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Speaker 1: (00:00)
Let's do it. Let's do it.

Speaker 1: (00:03)
I love the meeting being recorded voice. It's always my favorite.

Speaker 2: (00:07)
Yeah. Like the ultimate robot voice.

Speaker 1: (00:09)
Yeah, it is. It's like the ultimate, like, you've joined, this meeting is recorded. Like please behave. Uh, always. It is

Speaker 2: (00:17)
A very low quality voice. Yeah. I love it.

Speaker 1: (00:20)
, what they should do is like, you know what'd be brilliant, you know, with like cameos, all the actors and everything should just start recording their own, like zoom little like audio clips. Like this meeting is being recorded. And then you could like go buy them. Like you could buy the Cardi B meeting is being recorded. Uh, absolutely. These other ones, it'd be, it'd be amazing.

Speaker 2: (00:40)
That'd be cool. That'd

Speaker 2: (00:43)
That's like, yeah, we should sell that idea . Or you should sell it.

Speaker 1: (00:47)
. It's your idea. Idea. It's my idea. You can have it, Jen. I, I, I have enough businesses to run. I'm, I'm all good with, uh, with the other, I actually, the cameo guys are hysterical. Uh, when I was living in Chicago, I went to, I knew them and, and went to a couple of their events and they, I remember at the time everyone was like, this is such a weird business. And then it just blew up and everyone was like, no, this is so smart. And then anyone who was like skeptical was like, yeah, I really missed the boat on this one. seems, seems like it's now a really good idea. Uh, like all good things you don't realize it's super brilliant until after the fact.

Speaker 2: (01:19)
That's it. Right. Okay. I think we can get started. Uh, good morning or good afternoon everyone. I'm Jan. I'm the HubSpot Ops community, uh, moderator and welcome to this a m a with us today, we of course have Connor Jeffers, um, if you don't know him, he is the founder and c e o of Aptitude eight, which is a rev ops, uh, technology consulting firm and a HubSpot Diamond Solutions partner. But I think you're on, on the road to becoming Elite soon on the cus

Speaker 1: (01:46)
Correct me on the cus on the cus riding right in Operations Hub to make it happen.

Speaker 2: (01:50)
Exactly. So besides running the day-to-day, Connor is also active as a rev ops instructor here teaching courses to other, uh, solutions agencies on how to provide basically rev op services to their, uh, customers. I'm very excited to have, uh, Connor here and just as a wrap ups expert, as an operations start leader and stuff like that. And I hopefully that bio did you some justice. How are you doing today? Uh, Connor .

Speaker 1: (02:16)
I'm good. I'm good. I'm excited to be here. I think, uh, I'm, I'm all good with the bio. Nothing that, uh, just excited to be here talking about Operations Hub, which is one of the most exciting things that's happened in, in recent history for us. So we're just really excited to be here.

Speaker 2: (02:30)
Yeah, I think so too. Also, thank you everyone for joining and just as an f I add to the group, this isn't ask me anything you su so you can basically ask Connor any questions you may have for him. Um, do whatever you're comfortable with, whether that's chat or audio only. It doesn't matter. If you're comfortable with just, uh, leave your questions, uh, with us and we'll handle the rest. Um, and I'm just, yeah, we're just here to learn from Connor and from each other, so we're just here to have a good time. Um, the reason why, and of course Connor already touched on this subject, um, the reason why we're having this AMA is because Operations Hub launched last week, and of course Connor wrote his brilliant Operations Hub playbook full of recipes and interesting, um, stuff that you can do with Operations Hub. Um, Conor, just to start us off, like in your own words, how would you describe Operations Hub? Why is it like game changing?

Speaker 1: (03:21)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, operations Hub is, is really, really exciting. I think for us it's probably the most significant and exciting thing that's happened since the Custom Objects release. Um, and I think really takes that to the next level. Um, one of the things that I think has been, uh, uh, not necessarily a limiter, but just like the breadth of what HubSpot was capable of previously was you were really restricted to the actions that HubSpot's team created and made available to you, which was vast and ever expanding. And we had new features all the time, uh, but sometimes you ran into automations, you wanted to build features, you wanted to create functions you wanted to perform, and you just couldn't do them because they either required too many different steps or you couldn't get data across different objects or tables or the sort of native workflow automation rules weren't gonna support what you were trying to do.

Speaker 1: (04:09)
And so the reason the operations have is so significant is essentially all those barriers are removed. Um, you can now really automate essentially anything directly from HubSpot. Um, and you can now write code entirely inside of HubSpot, which really pushes the boundaries of what the system is capable of even further. And I think the piece that we get the most excited about is that, um, you may have some code that gets written into the tool, but those can then be leveraged with declarative automation and, and the workflows and lists and all the combination of features that people are used to in HubSpot. Um, and it really expands HubSpot to be a true platform that you can really customize to achieve whatever your goals are, um, as opposed to really a, a sales platform, a marketing platform, a service platform. And now it has really amazing out-of-the-box features to serve each one of those use cases, but you can expand that functionality to anything you might want to be able to support, which is really, really exciting.

