In this episode, we talk to Stephanie Chang, Sr. Vice President of GTM Strategy & Operations at Okta, about the importance of a learner mindset, why RevOps is essential to driving change within companies of any size, and how to put the infrastructure in place to enable growth and scalability.
This episode features an interview with Stephanie Chang, Sr. Vice President of GTM Strategy & Operations at Okta. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time.
Stephanie is a self-motivated, results-driven professional with a demonstrated ability to assess business needs, identify opportunities, and deliver results. She has worked on many large acquisitions in the high-tech space from operational planning and execution to development of GTM strategy and partner communication plans.
In this episode, we talk to Stephanie about the importance of a learner mindset, why rev ops is essential to driving change within companies of any size, and how to put the infrastructure in place to enable growth and scalability.
Guest Bio:
Stephanie is a self-motivated, results-driven professional with a demonstrated ability to assess business needs, identify opportunities, and deliver results. She has worked on many large acquisitions in the high-tech space from operational planning and execution to development of GTM strategy and partner communication plans. Her specialties include Sales & Channel Strategy, Partner Program Development, Project Management, and Client Management.
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Guest Quote
“Change often is driven with the data that a RevOps team can bring. Change is driven by having the right infrastructure and operational rigor in place, which RevOps helps, supports, and puts in place." - Stephanie Chang
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Time Stamps:
**(03:54) - Stephanie’s definition of RevOps
**(08:26) - How does Stephanie run a RevOps team?
**(09:16) - Rev Obstacles
**(20:17) - The Toolshed
**(24:31) - Quick Hits
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Sponsor:
Rise of RevOps is brought to you by Qualified. Qualified’s Pipeline Cloud is the future of pipeline generation for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Learn more about the Pipeline Cloud on Qualified.com.
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Links
Narrator: Hello and welcome to Rise of RevOps. This episode features an interview with Stephanie Chang, Senior Vice President of GTM Strategy and Operations at Okta. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time.
Stephanie is a self-motivated, results-driven professional with a demonstrated ability to assess business needs, identify opportunities, and deliver results. She's worked on many large acquisitions in the high tech space, from operational planning and execution to development of GTM strategy. And partner communication plans.
In this episode, we talked to Stephanie about the importance of a learner mindset, why rev ops is essential to driving change within companies of any size, and how to put the infrastructure in place to enable growth and scalability. But first, a brief word from our sponsor,
Ian: Rise of Revops is brought to you by Qualified.
Qualified pipeline Cloud is the future of pipeline generation for revenue teams that use Salesforce. Learn more about the pipeline cloud on qualified.com.
Stephanie: And
Narrator: now please enjoy this interview with Stephanie Chang, senior Vice President of GTM Strategy and Operations at Okta, and your host Ian Faison.
Ian: Welcome to Rise of RevOps. I'm Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios and today I'm joined by a special guest. Stephanie,
Stephanie: how are you? Great. Thanks for having me today. Yeah.
Ian: Excited to have you on the show. Excited to chat about Rev ops and all the cool stuff that you're doing at Okta. So let's get into it. Tell me first, how did you get into
Stephanie: Rev Ops?
I actually started my career far from rev ops. It was actually in it actually for financial services, and quickly realized my, my passion really lied more on the revenue side of the house versus cost efficiency side. So, exited that and started to really focus more on the sales and channel space, you know, the revenue drivers of most company.
And dived into supporting a lot of different mna and that was my first blush really driving different change and transformations for many companies. And it was super exciting, super exciting to see the impact that you can have, um, really merging different companies together to get to sub to their ultimate goals around acceleration or growth, new product and realize, you know, it would be great to get so much operational expertise, um, in the.
Space and the channel space. So actually found an amazing opportunity at Salesforce. They were at the time building out Marketing Cloud and you, um, are familiar with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. It had actually created from three different acquisitions, so really was amazing to leverage the things I love, which is revenue driving, driving transformation through m and a, um, and building deeper expertise in the sales ops space.
