Business Operations

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3. Business Operations

On this page

• Purpose
• Teams
  • Metrics
• Reaching the Teams (internally)
• Data Quality Process
• Business Continuity Plan
• Templates
• Documentation
• Labels
• BizOps Planning Hat
• Business Operations Team Organization
• Tech Stack
  • Making global changes
• Offsites
• Features Wanted
• What is the difference between Business Ops, Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, Marketing Programs, IT Operations, and IT Helpdesk?

Purpose

• Facilitating systems, workflows and processes for operational teams that work closely together - Sales, Marketing and Customer Success.
• Tracking all tools, license allocation, admins and contracts for the tech stack.
• Creating processes, systems and documentation for various interdepartmental groups.
• Maintaining an accurate and up-to-date data warehouse (product) and building our analyses for stakeholders in other functions as-needed (service).
  • The result of that service may be a dashboard, which can become a new product that is maintained.
  • As a service function, the data team can often be responsible for support, answering questions such as "Where does a dashboard exist?" or "What does a metric mean?"

Teams

• IT-Operations
• IT Help
• Business Systems Analysts
• Data
• Procurement

Metrics

Performance Indicators

Reaching the Teams (internally)

• Open an issue
  • Business Operations
  • IT-Help
  • IT-Ops
  • Access Requests
  • Laptop Requests
• Groups in GitLab
  • @gitlab-com/business-ops/bizops-IT-help
  • @gitlab-com/business-ops/bizops-bsa
  • @gitlab-com/business-ops
  • @gitlab-com/business-ops/itops
  • @gitlab-com/business-ops/procurement
• Channels in Slack
  • #business-operations
  • #bzo-business-systems-analyst-specialist
  • #it_help
  • #sysadmin-it

Data Quality Process

Data isn't perfect, processes change, people make mistakes. We recognize that and make sure that when we identify an opportunity to be more correct we are moving quickly to resolution.

Our Data Quality Process is meant to capture and document these improvements as they're discovered, and to ensure that communication is made to impacted parties in a timely manner. Learn more about Data Quality.

Business Continuity Plan

GitLab's Business Continuity Plan and associated procedures are documented in our Business Continuity Plan handbook section.

Templates

• Rollout Plan
• Change Management: Third Party Applications Changes
• Change Management: Internal Tool Changes
• Software application selection: Request for Proposal
• Software application selection: User Stories

Documentation

• We work closely with the Marketing and Sales Operations teams. Learn more about Go to Market (GTM) terms, workflows, and contacting these groups.
• We work closely with the Support, Fulfillment, and Finance teams on the customer portal integration and coordinate changes when needed.
  • How to use the Customer Portal-Admin
  • Portal Analysis, Integrations, and Flow

Labels

Label	Description	project/group	type
BusinessOPS	BZO is actively involved	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
BusinessOPS-FYI	No direct action needed from Bizops, but awareness for potential support/questions	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
BSA	business systems analyst work	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
BSS	business systems specialist work	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
BZO-Features Wanted	feature requests	gitlab-org	-
IT-Help	IT-Help work	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
IT-Ops	IT-Ops work	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
IT:: to do, IT::done	indicates if IT needs to do work	gitlab-com	scoped
waiting on license	cannot complete AR without new license order	gitlab-com	-
BizOPS-Status::1-Needs Review	This has not been looked at.	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Status::2-Backlog	This work is in the backlog and will be pulled forward when expedient	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Status::3-Working	This work is in progress.	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Status::4-Change	This needs a change in order to be approved or merged	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Status::5-Needs Info	This needs information from requestor to move forward	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Status::6-On Hold	This is on hold for a longer period of time	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Status::7-Ready to Deploy	This is ready to be merged or the work executed	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
BizOPS-Status::8-Denied	This work is considered incomplete and won't be worked on or will not be worked on at this time	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Priority::1	Critical	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Priority::2	Important not urgent	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Priority::3	No rush to do, but please do it.	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	scoped
BizOPS-Process	Change or addition to process/operations	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
blocker	This blocks other work	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-
laptop-request	laptop request	gitlab-com, gitlab-org	-

BizOps Planning Hat

A "hat" refers to a responsibility that any team member can pick up. It is not part of a specific role or job description. A "hat" should not make up more than 10% (half of a work day) of an employee's responsibilities.

