As 2025 winds down, most revenue teams are doing what they do best: analyzing dashboards, scrubbing pipelines, forecasting, and stress-testing Q4 close plans. But if you’re in revenue operations (or in the seat supporting GTM execution) you know this isn’t just about wrapping up the year. It’s about what happens next.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: every month you wait to optimize your revenue infrastructure is a month you delay unlocking growth. The systems you’ve relied on to scale this year may not carry the same value into 2026 unless you start proactively addressing friction and data drift now.
In our experience, we’ve seen that again and again, for SaaS organizations, the biggest issues are not broken tools, but rather, small gaps in process execution and data handling that quietly reduce confidence in the numbers. Addressing these now can prevent operational surprises and give your team a smoother start to 2026.
Spot System Gaps Early
Stop Hoping the System Is Working; Check Where It’s Not
Understanding where your system behaves differently than expected is critical. One of the clearest signs that your GTM machine is out of tune is when your reports look fine, but your operators don’t trust them. That disconnect (between what the dashboard says and what actually happens on the ground) usually points to small but systemic gaps in RevOps execution.
Here’s a reality check:
- Are your lead assignment rules still matching how your team sells today?
- Do your opportunity stages reflect the current buyer journey, or are they legacy steps no one updates anymore or consistently?
- Are field updates and validations creating noise or clarity?
Observing how data flowed in the past can reveal friction points that directly affect your ability to forecast and execute. This is not about assigning blame. It is about seeing where the system does not support day-to-day operations.
Use Case Tip: Pull a 6-month audit of your lead-to-opportunity conversion path. Visualize actual routing behavior vs. intended logic. It’s often shockingly misaligned and costs you qualified pipeline.
Practical Checks and Ownership Focus
Assign Real Ownership…or Watch Forecast Confidence Slip. Your Choice.
In scale environments, RevOps sits at the intersection of sales, marketing, customer success, and finance, but that doesn’t mean ownership should be vague. Without clear ownership, even well-designed processes can create hidden friction. Configurations built without cross-team review often lead to workflow collisions or stalled opportunities.
Don’t just fix the workflow. Ask: Who owns this moving forward? Who notices when it drifts? Who fixes it before it becomes a fire? Here are some tactical checks to run:
- Review workflow rules, validation rules, and lead assignment logic on high-volume objects (leads, contacts, opps, accounts) to spot where automation slows teams instead of helping them
- Track assignment patterns and conversion outcomes to ensure rules function as intended, identifying where logic was designed in isolation (i.e. by marketing ops without sales alignment)
- Clarify ownership for ongoing validation, whether it is the admin team, RevOps, or sales leadership and then create a cross-functional system governance doc outlining who reviews what, when, and why
Reports and dashboards also need regular attention. Small changes, such as new campaign source values or updated picklist options on opportunity stages, can silently shift pipeline metrics. Comparing raw data exports to dashboard numbers helps catch discrepancies before they misinform decisions.
With ownership clarified, teams can shift from identifying issues to evaluating their impact on planning.
Questions to Guide Planning
Don’t Just Check Metrics. Validate System Behaviour.
Leaders love dashboards, but dashboards are only as good as the integrity of the data powering them. In fast-moving RevOps environments, it’s easy for new picklist values, field changes, or campaign updates to quietly break reporting logic.
What looks like a dip in performance may actually be a reporting issue. The longer you go without checking, the more those errors compound and the more you lose trust across the org.
Understanding where operational risk is highest allows teams to prioritize fixes that strengthen forecasts and execution. Here are a few boardroom-ready questions to surface real operational risk:
- Where are there silent blockers in our funnel: stalled workflows, misrouted leads, unworked accounts?
- What assumptions are baked into our forecast models and how confident are we in the supporting data?
- Which automations are still aligned to how our GTM teams actually sell today?
These are go-to-market strategy questions that affect planning, resourcing, and ultimately, revenue. Answering these questions helps teams move beyond surface-level reporting and focus on actions that improve system reliability and forecast confidence.
Practical Step: Run a delta report comparing raw data exports to what your dashboards display. This simple exercise often reveals hidden filters, logic misfires, or missing data.
Bonus: Build a recurring “reporting integrity” checklist into your RevOps calendar. Make it as routine as board prep.
Getting Ready for 2026
Surfacing GTM Risk Before the New Year
RevOps planning is not about last-minute fixes. It comes from observing how data flows, checking workflows, and validating that rules and automations behave as intended. Once you’ve cleared the first layer of noise, shift your attention to risk; specifically, where your revenue engine is most likely to misfire when stakes are high.
Teams that are doing this well right now are:
- Aligning territories and handoff rules to new growth targets
- Validating the integrity of dashboards before exec offsites
- Clarifying RevOps ownership to reduce dependency on “that one Salesforce wizard”
- Fixing friction that sales leaders didn’t even know was happening under the surface
Revenue leaks don’t always look like churn or missed quota. Sometimes, they look like a lead that never made it to a rep. Or a forecast that missed by 7% because the fields changed and no one noticed.
So the question isn’t whether your systems are broken. It’s whether you’re willing to fix the small stuff before it snowballs.
If small gaps in your Salesforce setup could quietly reduce forecast confidence next year, reviewing them now gives your team a smoother, more predictable start to 2026. Want help spotting the invisible friction that’s slowing your revenue teams down? Let’s chat.