2021 Ops OutlookTakeaways from the Future of Ops and Admins Survey

Operations professionals and Salesforce Admins are at the heart of a company’s growth, managing the systems and processes that ensure success. However, their roles and responsibilities tend to be misunderstood by leadership, and their time gets consumed by non-value-add work. To understand the obstacles ops and admins face, Sonar, Wizards of Ops, and Salesforce Ben teamed up to survey 128 professionals from around the globe. Here’s what we found.

Admins and ops both play a substantial part in driving revenue for a company. Their roles have

a natural connection to RevOps, which focuses on increasing a company’s revenue potential.

However, many organizations don’t see it that way:

It’s a missed opportunity to separate Salesforce Admins and ops professionals from RevOps

since they’re all focused on generating revenue. By aligning them more closely with RevOps,

ops and admins can help drive strategy and optimize results.

They often sit outside of RevOps

0% 54%of Salesforce Admins are part of RevOps at their company

of ops professionals are part of a RevOps department

53%THE LARGER YOUR TEAM IS, THE MORE LIKELY YOU ARE TO HAVE REVOPS:

of companies have a RevOps department

of teams with 1 employee have a RevOps department

42%

of teams with 2-5 employees have a RevOps department

54%

of teams with 6-10 employees have a RevOps department

64%Want to advocate for you or your team to move under RevOps?POSITION YOURSELF AS A CONTRIBUTOR TO REVENUE GROWTH BY:

Incorporating insights in your reports for leadership, not just surface-level numbers

Understanding how the data you create can be used, so you can set yourself apart as a strategic asset

Speaking with your sales team about the problems they’re trying to solve, so you can provide better solutions for your stakeholders

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Just like too many cooks in the kitchen can lead to disaster, too many go-to-market (GTM) team members with

CRM access can spell trouble for Salesforce Admins. This unbalance between the size of an ops team and

others with CRM access is becoming an all-too-common story at many companies.

Their teams aren’t growing as a company grows

If your ops or admins team is disproportionately small to the size of your company, consider:

Advocating for better resources for your team

Using data and revenue impact to influence your leadership to invest in additional headcount for your team

Building an optimized tech stack that helps your team work more efficiently and fills in any gaps

11-50 employees 3

SFDC AdminsCompany Size

4

Others with CRM Access

51-200 employees 5 15

201-500 employees 7 30

What The Data Reveals

As companies scale, they’re not growing their ops teams. Instead, they’re giving Salesforce access to more GTM team leaders, which can lead to negative downstream impacts.

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Having the right cadence in place can make all the difference for ops. Without it, teams often lose

control over their work and time.

An easy way to define a cadence and build structure is to set a release schedule. A schedule allows

you to take your time testing and releasing rather than pushing things out as fast as possible.

If you work at a larger company, there’s a greater chance you already have a release schedule in place:

They tend to lack control over their work

Zooming In: Small Companies & Release Schedules

At small companies, releasing as needed is generally a sufficient approach. As your company grows, the more critical a release schedule becomes to help you continue prioritizing and communicating changes effectively.Gain more control and better protect your work by

implementing a structure for your releases.

Focus more time on strategic work

Better understand what’s coming up next

Communicate with stakeholders about new releases

HAVING A SCHEDULE HELPS YOUR ENTIRE GTM TEAM, ALLOWING THEM TO:

87% 71%of small companies don’t have a schedule

of SMBs release things as they’re built

64%of large companies have a release structure

ACROSS GTM TEAMS, THERE’S A LOT OF TIME LOST ON FIXING THINGS AND NON-VALUE-ADD WORK:

Their time gets consumed by inefficiencies and lack of documentation

Inefficiencies

HERE’S THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES FOR OTHER OPS TEAMS:

You can work more efficiently with help from a Change Intelligence tool like Sonar.

of ops pros discover errors sooner

65%

know when something breaks in under 1 day

65%Without Change Intelligence, ops pros spend

more time on non-value-add work

30%

Ops pros save up to

(that’s 240 hours saved each year)

20 hrmo

Business Systems Ops

Marketing Ops

Sales Ops

RevOps

78%

39%

29%

20%

Time LostFunction

Business Systems Ops support multiple teams, managing competing change requests and balancing the impacts across functions.

