CASE STUDY
IRIS
Building commercial clarity for scalable growth
IRIS had built a strong hospitality technology business, growing by around 20–30% each year. As the business prepared to expand sales and strengthen marketing, it also needed clearer commercial processes, better pipeline visibility and a stronger foundation for AI-enabled growth.
200+ hotel brands
120 countries
3m+ guest orders per year
About IRIS
Hospitality technology at global scale
IRIS is a UK based hospitality technology company helping hotels improve the guest experience through mobile ordering, guest communications, concierge services and digital guest information.
Its platform supports more than 200 hotel brands across 120 countries and processes over three million guest orders every year. Customers range from individual hotels to international hotel groups and hospitality management companies.
As the business continued to expand internationally, leadership wanted to ensure its commercial organisation could scale with the same confidence as its products and customer base.
The Opportunity
Making growth more visible, repeatable and scalable
Like many growing businesses, some of the knowledge behind commercial decisions had developed organically over time and remained with experienced people rather than within shared systems.
The CRM recorded activity, but it did not fully reflect how customers actually bought. This made it harder to see where opportunities were progressing, stalling or being lost.
AI tools were also already being used across the organisation, but adoption was informal and inconsistent. The opportunity was not simply to introduce more technology, but to strengthen the underlying commercial processes first and then apply AI where it could genuinely improve the way the business operated.
The core question:
How do you make growth more visible, repeatable and scalable without adding unnecessary process?
Our Engagement
Understanding how the business really worked
Tenon Growth ran a Commercial Revenue Operations Diagnostic across sales, marketing and account management, focused on understanding how revenue was actually created rather than how the process looked on paper.
The assessment covered 62 commercial measures across three functions, using a Red, Amber and Green framework. It combined a structured questionnaire, leadership interviews and working sessions with the teams responsible for day-to-day delivery.
Rather than reviewing departments in isolation, we looked at how the whole commercial organisation worked together. Particular attention was given to:
A Commercial Revenue Operations Diagnostic
Commercial Operating Model
Reviewed how sales, marketing, account management, processes and systems worked together to support growth.
Customer Journey
Segmented and mapped how individual hotels, management companies and international hotel groups moved through different buying journeys.
Pipeline & Revenue Operations
Assessed pipeline management, reporting, ownership, forecasting and commercial performance.
CRM, Data & Reporting
Reviewed CRM structure, data quality, dashboards and the information leadership relied on for decision making.
Qualification & Sales Process
Reviewed qualification, stage gates, handovers and how different customer types progressed through the sales process.
AI & Commercial Workflows
Assessed how AI was already being used and where it could improve research, reporting, enrichment and repeatable work.
Qualification
A lighter qualification model
Qualification emerged as an important area for improvement.
MEDDPICC is a strong qualification framework, but it was too heavy for IRIS’s sales process at this stage. Instead, we developed a lighter model with clear stage gates reflecting the different buying journeys of individual hotels, management companies and international hotel groups.
This gave IRIS a more practical way to improve qualification without adding unnecessary complexity to the sales process.
EXECUTIVE REPORT & ROADMAP
Turning insight into action
The diagnostic concluded with an Executive Report and Strategic Roadmap that brought together the findings, recommendations and priorities for improvement.
Rather than ending with a presentation, the report became a practical working document for the leadership team. It helped IRIS review the findings, agree where to focus first and sequence the next phase of delivery.
Pipeline leakage emerged as a key priority, and the order of improvements was agreed during a two hour leadership session. That alignment then led directly into the next phase of work, including a full CRM redesign.
What the Diagnostic Found
From assessment to action
The diagnostic identified four areas where clearer commercial structure would have the greatest impact.
1. Customer buying journey
The sales process needed to reflect how IRIS customers actually buy. The review distinguished between individual hotels, management companies and international hotel groups, each with a different buying journey.
That distinction created a stronger foundation for qualification, CRM stages, territories, forecasting, quotas and commission.
2. Qualification
Some opportunities were progressing further than they should have, while others lacked the information needed for confident decisions.
Of the loss reasons recorded by the team, two were not sales failures at all. They were qualification failures that could have been identified before anyone made contact.
The issue was not simply better selling. It was identifying which accounts were worth pursuing before valuable sales time was invested.
3. Forecasting & data
Opportunity values, pipeline data and reporting needed greater structure.
Linking opportunity value more closely to estate size, alongside clearer qualification criteria and more consistent reporting, would give leadership a more reliable view of the opportunities actually being worked.
4. Practical AI
AI was already being used across the business, but not always where it created the greatest value.
The review identified paid AI usage being consumed by work that could be handled more efficiently elsewhere in the organisation. Reassigning those tasks and directing AI credits towards higher-value applications reduced unnecessary usage and improved how the existing tools were being used.
What Came Next
Turning the roadmap into delivery
Following the diagnostic, IRIS commissioned Tenon Growth to redesign key parts of its commercial operating model, beginning with a full CRM redesign in Monday.com.
The next phase includes new CRM stage definitions, qualification gates, reporting dashboards, improved pipeline visibility, customer journey alignment and a stronger commercial data structure.
Alongside the CRM project, work continues on sales and marketing alignment, account-based marketing, outbound demand generation and the practical use of AI across commercial workflows.
Rather than completing the work in isolation and handing it back, Tenon Growth has worked alongside the IRIS team throughout implementation so that the knowledge, processes and capability remain within the business.
Building Commercial Capability
COMMERCIAL CAPABILITY
Visibility
Creating a clearer view of commercial performance through stronger reporting, customer journey insight and operational visibility, enabling better decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.
Alignment
Bringing leadership, sales and marketing together around shared commercial objectives, consistent processes and clear ownership.
Capability
Building scalable commercial processes, governance and technology that support continuous improvement and future growth, with AI used as an accelerator rather than a substitute for capability.
Ready to strengthen your commercial foundations?
Whether you’re improving Revenue Operations, redesigning commercial workflows or preparing your organisation for AI, sustainable growth starts with understanding how your business creates value.
If you’d like to explore how a Commercial Revenue Operations Diagnostic could help your organisation, we’d be happy to start a conversation.