Set up BizOps for success

Or how to make the most of your BizOps function

Over the last 3-4 months I have had the following happen. Someone reaches out on LinkedIn. They ask “Can we have a conversation, I can really use your help about how I am setting up BizOps at my company.” I say “Yes, of course.” We meet, we talk, and we discover that the founders in the company have no clue what BizOps is, why it should be independent from other functions, or worse, think they know and then stick it under Customer Success (for example).

The reality is that in Europe, founders still don’t understand what BizOps is. And miss out on the growth it offers over the long run. The SBO Hub aims to change that.

To take this from the founding post of the SBO Hub:

At its best, Strategy and Biz Ops, or BizOps, acts as a strategic partner across the organization, providing data-driven strategy, optimising system operations, and fostering new growth initiatives. It helps leadership make informed decisions by providing a holistic view of the business, aligning strategies with execution, and incubating new opportunities for growth.

Now that you know what it is in a nutshell, how do you make sure you set it up for success? There are two fundamentals of BizOps’ success: mandate & reporting line.

Mandate

Strategy & BizOps’s focus on data-driven strategic problem solving makes it uniquely positioned to advise senior leaders on the toughest decisions to be made.

1. Single threaded leadership: BizOps is a team (or early on, usually an individual) who takes charge of specific initiatives of strategic importance. That is, not your business as usual. If left to be someone’s 20% of workload these would get ignored, or the stuff that keeps the lights on would break. here comes BizOps, which can tackle strategic initiatives through a unique combination of hard and soft skills. Think about answering questions like “Should we enter a new market?”, “Can we change our pricing to a consumption based model? And when?”, “What should we do with these people sending us referrals?” and many more. These questions deserve real answers.

2. Independence: BizOps is like Switzerland. The projects, initiatives, and motions that sit in BizOps are protected from commercial, roadmap, or other interference. Moreover, the delivered analysis and approach doesn’t fit - by definition - with any one leaders’ overt or covert wishful thinking, biased views, or BAU operations. You can appreciate what this means, if your Sales leader missed targets one too many times while BizOps could tell you they were not going to make it any way.

3. Flexibility in structure: At the early stages, BizOps is like a Swiss Army Knife. But the best thing is, it is flexible. BizOps follows the structure of the organisation as it evolves. So for example, for a B2B SaaS business it might look something like Figure 1 below, where the major focus is on RevOps, and Finance. And for a PLG company, it might swap some of this focus for Marketing Top of Funnel, and automations in Finance. As the company grows, some of the incubated functions can evolve and“graduate” from BizOps, to become independent.

Figure 1

Reporting

Due to its Mandate, BizOps in a startup or scale-up typically reports directly to top leadership, often the CEO or COO. Why does it matter?

1. Executive oversight: The unit usually has direct oversight from C-level executives, as it plays a crucial role in shaping the company's overall strategy and operational excellence.

2. Cross-functional coordination: Given its role in aligning different departments and facilitating communication across the organization, BizOps often directly leads top management counterparts to ensure company-wide coordination.

3. Centralised: The unit's focus on long-term planning, performance management, and operational excellence compels it be centralised. While disparate ‘Ops’ individuals might sit in marketing, cx, or finance, BizOps serves as the glue to deliver cross-functional initiatives.

The specific reporting structure can vary depending on the company's size, industry, and organisational design. However, due to its strategic importance and cross-functional nature, BizOps is typically positioned close to top management in the organisational hierarchy.

Tackling the misconceptions

To conclude, I think it is worth looking at the common misconceptions about BizOps. It gets compared to a whole host of functions, or types of companies, but it has a number of key differences. Appreciating those differences would help any founder understand why people want to do BizOps, vs working in consulting, or working in Growth, or one of the other traditional “back-office” (🤮) function of a scale up. Here are the most common comparisons, and how BizOps is really quite different:

Because BizOps has broad capabilities, often employees can join in BizOps and then take over a motion, graduating into the org in a different role; or they can pilot a focus on a region, graduating as a GM; or they can join a function (e.g. Customer Success) and move to BizOps to broaden their view. The opportunities are (almost) endless.

In my experience, setting BizOps for success with a proper mandate, and reporting line, ensures not only that you have single threaded leadership for the most hairy of problems or business opportunities. You also ensure the team members in your company have a strong problem solving capability. And you give them opportunities for growth, and exciting career paths. A win-win for everyone.

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Comments and questions are welcome, through the usual channel: LinkedIn message.