An Interview with 180ops Co-Founder and CPO Toni Keskinen

Data can provide many useful insights to help companies to achieve sustainable growth, from streamlining budgets and optimising resources to boosting sales performance. However, the collection and processing of data can be a timely and costly endeavour while it can also be difficult to know how exactly to maximise its potential. This is where larger B2B businesses, in particular, can benefit from the 180ops revenue optimisation tool.
 
Developed in Helsinki, 180ops is a revenue intelligence tool that combines artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics to convert data into valuable and actionable insights. Having already helped businesses in Finland achieve tangible improvements across their operations, 180ops is now expanding outside the Nordics to the rest of Europe and North America. We spoke to Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Toni Keskinen to find out more.
 
How does the 180ops revenue intelligence tool work?
 
We work with three different kinds of input data to produce actionable insights. Firstly, we use your internal data (such as billing data) to paint the picture of status quo. Secondly, we bring in external data from third parties (such as Dun & Bradstreet) to understand your whole target market and customers' situation. Thirdly, we add to the mix macroeconomic trend data (such as the European Central Bank) to understand the environment in which your customers and target market live. These three components form your data recipe.
 
To make sense out of this data and provide you with actionable insights and evidence-based outcomes for business decision-making, we have built an AI- and ML-powered advanced analytics machine to do the crunching for you. In this way we bring you and outside-in perspective which enables bridging strategy with operational execution.
 
What challenges are B2B businesses experiencing today in terms of revenue growth?
 
Our target customers are midcap and large B2B organisations that have wide offering ranges and diversity in customer types. If they also have a group structure and history in M&A, it means that these companies struggle to make sense of the markets and their capacity to maximise customer lifetime value and ARPA (Average Revenue Per Account). We offer actionable answers:

• Potential at the offering level by individual customers.
• Billing projection (forecast) for the next 12 months by customer and offering.
• Risk analysis: Customer’s likelihood of defecting at offering level.
• Readiness analysis: Customer’s readiness to buy at offering level.

 
Companies have challenges in their sales productivity, quota setting, and they struggle with the substantial number of technologies. The availability of data is not a challenge, making sense of it is. We release salespeople’s time to selling what they are measured and rewarded by and motive them with answers about how to meet their quota. We help them act timely and prioritise their time allocation which improves hit rates and productivity. The technology is incredibly complex, but the use of it is simple and user-friendly.
 
Can you tell us more about the book that 180ops launched in 2023, Path to Growth and Profitability, and the type of insights that readers will uncover?
 
The book was essentially a mission statement about how we want to change the way B2B companies are managed with bottom-up and outside-in insights and understanding. Having a constantly updating view to markets is a game changer. The book has a story to tell about the learning journey behind 180ops and how to leverage new perspectives in strategy process and operational execution.
 
When I wrote the book, we were still in the product development and some of the features I was writing about were visions. Now, however, everything I wrote about is in production and operational use.
 
The book is most valuable for readers looking to transform their business towards customer and market centric strategy and management. Also, people running strategic development programmes like revenue operations, commercial excellence, sales excellence or portfolio optimisation will benefit from the book very much. The book was written from the C-level decision maker point of view so that they would be better equipped to run and benefit from such strategic programmes and reaping the benefits from them to the maximum.
 
In terms of analysing customer behaviours, what does 180ops offer clients that human input can’t?
 
Firstly, the sheer complexity and volume of data in complex businesses is just impossible to manage by a person or even a team. When I was doing discovery projects to customer’s strategic development with internal customer teams, I was able to scratch the surface and come up with highly valuable insights and learnings, but it was also very expensive for the companies I worked for. Our platformisation reduces human work radically in the data collection and processing, and allows humans to concentrate on making insights and connecting data driven outcomes to deeper understanding and stories that are scalable truths for management. Processed data allows people to concentrate on the most interesting and valuable part, which is insights and decisions.
 
Secondly, on-going modelling is not a snapshot situational view of the reality. It is an ongoing and constantly learning view to market changes. In the current VUCA economy, it is a management imperative to constantly stay tuned to markets and adapt to it. To turn volatility into an opportunity. We also solve the knowledge distribution challenge by delivering the outcomes to tools that users use to operate efficiently, like CRM and ERP.
 
