What data and reporting tools or platforms can your RevOps team absolutely love, and why do you like them?

We use three tools for data and reporting: CRM (Salesforce), Clari, and Tableau. We also have Snowflake for the data warehouse but that's run by the Data Eng team in service of many teams beyond my Sales Ops team. Each of these serves a distinct purpose for us:

1. CRM(Salesforce): We do foundational reporting and dashboards here. The primary audience for these is the Sales team (reps and front line managers) to let them track their in-quarter performance, see KPIs, manage their team and opportunities, etc. We also manage our CRM hygiene tracking this way which is helpful because it lets each Manager stay on top of their team status. What I like about in-CRM reporting is that (1) it's real-time, (2) in a tool that everyone is using day after day (i.e., in the flow of work), and (3) it's straightforward to build and customize so everyone from Analyst to VP can do it.

2. Clari: We use Clari for forecasting which has significantly improved the quality and rigor of our forecasting process compared to the spreadsheet-based approach that preceded it. The Sales teams like Clari because it's easy to track and edit their opportunities and it highlights risks and opportunities clearly. I like it in my role because it brings together all the information I need to understand the global business, I can drill-down into individual opportunities, and use the predictive modeling to get an alternative view of the outlook for the quarter. It's also pretty intuitive for looking up past results which can be faster than a CRM-based report, depending on what I need to look at.

3. Tableau: More complicated data analysis is typically done using Tableau. I generally like this tool, both for the use case of summary dashboards (e.g., trends over time) and reporting that pulls together data sources beyond the CRM (e.g., product usage data). The downside is that it is more complex and requires investment to build. I have a team of three people focused on Sales Analytics that does most of the work here, but if you didn't have dedicated resources I can see Tableau being less useful.

We’re on a massive digital transformation journey at LinkedIn.  We’re moving off legacy platforms and onto Azure, starting with core data and reporting tools, such as Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Automate. Together, these tools provide significant advantages for LinkedIn, such as:

• Firstly, Security → Member Security is our #1 priority and leveraging a platform that prioritizes security (reference) is a must for LinkedIn.

• Secondly, Business Agility → Power Apps enables LinkedIn to increase its metabolic rate and unlock Business Agility via rapid-iteration and low-cost application deployments.  This strategic move is already paying off as we are in the process of in-housing 3P software that had a high TCO (cost of licensing, maintenance, and personnel)

• Lastly, Accessibility and Data Democratization → Azure’s cloud tools make it easy to democratize data and scale with technology.  For example, we recently launched a dashboard ecosystem called SaaS KPI that serves as the one-stop-shop for front-line sellers all the way to VP-level executive staff, that places high fidelity insights, with the right level of granularity directly into the hands of decision makers.

Together, Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Automate have served as a major unlock for our business and are actively serving our entire sales field along with the broader Revenue Operations functions at LinkedIn.