ISG Software Research Analyst Perspectives | Revenue Performance Management

It’s Not a Hiring Problem. It’s a Role Design Problem

Posted by Barika Pace on 07 May 2026

Revenue leaders entered 2026 under pressure to deliver predictable growth while navigating tighter budgets, higher expectations from finance and rapid adoption of enterprise artificial intelligence (AI). Many organizations are responding by slowing hiring or reassessing the size of their sales teams, even as pipeline targets and growth expectations remain unchanged. The result is a growing... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Everyone Says SaaS is Dying; My Pipeline Says Otherwise

Posted by Barika Pace on 14 April 2026

Over the past year a number of investors and commentators have begun using the term SaaS-Pocalypse to describe slowing growth rates, layoffs and consolidation across enterprise software providers. Here is the complication: Revenue leaders are hearing this narrative at the same time they are being asked to deliver more predictable growth with tighter budgets and greater financial scrutiny. And... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Conga Connect 2026: Why Connected Commercial Execution Is the Next Imperative

Posted by Barika Pace on 08 April 2026

Conga Connect 2026 underscored a shift that revenue leaders can no longer ignore. The core technology challenge facing commercial organizations is not a lack of tools, automation or even artificial intelligence (AI), but the growing fragmentation across the systems and teams responsible for moving deals from initial pricing through contract execution and into revenue realization. New research... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

ZohoDay Addresses the Tensions Facing CROs

Posted by Barika Pace on 12 March 2026

This year at ZohoDay 2026, the conversation did not center on product features, competitive positioning or even individual applications. Instead, it focused on a tension many CROs are already experiencing. Revenue leaders are being asked to deliver higher forecast confidence, manage margin pressure and incorporate AI into selling motions while simultaneously reducing operational complexity. The... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Building a Revenue Strategy That Scales

Posted by Barika Pace on 19 February 2026

Chief revenue officers are being asked to scale growth at a time when revenue systems are under more strain than at any point in the past decade. Buyer journeys are longer and less linear, sellers are operating across an expanding set of digital and partner channels and revenue technology stacks have grown faster than the operating models meant to govern them. In this environment, revenue... Read More

Topics: sales engagement, Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

From RevOps to RevEngine: Stop Optimizing the Wrong Things

Posted by Barika Pace on 10 February 2026

Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) are under growing pressure to deliver predictable, scalable growth. They are surrounded by expanding go-to-market (GTM) teams, a sprawling sales technology stack and boardroom expectations that demand more than last quarter’s growth playbook. Sales leaders have never had more access to data, automation and point solutions, and yet the path to actual revenue... Read More

Topics: sales engagement, Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue, Business & Technologies, Revenue Lifecycle Management

What’s In, What’s Out: 2026 Mindshifts for Forward-Thinking CROs

Posted by Barika Pace on 04 February 2026

Revenue leadership is under pressure. Pipeline predictability is eroding, seller productivity is stalling and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated noise is clouding decision-making. While boards demand consistent growth, the operational scaffolding beneath most revenue engines remains outdated, over-reliant on siloed KPIs, fragmented tech stacks and an overpromised customer relationship... Read More

Topics: sales engagement, Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue, Business & Technologies, Revenue Lifecycle Management

Closing the Talent–Tech Gap: A 100-Day Playbook for Modern CROs

Posted by Barika Pace on 21 January 2026

Revenue organizations are running out of room to hide. With increasingly complex buyer journeys, longer sales cycles and rising expectations for personalized outreach, today’s CROs face a mounting challenge: deliver predictable growth in a market that’s anything but predictable while simultaneously building a team that doesn’t burn out. ISG asserts that through 2027, more than one-half of... Read More

Topics: Sales Performance Management, Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Ready for the Next Revenue Era? The CRO Stack That Will Define 2026

Posted by Barika Pace on 09 December 2025

Revenue leaders face a defining moment, which is why the time to define capabilities is now. As organizations brace for economic uncertainty, margin pressure and board scrutiny, the long-promised ROI of go-to-market technology is under intense evaluation. Sales productivity is declining, seller attrition is rising and CFOs are no longer tolerating technology bloat without measurable performance... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Why the ‘Messy Middle’ for Office of Revenue Needs AI and Salesforce