It was a wild ride. Six years later, we got to a billion. Dollar Cloud for Mark, which was the goal of, um, those three companies that we acquired then, you know, took, um, took a lens on how do I drive more, a different type of transformation at Splunk, where they were an on-prem perpetual shop and moving to the cloud.
That was also a multi-year journey. And, you know, four years later we were successfully, you know, transitioned over to the cloud and then, repeating a different type of transformation here at Okta today where we're looking at moving from a single product to a multi-product.
Ian: It's so cool to see that, that sort of transformation from finance to revenue operations and, and uh, and how much change that you've been able to drive.
What is it about rev ops that sort of allows change to happen like that? I'm
Stephanie: curious. I think Rev ops is central to basically the heart of the company, right? We look at everything from a data, from a process, from an end-to-end perspective and. That, that expertise for many companies is what helps Rev drive change for them.
And change requires, you know, having the right strategy, which often is driven with, with the data that a rev op team can bring. Right? Change is driven by having the right infrastructure and operational rigor in place, which Rev Ops helps, supports and puts in place, right? Change is driven. Providing the right context and enablement, which again, rev Ops team is central to.
So I think there's lots of aspects of rev ops and the different functions that we play and the different things that we bring to the table that, you know, the Rev ops team is just essential to driving transformation for many companies.
Ian: What, what's your definition of rev ops?
Stephanie: I think of rev ops in two buckets.
There's rev ops that helps, you know, run the business. So you think about, um, you know, having the right data, the right, um, analysis in place, um, forecast process, cadence. Um, and then there's the other side of rev ops. That is really touching on facilitating company pivots, right? When we talk about growing from, you know, a private company to a public company growing from a billion to 5 billion, these major pivots that companies make, that's where rev ops is there to kind of self facilitate, have the right infrastructure, have the right rigor, and the business processes to drive those changes for the company.
I
Ian: love that. And it's not something we've discussed a ton on this show, but in the modern, you know, whether it's tech or B2B or, or startup world where pivots are so important and critical, that's a really cool idea that, uh, a key cog in the pivot is, uh, is having rev ops. That's, that's a, that's a great idea.
So back to Octa, uh, you mentioned this sort of transformation that you're going through and how does. How does Rev ops play a role in that? And I guess zoom out. What does Okta do for in case someone's been living under a rock and doesn't know about? Ok.
Stephanie: I mean, our tagline is we, we allow everyone to use technology safely, um, on any device anywhere.
Um, whether that's, you know, providing secure access, providing authentication, automation, we provide that, you know, on a neutral platform. And we allow folks, um, our companies, our different customer base to leverage that both internally for their employee base through our workforce cloud identity cloud, um, product, or with their customers in our customer identity product.
Ian: And how have you organized your Rev ops
Stephanie: team? I've always thought of rev ops having two different pillars. There's um, a vertical and horizontal, vertical being folks that have really deep SME expertise, whether it's with the business partners that they support, so whether that is your sales ops function, your partner operations, XDR operations, and so on.
And then we have an horizontal. Branch that really is chartered to think more holistically across, go-to-market, across, um, the company to really think about how do you drive efficiencies, how do you put the right infrastructure in place so that we can scale and grow quickly? And then combining both, having that deep expertise and also having the horizontal layer is I think what makes Rev robots super powerful and again, helping companies.
Ian: and you know, you mentioned sort of the transformation of going to multi-product and having that. How have you sort of thought about taking this on as a rev ops challenge
Stephanie: specifically? I think for, for Okta, right, what we do from a rev ops, again, we support all the run the business. You know, whether it's the QBR that we have or comp discussions.
Helping retire tech debt and so on. But what's different for my team is we're also looking at how, you know, what are the changes that needs, that the company needs to go through? Even, even on the metrics front, right? When you go from a single product to multi-product, your metrics become infinitely more complicated when you're trying to track different product families and puts and takes.
You have to think about how do you, you know, how do you guide in terms of deal structuring and approaches when you have multiple products now in your, in a salesperson's bag versus single, even your forecasting cadence, right? Has to evolve now to really think about not just hitting the, the overall targets, but, but just the mix on how to get there.