The team member who is putting on the planning hat is responsible for:

• maintaining their team's planning process up to date in the handbook- Data & IT Ops
• iterate on their team's planning process based on team member feedback
• assign issues to a milestone and team members
• document, implement, and uphold a milestone timeline that works for your team

The team member who is putting on the planning hat is not responsible for:

• your manager's job- the planning hat is for planning, not for managing careers; this is not a manager role or an interim manager's role
• removing blockers
• scoping issues, outside of planning

Business Operations Team Organization

Tech Stack

The GitLab Tech Stack is the approved list of applications. It lists additional information such as the Business Purpose, Who should have access, Contact/Admin, Data Classification, Okta information, and Sox Compliance information.

Making global changes

To make changes to global configurations or settings for any third-party services in the Tech Stack, please follow the third-party change management process.

Offsites

• December 2019 Fast Boot, Washington, DC

Features Wanted

As part of dogfooding, we label features we request or support with the label BZO-Feature Wanted. Check out our issue board with this label.

What is the difference between Business Ops, Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, Marketing Programs, IT Operations, and IT Helpdesk?

Business Operations	Sales Operations	Marketing Operations	Marketing Programs	IT Operations	IT Helpdesk
Answering the question: “How do we build go-to-market infrastructure to support company growth and pivots?”	Quota assignments	Day-to-day management, maintenance and integrations in the entire tech stack	Day-to-day program and marketer support, including landing pages, Marketo program and Salesforce campaign management	Ensures sufficient controls and streamlines cross-fuctional & cross-system processes, such as onboarding & provisioning	Triage all IT related questions as they arise
Strategic analytics and data management	Field & RD Forecasting	New technology review, implementation, customization, documentation and administration	Development and growth of webcast program	Build and maintain controls via monitoring, source controls, and automated processes to enable sufficient controls, without the inefficiencies of complete separation of duties via organizational hierarchy	Build a knowledge base of IT practices and pragmatic problem solving in the handbook
Cross-functional process automation and optimization	Sales Compensation	Lead management & Data enrichment	Improve and develop newsletter program	Development and maintenance of automation of systems and processes for G&A and with Engineering to eliminate bottlenecks and slow manual activities.	Account management for password resets and lockout
New business technology review	Sales/Marketing SLAs	Grow the opt-in communication channel	Support Field Marketing with conference, event & VIP invitation, reminder and follow-up		On call support for immediate software and hardware issues during local business hours
Holistic business systems administration, development, integration, architecture, and planning around the entire GTM tool stack.	Ad hoc analysis for CRO	Marketing process design			Diagnose computer errors and provide technical support
Prioritization of business operations issues	Sales Process Training/Documentation	Marketing & Sales process training and documentation			Troubleshoot software and hardware
Prioritization and resolution of non-development customer portal process and support issues	Sales Enablement functions and sales training on process flows	Prioritization of Marketing-related business operations issues			Support Weekly IT Onboarding Sessions for new Team Members
Prioritization and resolution of non-development license app and signups process and support issues	Salesforce administration, development, architecture, customizations, and technical documentation	Marketing tech stack implementations, development and integrations			Train end-users how to setup and use new technologies
Reporting infrastructure	Evaluate, purchase and implement new technologies into GitLab tech stack	Marketo and Salesforce administration to support marketing activities			Provide technical support over the phone or Web
	Reporting and business analysis related to the sales function	List pull requests			Use specialized help desk support software to take control of end-users' computers to troubleshoot, diagnose and resolve complex issues
	Prioritization of Sales-related business operations issues. This means consolidating all of the requests from sales into a single funnel with prioritization.