Speaker 2: (05:01)
Yeah, I think so too, and I don't think I can summarize any of what you just said. It just, it's, it just, yeah, it just a brand new, uh, there's really no boundaries anymore and it's, it's as flexible as your automation, as your imagination basically. Right. Um, what were like the first things, because you, you, you got like access to some of the features a bit earlier, earlier as a solution partner. Sure. What were the first things that went through your head when you just got the announcement that we're we were building these types of, uh, disciples tools?

Speaker 1: (05:31)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the thing that's the most exciting for us is, um, a as a solutions partner, right? I mean, our business is helping people build things on top of HubSpot. Um, and as a, as a Rev op partner, we're really focused on how that works with the solutions architecture and how you're really deploying a platform to achieve a specific goal. And so, uh, being able to go in and say, we can write some JavaScript directly into a coded action. Uh, a non-developer can reuse those actions and copy and paste those into other workflows, um, and we can really leverage those and string them together with other native features was really exciting. I think especially, um, when we work with other platforms or other CRM systems that may support code, um, you're, you're rarely able to sort of weave the declarative automation that, uh, a marketer or an operations person or somebody on the, you know, sales management might be able to do, um, along with some of the development functionality that's, that's really exclusive to custom code.

Speaker 1: (06:24)
And being able to weave those two things together is, is really amazing. And I think really speaks to some of the product design, um, on the HubSpot product folks because, uh, having that in a workflow and and activated by a workflow as opposed to like building a trigger or something somewhere else that lives outside of the, the tools people use every day was really, really exciting. Um, and I think the, the direction that I've been really amazed by, and I was, I was playing with some of the new functionality last night, uh, and sent email to one of the product managers just like, uh, admiring some of the elegance of some of the, the product, the different, uh, sync pieces, which today support contacts. And I know in the near future the goal is to have them certainly expand to more objects. But, um, the, the ease of use with some of those and, and sort of the future state that I see of expanding those to allowing people to use that sync framework with other systems and expand into it, um, is really exciting. And I think we're really just seeing the beginning of, of what's really gonna reshape, uh, what HubSpot is and, and what's capable of it, which for us on the solutions partner side is extremely exciting. And I think for anybody who's a customer, uh, already, um, should also be really exciting of seeing, you know, the, the HubSpot team expand on what's already available.

Speaker 2: (07:35)
Yeah, I think it's, it's a very promising as well. Um, now, like you already touched upon, uh, these things, but when you got your hands on the beta, like what were the first things that you tried out? Were there any ideas in your head that you'd like said like, yeah, the first thing I wanna do is, is this specific workflow?

Speaker 1: (07:53)
Yeah, the first thing, I think some of the main things that we were looking at is like, how can we push data to other systems without needing third party connectors or without needing sort of like a Zapier or something else in the middle, uh, was one of the big things. We run into requests for that all of the time. And I know in the playbook a bunch of examples we have sort of, uh, are based off of like push integrations or poll integrations and connecting to other systems. And so some of the first things that we really looked at is how can we take, uh, a triggered workflow action from HubSpot, which could be, you know, a ticket being created or a deal being closed and push that information to another system or sort of sync it to multiple systems or maybe request data from other places.

Speaker 1: (08:30)
And being able to do that all within the workflow action, um, was probably the area that we were the most excited about. Um, and then being able to do some of the contact level syncs to other systems and really seeing how easy that is to set up, um, also gets us really excited, uh, cuz today, uh, when we work with customers, those, those can be really daunting large scale projects just so to build those data connectors, um, and being able to see sort of like, like how that's going to become something we can expand upon, uh, and make that a lot easier for customers to achieve makes us really excited about really what the future looks like of a sort of hub being a, a hub in a weird way, but to the ecosystem of all the other tools in a business, um, versus something that lives on the side. Oh

Speaker 2: (09:20)
Yeah, I I'm not sure if it was my internet or was it your internet ?

Speaker 1: (09:24)
It's, it's probably mine, unfortunately I'm in, uh, I'm in a, a shared co-working space and so, uh, the internet is sometimes iffy, but I'm happy to, to answer again, uh, or we can move on

Speaker 2: (09:34)
To you . Alright. Right. So just as nav to do to do people on this call, feel free to leave your questions in the chat. I'm going to ask Connor a little bit more questions and then, uh, I'm going to head it over to all of you. Um, so Connor, you talked about the playbook already a little bit. Um, like it really like the, when I wrote it, I was, uh, read it, sorry. It really isn't as an awesome bundle of all the creative ways of which you can use these new, uh, custom code actions to achieve and solve a lot of very complex business problems. You've talked to a lot of other HubSpot users and you have clearly have a, a very strong vision on how, what is these new tools do for, for larger businesses. But if you ha, if you're like a, a smaller business with that doesn't necessarily have an operations team yet, what can appro, what can operations help do for you now?