Beyond sourcing new leads, how does the 180ops tool help businesses improve their customer retention?
 
The core idea of our approach is in maximising customer average revenue per account (ARPA) and lifetime value. The primary approach is about up- and cross-selling. When customers are deepening their relationship with the seller, each new decision increases the ARPA and strengthens the bond between seller and buyer. The stronger the offering penetration, the higher the retention.
 
We are also modelling offering level risk of defect and declining revenue level. The combination of internal and external data allows us to name primary drivers of risk and reveal risk mitigating factors. Some of those drivers are not in our power to influence – like interest rates, energy prices or inflation – but there are factors we can influence and play in our favour. For example, if we recognise that certain offerings represent anchors in a relationship and mitigate churn risk, we can leverage that in our customer relationship strategies. We can also discover reasons for reclamations, incidents or refunds and fix challenges that increase the likelihood of defects.
 
At operational level, we are creating tasks for sales regarding risk and readiness at customer and offering level. The task in CRM contains the name of the company, the related offering and the amount of past 12 months billing and, in case of readiness, the potential revenue. This allows sales to act timely and improve their productivity.
 
180ops refers to a ‘single source of truth’ in terms of its offering. What does this mean, and how do your clients benefit?
 
Depending on the user’s need, we can deliver answers from C-level to sales and customer success level. When different stakeholders create their priorities and understanding from the same data and realities, it improves the company’s capability to create unity and improve agility. For example, objective and key results (OKR)-based management benefits very much from 180ops. The primary benefits for customers are clarity and unity in any given situation.
 
The name of the company comes from 180-degree perspective change to customer and market centricity in strategy and operations. While companies business intelligence (BI) and dashboards have their centre of gravity around some internal object – like company finances, offering, channel, campaign, sales team or person – our focus is on individual customers.
 
All data is connected to customers, and we can look at the data from different perspectives. We can do swift market analysis at macroeconomic level by offering, standard industry classification, geography, sale responsible, or other filtering factors and look at the target list with one click. We enable offering and portfolio analysis with same depth from different perspective.
 
Having already unlocked AI’s potential in revenue optimisation, what other functionalities can we expect to be introduced to the 180ops tool?
 
Our next steps will relate to sales performance analytics and metrics, creation of next generation revenue forecasting and scenario tools, which will be available in H2-2024.
 
The first scenario we will be working on is about how to set your sales goals and quotas. While markets are constantly changing, the goal setting should be dynamic in a sense that it considers the shifting demand. We will also offer text-based user interface with language-based questions and answers. However, we will concentrate on the areas where there are burning needs but zero to few viable options competing against us and deliver insights to systems customers are already using. We have our own role in the CRM, ERP and RevOps ecosystems as well as data-warehousing and we play our role in synergy with others.
 
We are also working with a variety of verticals that have very specific needs at the core of their business model. These vertical specific functions will further increase our competitive advantage and scalability. Scalability-wise, we have just launched on MS Azure Marketplace and App Source. There will also be new distribution channels soon as well as partners capable of helping our customers internationally.
 
Is there anything else you would like to add?
 
Companies have invested heavily on datalakes and warehouses, fundamental ERP and CRM technologies, as well as sales enablement and customer success. However, they struggle to make ROI from those investments. 180ops is the missing link between those major fundamental investments, turning those investments actionable and making sense of the data these technologies can deliver.
 
Our role is to turn complexity and overwhelming avalanche of data into understandable insights and activities. From a human perspective, our approach reduces anxiety and worry, replacing it with clarity and determination. According to Gartner, almost 90% of salespeople are at the verge of burnout. Although we are talking about advanced analytics and data, the human emotions and experience are the things that make a world of difference. We need to be more human, understand what we are asking from people and how we can help them succeed. This type of support intelligence provides the best of both worlds, advanced analytics, human knowledge, intuition and storytelling.
 
To find out more about how the innovative 180ops revenue intelligence tool can help guide your sales process and sustainably grow your business, please visit www.180ops.com.