Posted by Barika Pace on 06 November 2025

I attended Salesforce’s Dreamforce event in San Francisco to learn more about the company’s expanding vision for artificial intelligence (AI) and its newest capability, Agentforce Revenue Management. Salesforce has steadily evolved from being a CRM leader to positioning itself as an AI-first business platform. The introduction of Agentforce marks the company’s most ambitious step yet in... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, partner management, Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

Why I Joined ISG and the Software Research Office of Revenue Practice

Posted by Barika Pace on 04 November 2025

I am excited to announce that I have joined ISG as Research Director for the Office of Revenue practice, where I will lead coverage across a spectrum of revenue, sales and product technologies that shape how organizations operate and engage customers, align go-to-market functions and operationalize growth. This includes CRM, Commerce, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), Product Experiences,... Read More

Topics: Subscription Management, partner management, Revenue Performance Management, Revenue Lifecycle Management, Office of Revenue - Business Technologies

SugarCRM as a Revenue Platform with AI for Sellers

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 19 February 2025

I was recently a guest of SugarCRM at their 2025 Analyst summit with an opportunity to meet with the executive team and new CEO, David Roberts. SugarCRM is a venerable CRM offering that started as an open-source project and over the years has matured into a very flexible CRM system with offerings for sales, marketing and service. The new CEO, David Roberts joined the company toward the end of... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Akeron Vulki: A Sales Performance Application with a Difference

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 09 February 2024

Revenue and sales performance used to be the preserve of a few software providers as many enterprises made do with in-house solutions, often built on the ubiquitous spreadsheet. But increasingly managing revenue and sales performance is becoming too complex as business models are changing in response to customer behavior. Akeron, with their Vulki Sales Performance application, is a more recent... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

2024 Market Agenda for Office of Revenue: Bring AI to the Table

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 30 January 2024

Ventana Research recently announced its 2024 research agenda for the Office of Revenue, continuing the guidance we have offered for nearly two decades to help enterprises across industries derive optimal value and improved outcomes from business technology. Chief Sales and Revenue Officers face an imperative to manage their sales and revenue organizations, but they do not always have the guidance... Read More

Topics: Digital Commerce, Subscription Management, partner management, Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Margin Highlights the Need for Sales and Revenue Planning

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 27 December 2023

I have a phrase I like to use when describing the changing nature of sales: Not all revenue and sales dollars look the same. This is in reference to the changing nature of both how in addition to traditional offerings, organizations are now selling subscription and usage-based products and services through multiple channels. These customer-driven shifts in the approach to buying and selling are... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

The Buyers Guide for RPM Classifies and Rates Vendors

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 09 August 2023

I am happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, a research and assessment of how well vendors’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Revenue Performance Management Ventana Research Buyers Guide: 2023 is the distillation of a year of market and product research by Ventana Research. Drawing on our Benchmark Research, we apply a structured methodology built on evaluation... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Market Observations from the Revenue Performance Management Buyers Guide

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 08 August 2023

Having just completed the 2023 Ventana Research Buyers Guide for Revenue Performance Management, I want to share some of my observations about how the market has advanced since our assessment one year ago. In many organizations, the sales department is being superseded by revenue teams. These revenue teams support a super-set of traditional sales functions that include not only those involved in... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Why Incentive Compensation Is Right for More Than Sales

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 21 June 2023

A lot has changed in business over the past ten years. The rise of e-commerce and omnichannel buying and engagement, the increasing digitization of the economy and the broader adoption of pricing and revenue models such as subscription and usage. And these are all having an impact on how business leaders need to think about their organizations. One of the more significant changes has been an... Read More

Topics: Payroll Management, Total Compensation Management, Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Planning Matters to Sales and Revenue Performance Management

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 08 June 2023

While many vendors have focused on developing new technologies and features to improve sales execution through more personalized and targeted sales enablement, lead and sales opportunity progress tracking and scoring, manager coaching and conversational intelligence, it seems that sales and revenue teams are realizing that this is not, in and of itself, enough to arrest the decline in quota... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue

Revenue Operations Guides the Modern Revenue Organization

Posted by Stephen Hurrell on 27 October 2022

The topic of revenue operations has been extensively covered recently, not least by vendors extolling the virtues of their particular offering. But as with much of the software industry, vendors often see the market through the lens of their current product capabilities rather than what is necessarily needed. With the rise of the mixed-revenue model that includes subscription and usage pricing as... Read More

Topics: Revenue Performance Management, Office of Revenue