So those are all the things I think Rev ops does above and beyond kind of what I would call, run the business activities,
Ian: anything unique. Okta's Rev op team about how, how you think about Rev op.
Stephanie: Again, I think the differentiation for me on the teams, the Rev ops team that I run, is we asked for, again, those that deep that they developed as the functional expertise with the business partners.
So you're. You're in the same boat with the sales team. You understand exactly what their drivers are, what their challenges are. You're in deep with the partner team understanding the partner strategy, you know the implementation, the challenges that they might have feedback from the partners, but you work with the horizontal teams there that really think about how do you.
How do you incorporate that business expertise into creating a better process, a more scalable process? How do you create automation in your day-to-day to really bring efficiency, not just for the go-to-market operations team, but for all the business partners that we support?
Ian: All right. Let's get to our first segment, rev Obstacles.
Stephanie: Obstacle, obstacle.
Ian: An Obstacle to
Stephanie: What? There's Your Obstacle
Ian: where we talk about the tough parts of rev ops. What is a transformation that you've driven from a Rev ops perspective?
Stephanie: I think I've mentioned there's, um, you know, across my career I've done a, a lot to support different companies, whether it's, you know, Salesforce to the Marketing Cloud, you know, trying to combine three different companies to create that next billion dollar cloud for Salesforce.
Um, Splunk, we went from a perpetual on-prem model to SaaS, which I know is a journey many, many companies have been going through and Okta and, you know, going from one product to multi-product. Right. But I think. Each of these companies have gone through different change in their different pivots in their life cycle.
But I think what makes them, what's common for them is that when they think about transformation, I think there's three things that all of them have, right? First, they start with having clarity and alignment from top to bottom on. You know, what is the change that we're trying to drive? What does success look like?
What is the North Star that we're using to guide every decision we make or every action? I think each company also has this commitment to really creating scale, scalable operations and in infrastructure because change is hard. If you're trying to make changes while having to still support a lot of manual processes and overhead, it makes it infinitely that much harder.
And I think the third is really that we, we look at providing everyone enough time and we spending enough energy on change management to make sure everyone comes along on that change journey, right? That they actually understand what we're doing, incorporate that into their day-to-day actions. Right? And if you don't actually spend enough time doing that, honestly what ends up happening is most companies loses their most valuable resource, which is their.
Ian: Well, and time and frustration and all that other stuff that, that goes into that. Right? It's like, you know, you think of the employee hours that you invest in terms of like a salary perspective into that type of change. And like the r o I has to be great, obviously, you know, Taking something like going on-prem to cloud or, or you know, combining three different products into one cloud or things like that, which are like massive revenue driving, you know, initiatives.
It's necessary for the business to continue to thrive, to be able to do that stuff. So, you know, you're not worried about the investment in time, but of course it's gonna be massive. Do you track that stuff as part of your deliverables? Like how much time is being spent? I
Stephanie: think what we really track when we think about transformation, right, is success metrics.
Like most transformation takes years, quarters, years to occur, right? The marketing cloud was over, you know, to hit their billion mark was almost over a six year timeframe. The journey from on-prem, perpetual to cloud took Splunk almost about four years to get there, right? And in Okta, we're still on this journey today, so I would.
the metrics that I anchor on is really not time, but those incremental success metrics that we know that shows us that we're going in the right direction, right? Because you wanna make sure, again, you're moving an entire organization, like shifting a cruise ship, right? Almost if you wanna make an analogy there.
So you gotta make sure that you know that there are those interim milestones that indicate to the organization as a whole that, hey, we're on the right path. And I think it's also important to spend. Time thinking about like what do you look at from an adoption metric standpoint, right? How are you testing to make sure people are actually absorbing and understanding the change?
Um, and then last but not least, you know, you measure the trend line in your financials, right? Like we said, every one of these pivots. Really supposed to be this boost and acceleration in growth. And yes, change is disruptive, so you might see a dip at the beginning of your change journey, but as people come, come along, as you're starting to see the success and you're actually transforming your organization, you should start to see that reflected in your financials.
