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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Business Operations Lead

💰 $ - $

🎯 Role Definition

The Business Operations Lead is a strategic, hands-on operations professional responsible for driving cross-functional operational excellence, process optimization, and measurable business outcomes. This role partners with Finance, Product, Sales, Customer Success, HR and Engineering to establish scalable operational frameworks, define and track KPIs/OKRs, lead continuous improvement programs, and deliver high-impact projects that increase efficiency, reduce cost, and accelerate growth. The ideal candidate combines quantitative analysis, stakeholder influence, project leadership, and practical systems know-how (CRM/ERP/BI) to turn data into action and strategy into repeatable operations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Operations Analyst or Operations Manager with cross-functional program delivery experience
  • Program Manager or Project Lead with a strong track record in process optimization and stakeholder management
  • Senior Business Analyst or Strategy Analyst who has led operational initiatives and change management

Advancement To:

  • Head of Business Operations / Director of Business Operations
  • Senior Director / VP of Operations, Strategic Programs, or Growth Operations
  • Chief Operating Officer (COO) for smaller teams or fast-growth startups

Lateral Moves:

  • Product Operations Lead
  • Strategy & Operations Manager
  • Revenue Operations or Sales Operations Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead end-to-end operational strategy and execution for core business processes, designing and implementing scalable workflows that reduce cycle times, eliminate manual work, and improve cross-functional throughput.
  • Define, own, and report on critical KPIs and OKRs (e.g., operational SLA adherence, cost-per-transaction, time-to-resolution, revenue retention, churn drivers) and translate insights into prioritised, measurable action plans across teams.
  • Drive process mapping and standardization across Sales, Customer Success, Finance, and Product, creating playbooks, runbooks, and SOPs to ensure consistent execution and knowledge transfer.
  • Design and manage monthly and quarterly forecasting processes in partnership with Finance and Sales leadership, including variance analysis, scenario planning, and recommendations to improve predictability and margin.
  • Lead cross-functional projects — from scoping and resource planning to delivery and post-implementation review — ensuring on-time, on-budget delivery and measurable business impact.
  • Perform deep-dive operational and financial analyses using SQL, Excel, and BI tools to identify root causes, quantify opportunity, and build business cases for automation and process improvements.
  • Establish and govern data quality, definitions, and reporting standards across CRM and ERP systems (e.g., Salesforce, NetSuite) to ensure a single source of truth for performance metrics.
  • Partner with Product and Engineering to prioritize and scope systems and automation projects that remove manual work, reduce error rates, and accelerate customer onboarding and revenue recognition.
  • Build, coach, and mentor a small team of operations analysts or project managers, setting clear objectives, developing career paths, and creating a culture of continuous improvement and ownership.
  • Manage vendor relationships and third-party service providers (implementation partners, outsourced ops teams), including SOW negotiation, SLAs, performance tracking, and cost management.
  • Implement cadence and governance for leadership reviews (weekly dashboards, monthly operating reviews, quarterly business reviews), preparing executive-ready materials and insight-driven recommendations.
  • Lead change management initiatives for new processes, tools, and systems by creating communications plans, training materials, and stakeholder enablement programs that maximize adoption and minimize disruption.
  • Create and maintain capacity planning and resource allocation models to optimize headcount utilization, outsourcing decisions, and operating expense budgets.
  • Identify opportunities for margin improvement and operational cost savings; design and execute initiatives to streamline spend, renegotiate vendor contracts, and optimize process labor.
  • Develop escalation frameworks and operational playbooks for high-impact incidents (e.g., billing disputes, system outages, compliance exceptions), coordinating cross-functional resolution and post-mortem actions.
  • Partner with Legal, Compliance and Security teams to ensure operational processes meet regulatory requirements, internal controls, and audit readiness, and document controls and test protocols.
  • Own the periodic operational readiness and go-to-market readiness assessments for new product launches and feature rollouts, aligning internal teams and tracking launch KPIs.
  • Lead continuous improvement programs (Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen-minded initiatives) to reduce waste, increase throughput, and embed a metrics-driven improvement culture across the organization.
  • Design incentive and measurement structures in collaboration with People & Finance to align team behaviors and compensation with operational goals and customer outcomes.
  • Serve as the operational liaison to executive leadership, synthesizing complex data into concise recommendations and facilitating strategic decision-making with scenario analysis and risk assessments.
  • Develop and maintain dashboards and self-serve reporting that empower functional leaders to monitor health metrics, spot trends, and drive faster, more informed decisions.
  • Drive revenue ops collaboration: align lead routing, opportunity hygiene, forecast accuracy, and post-sale processes to close the loop between Sales, RevOps and Customer Success.
  • Own cross-functional process audits and regular performance reviews, producing action items, timelines, and accountability matrices to track remediation and measure impact.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Produce executive summaries and board-readiness materials for strategic operations updates.
  • Facilitate cross-functional workshops and discovery sessions to map pain points and prioritize operational initiatives.
  • Assist in designing training programs and onboarding sequences for new hires in operations functions.
  • Coordinate with Marketing and Growth teams on experimentation infrastructure and operationalization of test-and-learn programs.
  • Maintain an operations knowledge base and continuous training content to accelerate new process adoption.
  • Support M&A operational integration planning and day-one readiness for acquired entities.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Advanced Excel (pivot tables, complex formulas, modeling) and proficiency in SQL for data extraction, transformation, and analysis.
  • Experience with BI and dashboarding tools such as Tableau, Looker, Power BI, or Mode Analytics; ability to design executive-level dashboards and self-serve reports.
  • Practical experience managing CRM and ERP systems (Salesforce, HubSpot, NetSuite, or equivalent) including data governance and process automation.
  • Familiarity with automation and workflow tools (Zapier, Workato, Make/Integromat) and process orchestration platforms to eliminate manual handoffs.
  • Strong financial acumen: budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, unit economics, and building business cases to quantify ROI of operational changes.
  • Project and program management skills, including experience with Agile frameworks, Jira, Asana, or other project tracking tools; ability to run cross-functional sprints and delivery milestones.
  • Knowledge of process improvement methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, or Kaizen and the ability to apply them to operational workflows.
  • Experience with scripting or analytics languages (Python, R) is a plus for advanced analytics and automation prototyping.
  • Competence with cloud collaboration and productivity suites (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365) and documentation/version control practices.
  • Understanding of compliance, controls, and audit processes relevant to billing, revenue recognition, and data privacy (GDPR, CCPA).