Speaker 1: (10:25)
Yeah, absolutely. So some of the, the basic starter functions are really, really helpful. I think some of the ways, and, and we have an example in the playbook around, um, like content syndication and, and list imports, but, uh, being able to standardize information. So something we see all the time and projects that we do with customers is I have this giant database, I've imported, uh, data from tons of systems over time and I have all my first names aren't necessarily capitalized and I'm merging those into emails and they sort of don't look like, uh, I really have good information on people or you have mis formatted date fields and some of the starter functionality will allow you to clean up a lot of that data programmatically, which is really exciting. Um, and all without knowing any code at all or really having any, any robust technical background, it's all just sort of declarative automation.

Speaker 1: (11:10)
Um, and something that should save you tons of time because pre-operation sub you would've had to export those lists, export that data, clean it up and excel, re-import everything. And just removing the need to do that somewhere else before you get data into HubSpot is really exciting. Um, and allows people to automate some of that data cleaning, uh, which I think is really valuable. Um, the other piece that I would challenge for anybody who is, uh, coming into this and thinking, I don't have a developer, I don't have someone who knows how to write JavaScript, like how can I use this? Um, by creating some development scripts, um, you can have somebody come in, you explain to them your use case. A developer has to write some code, but then it all lives directly inside of HubSpot and you don't need additional knowledge or maintaining another server or understanding sort of how you manage some of that API framework. It's all data that's just going to be stored inside of HubSpot. And now that script is something you can leverage and reuse over time, uh, which is really, really exciting. And I think by, with slight modifications the same way you'd use sort of any other contractor, you should be able to, to leverage a lot of the functionality without necessarily having ongoing in-house development support.

Speaker 2: (12:17)
Yeah, I think so too. Um, just before we we move over, I just wanted to ask you one more question because you're a rev op expert. Sure. And we have this rev ops community. Um, to the folks on the scale who aren't necessarily very familiar with Rev ops, um, can you briefly just explain what is Rev ops and why should companies Yeah. Adopt it basically?

Speaker 1: (12:37)
Yeah, for sure. Um, so I, we've been doing, I, I think it's interesting cuz early in my career we're doing a lot of like rev ops stuff without really knowing what term to apply to it. And now we're sort of putting it out there as rev ops. So when we think about Rev ops and the role of Rev ops, um, we really look at it as ultimately your customer experience is, is a part of your, your product and your service and how you deliver that customer experience is powered by the technology that your business uses. And so the less efficient and the more siloed your data is, the worse your customer experience is. No one likes going into, uh, any, any sort of service relationship. If you think about even on on the consumer side, you go into a business they don't remember maybe your sizes, they don't remember what types of rooms you look for or I know we're dealing with one right now cause we're actively looking at, uh, new apartments and I think we have like four bookings at the same apartment.

Speaker 1: (13:26)
And they've, and we're just like, man, like we're already talking to you even though we're talking to somebody else. And being able to break down those silos and connect the different data points in your business, automate as many of the processes as you can. And really I think the two outputs when we look at, um, rev op as a problem is how can you deliver a better customer experience by putting the information about that customer and about their relationship with your business in front of the people who are working with them, uh, in that moment. And then the second piece is how can you eliminate minutia and boring experiences and copying and pasting from your internal team's workflow so that they're really focused on the work that matters and really identifying where are their breakdowns in our internal systems to prevent, uh, getting the data to where it needs to go to create that customer experience.

Speaker 1: (14:14)
And then where are the pieces in our process that people spend a lot of time? And it's not critical thinking time, it's not expertise time, it's not communicating with a customer time, it's really just managing some internal process that could be automated and how can you focus on improving that piece of the funnel, uh, and that part of the experience. And so when we think about Rev ops, that's really how can you create a better customer experience and then how can you create a better experience for the people that work at your company by eliminating parts of their day and automating pieces of your business wherever possible.

Speaker 2: (14:47)
Yeah, yeah. And how does that then tie back to operations stuff? Because Yeah, well, I'm, I'm, I'm a market, I'm a HubSpot marketer. I, we have marketed operations hub as like a way to adopt rev ops at your company, but tell, tell us about that. Like how can we use these tools and features to actually be, be rev ops experts at our own companies?