Ian: Do you seek out the companies with the big problems? Because it seems like, you know, uh, not that big problem is not the right way to, but, uh, big opportunities because it seems like you have so much strategy in the way that you think about go to market and the way that you think about ops and, and optimizing that sort of stuff.
It's not just like, you know, you're. Whatever, if the K T L O type task, it's like, Hey, no, I want to seek this sort of institutional change bec and then, you know, and when you do something like that and you do pick something, I'm curious like how much of that is, you know, getting that cross-functional alignment across teams and, and uh, and how much of it is on you to sort of like shoulder the, the burden of the huge project.
Stephanie: To answer your first part, I think what I, I go back to, I look for companies that allow me to continue to focus on the thing I'm passionate about. Revenue drivers, right? What are the things that's really gonna help accelerate growth quickly, which again, massive transformation and pivots tend to do that.
And yes, those tend to be bigger, you know, longer term projects to take on. And as you mentioned, cross-functional. I would say it's not, it's not on any individual. to shoulder, that cross-functional burden is actually on the entire company to make sure that cross-functionally we're aligned. Like I said, any transformation starts of having clarity and alignment top to bottom right on.
What is that North star? What is that one thing that's gonna be most important for the company? Cuz by definition one means that there is a singular priority that is most important. That is what the entire company and organization needs to rally around to help the company.
Ian: What's your biggest rev, whoops.
Moment of the past
Stephanie: year. I often find that assumptions lead to those rev whoops moments you mentioned. You know, if you don't take the time and energy to really focus on change and getting everyone to, to align on the change and understand the change, you can can result in a lot of frustration that for.
Is what happens when you have too many assumptions that you're relying on. Assumptions are great because it, it allows folks to run quickly, make decisions, get to actions, get to results. However, if your organization as a whole, especially when you are dealing with large cross-functional initiatives, if everyone's not on the same page with the same set of assumption, it can lead to a lot of that frustration and frankly, it impedes your ability to, to move quickly on that.
So when you think about, you know, old saying, you gotta slow down to then hurry up later. Like, that's exactly what I find that we need to do to avoid those rep oops. Moments where you really need to slow down the beginning. Make sure everyone has the same foundational understanding of the problem statement, the, the metrics of success, the ultimate like North Star.
Make sure that you. You know, he nods from everyone on like, do you have clarity on this before? Then? Before then embarking on executing against that project? And if you don't, that's I think when you end up with, again, with a lot of frustrated people and a lot of wasted time.
Ian: Well, that thing is, I think, a little bit challenging for Rev ops leaders at, at times because they have the sort of the, the three-headed hydro of sales, marketing and, and, and customer success that are constantly asking them for, you know, this or that.
And so to even just get out of the day-to-day operational piece and to think more strategic can be challenging a little bit, but then also, Trying to say like, Hey, this is, you know, a five year journey and obviously there's gonna be executive buy-in on that stuff. How do you sort of like bracket your time to make sure that you are doing the day-to-day and also the like, longer term planning and getting on everyone on the same page.
Stephanie: I think this is why it's really, again, important for me that my rev ops team have the horizontal layer, because the only way to create more time is if you automate and build efficiencies, and you need that time in order to really be strategic and be able to drive a company through its different pivots.
So there is no easy answer. I wish there was more time in a day. . But in order to create that time, that's where technology has been amazing. It's where technology has really even changed, you know, human behavior on so many different fronts and made us more efficient in some cases. And that's what I look to drive with my team, is that horizontal layer that we're looking at to really bring the process improvement, to bring the scalability.
That's gonna give us the time for the rest of the team to really focus on thinking strategically, thinking through the pivot. .
Ian: So obviously you know Salesforce later stage technology company. When you're either Splunk, same thing, Okta, same thing, similar type of stages. I'm curious, like how does that chain or that stage of a company compare to how you would go about approaching it if it was much earlier or like a startup, uh, and how they should think about Rev.
Stephanie: I actually think Rev Ops is super relevant regardless of the size of the company, because every company, regardless of you're a startup or you've recently iPod, or you are a massive behemoth like a Cisco and, and looking to continue. the growth and acceleration rate on their financials. They're gonna be going through pivots, and that's what Rev ops is there to help facilitate.
