketing Wave in 2021.
While Invoca has long been focused on connecting marketing, commerce, and sales teams to drive revenue, many consumer brands have only recently shifted to this more integrated approach. I wanted to share some observations on how market-leading consumer brands are using revenue execution platforms to achieve higher levels of profitable growth.
The concept behind revenue execution platforms isn’t new. In fact, we laid out our vision during the 2021 launch of Invoca for Contact Centers of connecting the marketing teams responsible for generating demand with the contact centre sales teams who convert that demand into new customers and revenue. Simply put, this concept entails connecting the entire buying journey “from the first touch to the final sale” in a seamless, data-driven way.
Unfortunately, many consumer brands have not yet adopted this integrated approach to revenue, and that is hurting their long-term growth prospects. This is especially acute in high-stakes, high-touch B2C industries like telecommunications, automotive, financial services, and healthcare where consumers research their purchases online, and then connect with an expert for advice at the “moment of truth” to make a confident buying decision. In its report, The Real-Time Revenue Execution Platforms Landscape, Q1 2024 Forrester describes transactional sales as “typically single touch, with the interaction ending in a won or lost deal. Getting a second chance is rare if the initial interaction doesn’t go well, so companies must make the buying process easy.”
In today’s world, companies can no longer afford to lose these deals at the “finish line” and still expect to achieve their growth objectives. The Forrester Wave report validates for us the need to connect marketing, commerce, and sales teams to optimise revenue growth and provide a world-class buying journey.
When I talk to practitioners, I hear about three market forces catalysing these changes.
CEOs and executive teams are doubling down on profitable growth. Wall Street and the investor community continue to place a premium on revenue growth, while executive teams balance the challenges of a stabilising but still uncertain economy and softer consumer confidence. Meanwhile, there is far more pressure to be efficient in today’s world than in the preceding zero-interest rate phenomenon era. Marketing teams must demonstrate the effectiveness of campaign investments and collaborate with sales teams to optimise results. This increased focus on efficiency is pulling marketing, commerce, and sales teams out of their respective silos and pushing them towards a more collaborative approach, all in the spirit of driving revenue.
With the launch of ChatGPT and the subsequent wave of rapid advancements in AI, we have seen this technology have a two-fold effect on how companies drive and convert demand. First, there are even more opportunities to engage and educate consumers through digital self-service, so companies are offering consumers more ways to complete low-complexity transactions digitally. Second, companies are using AI to turbocharge the “moment of truth” when consumers turn to expert human agents for advice. AI technology enables consumers to speak with the most qualified human agents, with the appropriate context about what the consumer wants, and even provides real-time suggestions and feedback to help those agents deliver the best advice.
Spurred by stronger regulatory policy (i.e., GDPR in the EU and state-by-state legislation in the U.S., like CCPA) and competitive positioning in the consumer technology market — i.e., Apple’s emphasis on privacy to create differentiation from the advertising-dependent business model of Google — companies are fundamentally changing how they build and convert demand.
With more robust consumer privacy protection, marketers can no longer buy and activate huge data sets from third parties, focus purely on top-of-funnel activities, and completely defer responsibility for converting that demand to commerce and sales teams. Instead, best-in-class revenue teams are building more meaningful, one-to-one relationships with consumers and meticulously capturing data across each touchpoint of the buying journey. This more holistic approach requires marketing, commerce, and sales teams to integrate and activate their previously siloed data sets (rather than buying them from third parties), and drives a more coordinated approach to managing the funnel, from top to bottom.
The accelerating pace of change in both consumer behaviour and AI-powered technology — combined with a more challenging macroeconomic environment and regulatory regime — is creating more separation between the winners and losers in every industry. In this new environment, consumer brands need tighter alignment across the entire revenue organisation to succeed and thrive. And ultimately that alignment is a function of great technology, meaningful organisational change, and a relentless focus on the consumer.
To learn more, read Invoca CMO Peter Isaacson’s post about how revenue execution platforms provide a critical foundation for this alignment. To see why Invoca was named a revenue execution platform Leader, get the The Forrester Wave™: Real-Time Revenue Execution Platforms, Q2 2024 report here. And next week, we will share more specific suggestions on how Invoca customers are using revenue execution platforms to transform their business operations and drive more profitable growth.
