My company does not use opportunities - how will this affect the setup of RCA?

[Anonymous]

Unsure how I'll report on revenue in RCA and other analyzers without closed won opportunities. We put revenue into a field in the account object in SFDC. Has anyone encountered this? How will this affect the set-up of our RCA?

[Anonymous]

Is there any way that you can - hidden from your Sales team's profiles, but viewable to the Marketo Synch profile - create an Opportunity for at least Wins? 

[Anonymous]

I'm with elliott. I think you gotta bite the bullet on this and ensure these opportunities are created closed/won.

Why is it important for your company to use this business practice? Why wouldn't you want to take full advantage of the wonderful reporting that RCA offers?

[Anonymous]

Thank-you for the response Elliott and Adam. We have a homegrown DB that we later synced to SFDC. We have a recurring online revenue business with small sales of around $10 to $20 per month. 

How would I implement opportunities in SFDC with this monthly recurring revenue? Would I create  a rule in SFDC to create an opportunity with close won and then update that opportunity every month with the total amount purchased from our database?

ROI would then change in program reporting and RCA as time went on. Another way might be to assume the customer would stay around for the average amount, but that doesn't seem right either as we wouldn't be reporting actual, but estimated.

Thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Our Opportunities have an ACV (Annual Contract Value) field.  Do you have annual contracts or just monthly subscriptions that can be terminated at any time?

[Anonymous]

Almost all are monthly subs that can be terminated at anytime.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Consider creating a single Opportunity for each subscriber with either the annual value or the current Estimated Average Lifetime Value in the ACV field, whichever is more conservative.  You will at least be able to run some analysis, but of course you need to have a clear disclaimer on any reports / presentations you present with this data. 

Currently we don't analyze renewal opportunities since most of our marketing spend is on acquisition.  But you could also create a new "renewal" Opportunity for each subscription each year.

Not the perfect solution, but at least something.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all your help Elliott!