It's help. It's there to make sure you have the right data infrastructure, operational business processes laid out in a really scalable fashion to allow the companies to go through those pivots. So if I have one word of advice for any startup, it's invest early in your web op team because that's gonna build the foundations that's gonna allow you to grow quickly.
Ian: any other, you know, piece of advice of your rev ops team of, you know, two or three or four or five or something like that, and you're working in those early stages of how do you help your leadership think more strategically. You know, like when next week is important, you know, let alone next quarter or next
Stephanie: year.
I mean, it is hard. Again, I'm not gonna deny the day-to-day activities and the demands on a rev offs team can be infinite. But for me, I've always guided everyone to say, pause a minute, understand what's being asked, and how does that fit into the bigger picture? And then think ahead. So if you're. Working with a small startup and they've got two salespeople, how are you going to, how does your process need to evolve so that tomorrow it can support double and then double from there?
So at some point, like if your team of two now is 20, what's gonna break? and if you kind of think ahead to like, what is that? What is that? What is the company gonna look like in the next two or three or four years and how is it gonna grow? And then you apply that to what you're doing today. I think that is the mentality that's gonna help establish the right infrastructure for growth.
Despite everything that's being asked you, you know, you're always kind of working towards something that's gonna allow the company to be pivot.
Ian: Let's get into the tool shed. Hey, hey Brandon,
Stephanie: Michael, wanna do me and mom a favor? Get off that shed. This is my favorite place. the tool shed get off the shed
Ian: where we're talking tools, spreadsheets, metrics.
Just like everyone's favorite tool qualified, no B2B tool shed is complete without qualified. Go to qualified.com right now and check them out. We love qualified. They're the very best. And. The perfect tool for any rev ops leader. Stephanie, what is in your tool shed? What do you feel like are the essential tools needed to drive change?
Stephanie: For change, it's, to me, it's not a physical tool or a software. For me, it's really more of a skillset. So in order to be successful, I think in helping companies pivot, you really need to have a learner mindset, cuz every company is gonna have its own unique set of circumstances, goals, history that you have to work through or unravel.
So having that learner of mindset allows you to really understand current state. So everyone might have clarity on the future state, but you really need to know where you're coming from, what you're working with, what resources you have, what challenges is inherently already baked in based on decisions that's been made maybe years ago, right?
To really create a true plan that's gonna allow the company to, to pivot and bridge the gap between where they wanna be and where they are. Are
Ian: there certain metrics that like matter to you in change? Like certain things that, that you're tracking really closely?
Stephanie: Yep. I think it goes back to, you know, change takes time, right?
So anything that is gonna take a few quarters, a few years, you're gonna wanna make sure you have those interim's assess metrics, whether that means that you've, you know, effectively changed. Particular business process or a cadence, an operating cadence that your sales or your partner team might be running, right?
Or you've put in a new system, in place, whatever those interim success metrics to really show that, hey, we're now actually, you know, reestablishing the, the foundations around our. Operational framework and our infrastructure to be, to facilitate the pivot is super important to, um, measure. I think the other thing again, is adoption, right?
So if you know, if you're trying to sell a new product, right? How many, you don't wait until you see the bookings come from those new products. You really need to understand adoption, um, early on adoption, right? How many people are, are, um, able to, you. Talk about the product, do the first call deck on the product.
How many people are now creating pipeline on that product? Right? All these, all these small stepping stones that really show you like, are people going advancing along that change journey that we all know we have to go on
Ian: sticking to, uh, to pipeline. Is there anything that you. Noticed and it could be, you know, more recent or, or in previous companies when you found something in the pipeline that wasn't working and then you fixed it.
Stephanie: I think, and this is not particular to any company, I think most transformations go through a state stage where that clarity on the priority and what's most important, that one thing that is most important is the company. is not there, and the alignment on that one particular thing is not there. But the understanding of that, that the company lacks that alignment across all the different function is not necessarily well understood.
And I think. to me, transformation can't start until you have that clarity and alignment. So before, um, and, and often this is where Rev Os can play a super strategic role, right? In really trying to bring together all the different pieces, whether that is the finance. You know, the finance function, the IT function, your product function, to really make sure that they see and understand what the entire company is hearing from those leaders.
