The biz of Biz Ops (1) — building a function that supercharges the business
Have you seen the Italian Job movie? An eclectic group of thieves gather to steal some gold from an old partner who turned on them. What is curious is the weapon of the heist — a bunch of MINIs that were tuned to corner sharper, go faster, and perform advanced driving tricks.
This — the tuned MINI — is how I think of a Biz Ops function within any org. And while many blog posts focus on the elements and various set ups of Biz Ops within famous companies, I want to focus here on the tuning bit. What is the responsibility of Biz Ops? What should it deliver? To whom?
At its best, Strategy and Biz Ops, or just Biz Ops, is the glue between reality and planning for a company. At a bird’s eye view, this function keeps an eye on reality and feeds the business data driven arguments to help decision-making. Biz Ops has as stakeholders Product, GtM (Marketing, Sales, CX), People, Legal, Finance teams. As such, Biz Ops has a great opportunity and a massive responsibility: to unlock new growth, and over time optimize for efficient growth.
But how to structure this?
There is an old saying that “what gets measured can be managed.” A good Biz Ops function starts with the basics: “Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured.” You have to go from 0 to 1, before you can go from 1 to 10. And it is Biz Ops that helps measure, manage, and then scale business impact: they find it, prioritize it, and scale it. In that order.
A full fledged Biz Ops department scales business impact through three responsibilities, developed in that order:
(1) Data & Market Intelligence: the one stop shop of data and market intelligence feed for the business. This should include internal data monitoring and external market research.
- The objective is to measure key metrics across the business and ensure consistent live access to the data.
- [For whom: company-wide; on-demand access to anyone in the org]
(2) Business Analytics & Performance: align the company on strategy, and execution, and keep the company accountable. This includes monitoring and conducting company performance analysis (marketing, sales, partnerships, channels.. all GTM) (based on (1)); and driving company level strategy with OKRs.
- The objective is to communicate and align the company around a common strategic goal.
- [For whom: company-wide; on-demand access to anyone in the org; + a regular cadence for an MBR/QBR]
(3) Business Expansion & Scale: demonstrates upside, risks, trade offs, and prioritises expansion and scale projects. This includes expansion across geographical regions, product lines, verticals, M&A; potential business fundamentals changes (pricing or business model etc); and implementation of company-wide tools.
- The objective is to deliver data-driven arguments / recommendations — in one package — to product, finance, and GTM org to facilitate informed decision-making. Those departments in turn can use that as inputs into their own models and frameworks.
- [For whom: specific departments (e.g. Finance), on a project basis]
It is important to note to the three responsibilities build on top of the previous one. (1) supports (2), which informs (3). As such, (1) helps to measure what needs to be measured. (2) helps manage what has been measured. And (3) helps pave the future, and scale. So in the cycle of Biz Ops projects, you:
- measure
- manage
- scale
… and repeat.
How this plays out at every stage of development for a company will evolve: Biz Ops taps into (1), (2), and (3) responsibilities, with a different level of sophistication (that’s for a whole other post), develops a relevant sub function (e.g. M&A expansion) and one day once that’s grown enough and ready to stand on its own feet, might spin that off into the business.
End of the day, Biz Ops should help point the right resources to the right direction, in the right amount, and through the right tools. So that, just like in the original Italian Job movie, you don’t blow up the whole truck. You blow off only the doors. No.. Not the whole truck!