Soft Skills

  • Influential communicator able to present complex analyses to executives clearly and persuasively; strong written and verbal communication skills.
  • Strategic thinker who balances long-term operational strategy with hands-on execution and tactical problem solving.
  • Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills; ability to build trust and align diverse teams around shared goals.
  • Highly analytical and data-driven; comfortable making recommendations using imperfect data and framing experiments to validate hypotheses.
  • Results-oriented with strong bias for action, prioritization skills, and the ability to drive projects to completion in ambiguous environments.
  • Leadership and people management skills: coaching, performance feedback, career development, and hiring for operational excellence.
  • Adaptability and resilience in fast-paced, changing environments; excellent time management and organizational skills.
  • Attention to detail and process rigor while maintaining a customer-centric mindset.
  • Critical thinker with strong problem structuring capability and the ability to distill root causes into actionable solutions.
  • Cultural sensitivity and inclusiveness when working with global, remote, or distributed teams.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Finance, Economics, Operations Management, Industrial Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

  • MBA, Master’s in Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, or a related advanced degree; or equivalent professional experience paired with continuous upskilling and certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Business Administration
  • Finance / Accounting
  • Operations Management / Industrial Engineering
  • Information Systems / Computer Science
  • Data Analytics / Statistics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–10+ years of progressive experience in operations, program management, or strategy roles; demonstrated ownership of cross-functional operational initiatives.

Preferred:

  • 7+ years in fast-growth technology companies, SaaS, e-commerce, or complex service organizations with P&L exposure.
  • Proven track record leading teams and delivering measurable efficiency, margin, or scalability improvements.
  • Prior experience with systems implementation (CRM/ERP) and cross-functional change management at scale.
  • Certifications such as Lean/Six Sigma, PMP, or Agile Scrum Master are beneficial but not required.
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