I’m excited to announce we closed a $150 million Series E funding round from Silver Lake, with participation from B Capital Group and all existing investors, at a $1.6 billion valuation.
Today’s news is more than just the next phase in Clari’s evolution. It’s validation for the entire revenue operations movement. It’s a call to every company and every leader working to manage revenue generation as a predictable process, one that can be controlled, automated, and optimized, like any other business process.
(See the LinkedIn announcement here)
For any company seeking transparency, accountability, and predictability from the boardroom to the front line, we’re excited to show you what we can do.
We plan to use the additional capital to accelerate product innovation and build the revenue operations ecosystem, as we work to bring revenue operations to every business on the planet.
Revenue Operations, Today
The revenue operations concept starts with two big ideas—visibility and rigor. When you combine these two ideas, you get predictable execution, predictable results, and predictable revenue.
Total visibility means every accountable revenue employee knows what’s going on in their business, whether that business is pipeline, channels, new accounts, or renewals.
Rigor means operationalizing growth by taking your company's strategic growth initiatives—like expanding into new markets or driving higher net dollar retention across the base—and ensuring the required process and tactics cascade down to the front line, connecting the strategy with the actual execution across all revenue personnel
Revenue operations represents the data, the cadences, the communications, the people in the room where decisions get made, all in lockstep towards a common goal—driving more efficiency, growth and predictability across the end to end revenue process.
When those elements cascade into every nook and cranny of the business, everyone’s progress towards their revenue goal is transparent. Cadences are consistent. First-line leadership shifts from interrogation to coaching and inspiration.
The result? In the words of an executive at one of Clari’s largest customers, “Alignment, accountability, and discipline at scale.”
The Revenue Operations Journey
We’ve worked closely with some of the most successful revenue teams since our beginnings in the garage of my cofounder, Venkat Rangan. Since then, some things have changed, but our mission to make revenue operations more connected, efficient, and predictable has remained our north star.
That’s why revenue operations is not only our mission, it’s also our passion—though it wasn’t called revenue operations back then.
Through the years, we’ve seen how consistent, repeatable business success hinges on how well revenue teams—sales, marketing, and customer success—align against strategic company initiatives, and we’ve helped them get there along the way.
In 2020 alone, Clari customers raised private and public capital at an aggregate valuation of more than $100 billion. That’s a testament to the brilliance and resilience of our customers and their ability to deliver predictable revenue results even when everything about their markets was unpredictable, at best.
This past year, we saw a surge in usage & activity in Clari's Revenue Operations Platform across all our customers as more revenue team members required more visibility, transparency, and data-driven insights to drive more confidence and predictability:
- Total executive time spent in Clari increased 50% as usage soared among C-level executives seeking more forward visibility into their revenue process.
- Forecast usage nearly doubled year-over-year, and deal updates grew more than 80% with users accessing Clari to manage their pipeline and forecast future revenue.
- Weekly active users tracking rep activity and prospect engagement grew over 100% year over year, as revenue teams transitioned into a virtual selling environment.
- Some 70% of new customers signed multi-year contracts, and over 60% of existing customers expanded their investment with additional product capabilities and user seats.
Driving Predictable Revenue in an Unpredictable Year
Revenue teams all over the world carried the added challenge of driving business and keeping our economy healthy during this incredibly challenging year. These dedicated individuals form the heart of a colossal shift in selling that has transpired over the past year, and have inspired us with their courage, flexibility, and tenacity. That includes our Clari team, who united under the shared goals of ensuring our customers thrived in a virtual world, even as we launched programs to help those most keenly impacted by the pandemic.
In 2020, Clari introduced innovative Revenue Operations capabilities and products that we developed based on tracking the needs of our clients, and the marketplace. One aspect of these innovations I’m most proud of is how they came from our Clari experts really thinking about our clients’ deepest needs. I like to point to the five patents that we announced at the end of Q4, many of which stemmed from our engineers taking the time to really think like a revenue leader, and apply their technological acumen to push innovation.
Clari Adaptive Revenue Metrics: Powered by up-to-the-minute quota, forecast, and CRM data, Clari’s Adaptive Revenue Metrics continuously surface the insights that matter most for each unique business. These metrics can include calculations like retention rates, forecast coverage ratio, average sales price, product pipeline mix and other configurable metrics that help gauge the health of the business.
Clari Account Engagement: This year more than ever, businesses had to respond quickly to align sales resources with shifting market conditions and strategies. Without proper instrumentation, it’s hard to know whether adjustments are working until it’s too late. Account Engagement uses real-time activity data to show you where time is being spent, and where you have gaps that need to be addressed.
Clari Relationship Insights: We analyze a lot of business activity data at Clari, and one trend is clear– B2B selling (and buying) is a team sport. To scale success, you need to equip your team with data-driven insight into customer relationships in every account. That’s why we built Relationship Insights. Relationship Insights give revenue leaders and front-line managers visibility into all buyers and sellers involved in their sales pursuits so they can better inspect their pipeline and coach reps on how to navigate diverse buying groups.
Building a Team That Lasts
Sure, building a successful business means understanding your customer. But our people make Clari the success it has become. Every day, I’m honored to roll up my sleeves, pull up my chair, and get to work with every one of the revenue leaders that drive Clari to new heights. Sometimes, my job is simply to get out of their way.
Increasingly, others recognize the incredible culture we’ve built too. I’m happy to brag about our sixth year on the Bay Area News Group’s list of best places to work for. We’re on Inc.’s list of Best Places to Work, too. And we understand that it’s our obligation to walk the walk in support of social justice. We’re not just talking about building an equitable organization, we’ve created a workplace that our own employees say is one of the best places for women in tech, notes #GirlsClub.
Looking to the Future of Revenue Operations
So what will the future bring? I get asked this question all the time. With remote work and geographic untethering, rapidly shifting business environments, the rise of AI, the unprecedented times we’re living in, sometimes predicting what’s happening next month can feel like a risk, much less the next year. But I would argue that having solid goals and KPIs, and investing in technology that meets your team’s needs on a fundamental level, can make those predictions land on more solid ground.
In other words, the future is you, the revenue leaders, as you create new ways of succeeding in our ever-changing world. We are ready to join you on this quest. Thank you Clari customers, Clari wouldn’t be here without you, and we can’t wait to see what 2021 brings.