When I first began to look at HubSpot Revenue Hub, I originally thought that the main advantage would be simpler invoicing, but the longer I examined it, the less I believed that was the true story.
The greater issue lies in what occurs between the sale and the time when the money actually gets to the business.
A deal gets closed.
At that point a contract is made.
The billing information is needed by finance.
An invoice is created elsewhere.
Another system is used to keep track of the payments.
A few months later somebody will have to work out when the customer is up for renewal.
Each of these steps is by itself rather simple. The issue lies in the handover between them. It is there that I believe Revenue Hub becomes interesting.
HubSpot is going to incorporate quoting, contracts, billing, payments, renewals, and revenue reporting on to the same customer platform.
So instead of asking:
How can we prepare an invoice more quickly?
The bigger question we must be asking is:
Why do we have revenue information spread across so many systems at all?
That’s a completely different perspective on the problem. What this also implies is that the sales, finance, customer success, and RevOps teams can work from the same revenue context rather than each team having its own version of what took place.
What I believe will become the more interesting aspect of Revenue Hub in the future is that part. It involves more than just switching out the invoicing tool. But reducing the gaps among the teams responsible for generating and managing revenue.
By no means does that imply that every business has to transfer its entire revenue process to HubSpot. The appropriate setup will vary depending on the accounting systems already in place, the billing requirements, the need for integrations, and the complexity of the revenue model.
Yet if you have already chosen HubSpot as the source of truth for your customer and deal data, it might be worth considering whether the process that takes place after a deal is marked as ‘Closed Won’ results in more work than it should.
To me, Revenue Hub becomes a lot more interesting than just yet another invoicing feature.