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06/29  05:18

Members Seek Improvement of Top-line Performance Through Managing And Leveraging Intellectual Assets

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The Revenue Optimization Council (ROC) today announced its formation and initial meeting. The visionaries who attended the meeting on June 12, 2000 included executives from BEA Systems, Booze Allen & Hamilton, Brio Technology, Columbia University, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, National Semiconductor, Star Alliance, Sun Microsystems and Talus Solutions. Brio Technology is the founding sponsor of the ROC.

The ROC was formed to help executives better manage aggressive growth mandates. This has become increasingly difficult in the face of quickly changing market conditions. Floyd Kvamme, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and member of the Brio Technology board of directors said, "Executives have spent their careers managing their hard financial assets. In 1978, 83% of the market cap of non-financial companies was made up of plant, real estate, and equipment. In 1998 this had shrunk to only 31%. It's a new game. Executives must manage their new assets."

Revenue process optimization (RPO) is a way to manage the new assets of the corporation, including intellectual property. The integrated cross-functional methodology focuses on driving revenue and healthy growth for global corporations.

"This is a fundamental activity of any business. I think it has not received the attention it deserves," said Garrett Van Ryzin, Management Science Professor, Columbia University. "This new business methodology being studied by the Columbia University Graduate School of Business allows executives to establish strategic and tactical alignment of their new assets and front-end sales processes."

Typically, companies can find 10% to 30% upside revenue potential just by knowing where to look in their revenue assets. RPO enables executives to find and capture this "hidden revenue." For the first time, companies can leverage the practices of their top performers across the enterprise. This results in better management of the top-line through, for example, better account penetration, market aligned product configurations, increased average selling price and shorter sales cycles.

"The foundation of RPO is the management principles of Deming, Crosby and Drucker. For example, zero defects can be used to manage the revenue pipeline. Because these principles of quality can be institutionalized in a formalized framework, any user can put very powerful business principles into action," said Janet Dang, vice president and general manager of Applications at Brio Technology.

The ROC will help to institutionalize knowledge across organizations to increase revenue and market share growth through the uses of RPO. By bringing together experts in academia, software design, and business practices, the ROC will work toward the common goal of broadly extending and making RPO practices accessible to organizations worldwide.

"RPO opens a new horizon that takes us beyond the limitations of expense control. With the advent of the Revenue Optimization Council, we look forward to establishing replicable methodologies that will reward every type of industry," said Albert Viscio, vice president of Booze Allen & Hamilton.

"Columbia Business School looks forward to advancing the study and implementation of this critical business methodology with the industry leaders who are participating in the Revenue Optimization Council," said Nelson Fraiman, Director of Columbia Business School's W. Edward Deming Center.

"RPO opens a new horizon that takes us beyond the limitations of expense control through budgeting. With the advent of the Revenue Optimization Council, we look forward to establishing replicable methodologies that will reward every type of industry," said Bob Philips, president of Talus Solutions.

About The Revenue Optimization Council

The ROC is providing an analytic framework for sharing and managing best practices, as well as facilitating the adoption of RPO by organizations. It is organizing executive forums, sponsoring publication of white papers, and working with Columbia University to foster research relevant to executives' most crucial top-line issues. For more information, or to become a member, please contact Roberta Moore, acting executive director, at 408-295-5524 or roberta@qmarketing.com.