Marketing Ops’ projects often involve time-consuming cross-system communication to fire correctly, like lead routing, lead nurturing, and customer marketing processes.

The slightest disruption for the sales team can get in the way of closing deals, so Sales Ops is always on call to make changes and manage every request quickly and efficiently.

Since RevOps manages all of the change at a company, almost a quarter of their time is unsurprisingly spent on fixing things.

Disruptions

DocumentationDocumentation is critical for teams to have a shared understanding of their systems, the changes

previously made, and how everything interconnects. But, most teams have a severe lack of good

documentation — on average, satisfaction with documentation data was rated a 5, on a scale of 1-10.

You’re significantly less happy

with your documentation if it’s

ad hoc or non-existent

☹ 🤯Your leadership team is 30% less

likely to understand your work if

you don’t use documentation

Secure your leadership team’s understanding of your work by providing them with a detailed change history and summary of your work

Help your GTM teams with adoption and build their trust in your work

Work quickly and confidently with automated documentation and impact analysis, so you can take action against dependencies as you’re building

Keep your GTM teams on the same page and empower them to confidently tackle their work without unintended downstream impacts that derail other projects or processes

ADDING A CHANGE INTELLIGENCE TOOL TO YOUR TECH STACK HELPS SOLVE YOUR INEFFICIENCY AND DOCUMENTATION PROBLEMS, ENABLING YOU TO:

DOCUMENTATION CAN MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE ON OUTCOMES FOR AN OPS TEAM:

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Ops and admins handle a lot of the unseen work that enables their GTM teams to capture

leads, close revenue, and retain customers. But often, the complexity of their jobs is

misunderstood by others, and much of their work goes unseen.

Affirmations from their teams go a long way. However, they report

they often feel unappreciated and unempowered:

They are seeking support and happiness from their jobs

78%don’t always feel appreciated by their leadership team

78%don’t always feel empowered

75%don’t always feel recognized by their GTM teams

65%want their organization to include them in strategic conversations

Take steps to feel more empowered in your role. Start by:

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Providing analysis coupled with insights and actionable steps to leadership, not just reports

Improving communication between your team and your managers/leadership, so they understand the impact of your work

Understanding what your stakeholders are trying to accomplish, so you can get ahead of process evolutions and design solutions to make their jobs easier

Reflecting on the actions you can take to have a voice at the table and get included in more strategic conversations. Begin with:

Talking with your RevOps leader or manager about ways the company can better support you, like:

Including you in more strategic conversations

Giving you a dedicated budget for ops tech

Providing you with career pathing

Prioritizing hiring for your department

Sending you to trainings and (virtual) conferences

Determining if you have the tools and resources you need to do your job properly

Curious to know what other ops and admins earn each year? Here’s the latest compensation data.

Bonus: 2021 Ops Compensation Report

Salary $122,809

Average in the U.S.

On-Target Earnings $138,275

San Francisco $152,200

Average by Location

New York City

Austin

Atlanta

UK

Canada

$133,333

$156,900

$113,063

£141,667 ($203,363)

C$145,667 ($119,947)

Just Myself $103,667

Average for Individual Contributors

2-5

16+

Not In RevOps

In RevOps

6-10

11-15

$98,292

$110,000

$98,325

$116,964

$106,042

$155,000

11-50 employees $72,000

Average for Individual Contributors Based on Company Size

51-200

1,001-5,000

5,000+

201-500

501-1,000

$111,536

$110,000

$105,250

$137,667

$105,000

Individual Contributor $106,950

CertifiedRole

Average for SFDC Certified Professionals vs. Non-Certified

$105,604

Non-Certified

Manager $132,568 $107,250

Director

VP

$169,250

$200,000

$176,660

$278,000

SFDC certifications help you break into ops and become a value-add team member. Data suggests a more strategic mindset that’s not rooted in systems administration improves your earning potential.