Revenue Operations Interview: Yuri Dekiba at Akamai Technologies

The Interview

Kluster's Take

Tom spoke with Yuri Dekiba, Sr. Director, Sales Operations & Planning at Akamai Technologies. She shares what she's learned on her ops journey.

Yuri started off her career in sales, then shifted into sales ops. She began in a sales role, then had various positions including change management. Eventually ending up in a sales operations role. 

Yuri's philosophy is about balancing the needs that the business has. The challenge is to support the sales organisation whilst also being proactive and strategic. Yuri believes that maintaining this balance is key to being successful. 

Yuri places real importance on the annual planning aspect of operations teams. She works with sales leadership on their go-to-market strategy. Yuri thinks that if you want to understand how a business works, you need experience in the annual planning process. The process is cross-functional, involving marketing, go to market and the future roadmap. It exposes you to a lot of different aspects of how a company operates. It's important to understand how your number contributes to the larger plan.

Yuri thinks about recommendations rather than complaining about pain points. If you can articulate the reasons behind a recommendation you’re thinking like an ops person.