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Rollout Approaches
There's no single correct way to sequence a Revenue Management go-live. The right approach depends on your company's size, complexity, risk tolerance, and the migration strategy. Each of these four approaches represent a different way to migrate to Revenue Management.
Big Bang
All in-scope capabilities go live simultaneously for all affected users in a single maintenance window.
Here are some key aspects of the Big Bang approach.
- The entire revenue team migrates to Revenue Management at the same time. There's no period of dual-system operation.
- Run multiple dry-run cutovers in a sandbox so your team can practice the sequence before the production go-live.
- Rollback planning is critical. Define and test your rollback procedure before you commit to a big bang cutover.
- A successful big bang produces the cleanest outcome of one system, one data model, and no ambiguity about where to create records.
Pilot-First
A representative subset of the business, such as a product line, a geography, or a defined group of sales reps, goes live first. The broader rollout follows after you validate the pilot and resolve any issues.
Here are some key aspects of the Pilot-First approach.
- Choose a pilot scope that genuinely represents the broader environment. A pilot that's too simple doesn't surface the issues that matter for the full rollout.
- Treat the pilot as a process and configuration investment. The pilot produces a tested and validated configuration, and a team that's been through go-live before the broader rollout begins.
- Use feedback from the pilot to shape the process and configuration decisions for subsequent cohorts. The pilot is a learning exercise, not just an early go-live.
Bridge
All new business goes live in Revenue Management immediately. Existing CPQ contracts remain in CPQ. Migrate to Revenue Management naturally at renewal or amendment, or through a planned migration cohort over time.
Here are some key aspects of the Bridge approach.
- With this approach, your company immediately realizes Revenue Management value for new deals while managing the existing install base at a measured pace.
- CPQ license retention is important in a bridge strategy. The existing install base continues to require CPQ access until each record is migrated.
- Your team operates two systems in parallel for a period. Provide clear guidance for sales and operations teams on which system handles which transaction type. See Managing Coexistence During the Transition Period.
- Maintain renewal automation and asset management for contracts originating from CPQ in CPQ, until you migrate those records to Revenue Management.
Cohort-Based
Rather than going live across the entire business at once, organize the rollout into defined cohorts. Each cohort goes through the full go-live process independently, with learnings from each cohort informing the next.
Here are some key aspects of the Cohort-Based approach.
- Common segmentation approaches include by geography or legal entity, by customer segment, or by selling motion (direct vs. partner channel).
- Each cohort is a contained go-live event with its own data migration, integration testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), and cutover plan.
- By the time subsequent cohorts go live, your team has run the process multiple times and the configuration is well-understood. This experience tends to produce progressively smoother go-live events.
- Cohort-based rollout is a natural fit for multi-region or multi-entity companies where regional differences in pricing, tax, or fulfillment mean that each cohort has genuinely distinct requirements.