Right? Do they actually hear that there is alignment coming from tops down on what is the most important thing for the company to achieve in this pivot? And if that, if that isn't clear, right? I think it's part of Rev thought's, responsibility to really help bring those pieces together and provide that clarity.
Okay.
Ian: Let's get into our final segment. Quick hits.
Stephanie: Quick, quick.
Ian: These are quick questions and quick answers. Quick hits. Stephanie, are you
Stephanie: ready? I'm ready.
Ian: Number one. What is the coolest animal? ?
Stephanie: I think o possums are really cool, which I know is, is probably not an answer you've heard before on this show, . Um, but they, um, I don't know if everyone knows this, but there's a protein that we've been able to extract from o possums that, um, basically we've used to create a bunch of anti-venoms that save like thousands of lives at this.
Dang.
Ian: That's pretty sweet. I love, uh, I love pretty much all forms of like biomimicry and stuff like that, that, or whatever it's called. Is it bio? No, that's something different. Whatever the thing is where, where basically animals have already figured out how to do all sorts of crazy cool stuff and then we just borrow it.
But I did not know about pos. Creating Antivenoms. Shout out to all the possums out there. Um, alright. What about, uh, your biggest rev ops misconception?
Stephanie: I think one that is near and dear to my heart because we're going through our fiscal year, um, planning and, and transition soon. Often misconception from the field that rev offs, you know, sets quotas and comp and commissions all in a box.
And maybe we're just like spinning a wheel to set your numbers, but in reality, it's done in you. Collaboration with all the leadership team. It's done in collaboration with our c f and the finance organization to really make sure all our metrics line up right? That from the bookings through the quota to how then we incent people to achieve those quotas is all part of a bigger strategy.
Ian: What about a rev ops prediction for 2020?
Stephanie: Think of prediction for me is that the, you know, the importance of rev ops I think is just gonna continue to like deepen and increase for all companies cuz we're so critical I think in helping organizations kind of continually evolve and reach their growth aspirations and especially with the market changing.
And I think, um, we're kind of a pivot for many companies with the market dynamics. I think Rev ops is really going to be super strategic in helping navigate through the changes that's coming in the. Or some in some cases already hit us. But coming in, you know, in the next few months,
Ian: if you could have one superpower, what would
Stephanie: it be?
I would love the ability to stop time. So if you think of uh, Harry Potter, Herman Granger, and she's got the little machine that allows her to basically create more time, that would be amazing. Cause I feel like I always have so much to do and never enough time. time
Ian: Turner gets you on time Turner. I, I feel like though it's, it's if you start messing around with a time turner look out, but it's your superpower, so I feel like, I feel like you'd be okay.
What advice would you have for someone who's newly leading a Rev ops team?
Stephanie: I would tell anyone newly leading that, you know, feedback, treat all feedback as a gift, and I mean that both on giving feedback as well as the pre receiving feedback. and I always think of feedback. You know, if someone, if someone's willing to give me feedback, it's because they have information for me on how I can be better at my job.
You know, for me, I would want anyone who has that information to give it to me so I can, you know, continually improve. So if you have that information as a, as a new leader, I know sometimes giving that feedback can get uncomfortable. But if you're coming from a place where really telling someone how you have information that's gonna help them improve and help them be.
Like, don't be shy about giving it.
Ian: All right, Stephanie, that is it. That's all we got for today. It's been wonderful having you on the show. For our listeners, you can go to okta.com to learn more about all the cool stuff that they have going on. Any, uh, any final thoughts, anything to, uh, to plug?
Stephanie: Nope. Thank you so much.
I, I enjoyed all the different aspects of rev ops and look forward to great New
Ian: Year. Indeed. Thanks again.
Stephanie: Thank you for listening to Rise of. If you enjoy today's episode, please leave us a review and subscribe wherever you're listening. This podcast was created by the team at qualified the pipeline Cloud is the modern way.
B2B revenue teams generate pipeline. Learn more at qualified.com.