As a top cybersecurity firm, Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT) protects over 500,000 customers, including the U.S. federal government and some of the world’s largest enterprises and service providers. Because so many organizations trust us to safeguard their work, we have 9,000 employees and generate nearly $3 billion in annual revenue.
A company of our scale and complexity demands a revenue process that’s built for continuous improvement and standardization. That means accurate data, consistent execution, and a clear view of our future growth trajectory are mandatory. Our process needs to evolve alongside our business, so we can continue doing what we do best: securing our customers.
I discussed Fortinet’s approach to revenue operations excellence in a webinar, Revenue Operations in 2022, featuring Anthony McPartlin, principal analyst at Forrester, and Clari.
In this piece, I’ll delve into three ways that Fortinet aligns our revenue team and drives operational efficiency to grow revenue for our business:
- Prioritizing data quality as a foundation for accurate forecasting
- Distilling historical data into predictive revenue insights
- Simplifying processes for everyone generating revenue
Mapping Fortinet’s success with RevOps and reliable forecasting
At Fortinet, our path to predictable growth started with revenue data. Leaders need to know what happened yesterday, and what’s happening today. We also need to know how the information we have today will shape tomorrow. As a revenue operations leader, I know that only happens if we have accurate forecasting.
Fortinet’s forecast accuracy rate is 97%, as of Q3 of fiscal year 2022. We achieve that thanks to Clari’s revenue operations platform, which delivers trustworthy, predictive insights early in the quarter. These insights allow us to understand our performance trajectory, and empower our revenue team to make smarter decisions and take more effective actions to reach our goals.
Getting ahead of end-of-quarter targets also means we can confidently plan ahead for the next quarter, with accurate data to:
- Inform capacity planning
- Identify opportunities to reinvest in the business
- Better understand where to allocate our resources
- Deliver accurate reports to executive leadership and shareholders.
That’s where the processes and philosophies of revenue operations come in. With a mature RevOps program in place, companies can plot a course for continued growth, even in the most complex organizations and markets.
The biggest takeaway is this: To improve revenue outcomes across teams, you first need accurate data—it’s the source of accountability and actionable insights.
1. Data is the foundation of growth
Make sure that data is high-quality, digestible, and actionable. It’s easy to say that you want better data quality, but it’s another thing entirely to harness the right processes and technology that ensure your data is clean, accurate, and useful. This is particularly important for revenue data, because this information can determine your business’s long-term viability.
At Fortinet, we know that improving data quality opens the door to better forecasting, and in turn, the predictable growth we need as a public company.
Doing so, Fortinet achieved:
- 92% of Fortinet’s reps and managers forecasting weekly in the Clari platform
- Increased trust in the forecast with better data hygiene in our CRM
- Consistent 90%-plus forecast accuracy in fiscal year 2022, supported by Clari’s accurate week-four quarterly projection
- Increased visibility into revenue outcomes even earlier in the quarter
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Fortinet’s Forecast Accuracy |
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92% |
96% |
97% |
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Q1 FY22 |
Q2 FY22 |
Q3 FY22 |
2. Leverage historical data to better predict future outcomes
Want to determine where you’re going? Take a look at where you’ve already been. At Fortinet, understanding our historical performance helps us understand what’s possible for the future.
To stay ahead, Fortinet leverages artificial intelligence and analytics in Clari’s time series database. The database ingests a range of historical data, including CRM data, to predict outcomes that become the basis of our forecasts.
We harness the time-series data trove to:
- Track our improvement between points in time
- Monitor forecast and pipeline changes in real time
- Run queries
- Better drive key meetings, like one-on-one coaching sessions
- Analyze our performance over time
To achieve an accurate forecast, we needed this library of historical data, so we could predict what was likely to happen based on the activity that drove previous growth. The more data the Clari RevOps platform collects, the more accurate our forecasts become over time.
3. Simplify processes with revenue operations to reduce friction for the entire revenue team
Fortinet has roughly 2,500 sellers. Simplification is vital for a team of our magnitude. The centralization and automation that Clari delivers ensure our processes run smoothly and consistently across every individual teammate.
Clari automates data capture across activity and engagement, so our reps can spend their time focused on high-value selling activities, rather than data entry.
Simplification unlocks reliability and repeatability. When you have an effective revenue process that your reps can easily understand and execute, you can increase your output and add new headcount to continue doing more of what’s working well.
As RevOps leaders, we’re in a unique position to reduce friction across the full revenue process. For example, if you have six different sales tools that reps need to log into every day, you’re increasing complexity for your sellers. The focus shifts from selling, to learning six different technologies.
RevOps leaders have the power to step in and identify new, more efficient solutions.
After your organization initiates these three steps, next, it’s time for continued refinement as your company continues to grow. When you approach revenue as a process that can be continuously improved, you also continue to realize new efficiencies that help you achieve bigger, bolder goals.
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