Speaker 1: (15:07)
Yeah, absolutely. So I think two of the examples I've touched on, but really getting into the, the details on, on functionality, right? So one is, uh, in terms of data hygiene, data cleansing, um, data, uh, automation, um, using some of the starter functionality and being able to clean up and capitalize the fields or be able to consolidate date formats and to, and to consistent, um, pieces. That's something that previously someone would need to go through. List management processes. So if you're importing lists, that's something that we run into a lot on the, on the marketing side is, is with sort of different strategies like content syndication. You might get 12 lists from 12 different vendors and they all have different fields and they all have different formats, and you're trying to get everything and then you're trying to import that data into your system and you get errors because it says, oh, sorry, this, this particular value imported isn't supported in that dropped out.

Speaker 1: (15:56)
And so now you need to go open your file. And the answer is because that vendor added a hyphen between these two fields and you didn't, and you can use Operations hub to clean up all of that data, build those processes and systematize them. And now you're eliminating something that's extremely frustrating from someone's day to day. And so there's a reward in it of saying, you know, I'm, I'm focusing you on work that matters, but you're also returning time back into the organization overall and eliminating different parts of that, that piece. And so I think that's one. Um, the second one that we run into, and one that I think is really exciting in Operations Hub is with integrations and coded actions and working with other systems, which is something we see really often is you can use HubSpot to whenever a, whenever a deal is marked closed, one, send an automated email to the finance team to go create all the billing details, send an automated email to the, you know, fulfillment team to go create the project in their project management system.

Speaker 1: (16:48)
And now using Operations Hub, you can use APIs from those other systems to go and push that data over there, automatically sync that information automatically, and you're no longer reliant on and creating processes that require people to copy paste information and transpose data. You're really just equipping them to execute on the work. And so when we think about Operations Hub as something to empower Rev op teams is no longer do Rev op teams need to think about all the different tools and the ways to kind of stitch them together with duct tape and glue. And now they can power a lot of that workflow directly from HubSpot, um, and really gives them a tool inside the rest of their stack to automate a lot of the functionality that today people might be doing manually or, or sort of facilitating with with handoffs.

Speaker 2: (17:34)
Yeah, I totally get that. It's, uh, it, it really gives time back to the, to, to the company and really prevents a lot of like data fires and manual work focused on fixing integrations, stuff like that. Um, I think I'm going to hand it over to the, to the audience. I already got a couple of questions in. Um, let's start with the first one by, by John, can you perhaps explain some of the segmentation of products, correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand the basic version, uh, has synchronization via standardized set of data points, but what level do I need to be able to inter interface various APIs? We're making a major move to HubSpot from an in-house system and there are a lot of interfaces not, uh, all well documented. Can you, uh, talk more about that Connor?

Speaker 1: (18:22)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, so John, congrats on, I'll start specifically to operations hub of, of which tiers the functionalities are at, and then I'll speak a little bit to my understanding of some of the bundling and pricing, though I know it is constantly changing and, and some hub start reps of the pricing page is probably the best place to go for completely accurate information. Um, but I can speak to the difference between the two products. So when we're talking about, um, leveraging, uh, different APIs and triggering coded actions and being able to write code directly inside a HubSpot, all of that is professional level features. So that's in the, the Operations Hub Pro. Um, the operations Hub starter has some basic sync functionality and then I believe some of the automation around date fields, uh, or some of these other pieces. And then starter is really just sort of like a taste of some of those different features.

Speaker 1: (19:14)
So it's not that starter can't add value by any means. It's certainly useful, uh, but I think most of the things that I'll speak to around, um, interfacing with APIs, writing scripts, um, connecting to other systems that have web-based connectors, all of that's going to be pro-level functionality. Um, I will just say that, uh, the new bundles, um, so there, I think that there's a new CRM bundle that has like pro of every, every hub or something to that effect. Um, we just upgraded, uh, our system. So previously we, for our own business and we, we do services across every HubSpot hub. So I'd be happy to chat with you directly, John, around like what you guys are trying to do and, and if we can help. But, um, we do services on every hub, but internally, we historically were using, um, the sales hub and the marketing hub and then CMS hub for our website, and we upgraded to the CRM Pro and to the CMS enterprise.

Speaker 1: (20:05)
And our upgrade cost was less than us sort of buying everything at once. And so highly encouraged the new bundles. Um, they're really, really awesome and, and have a little bit of every tool. Um, and you'll usually, I think, get more value from a bundle than one one specific suite. Um, and then adding on the rest of them, which hub Said's sort of moving, I think to saying, here's all the CRM platform tools, uh, but whoever your AE is is probably the best person to talk to about bundling for you. But hopefully that answers your question.

Speaker 2: (20:35)
All right. Um, we have another question about April. Uh, from April, do you see new features like this changing the toolkit that rev ups Nel need to possess? Do you think I should be signing up for Java script courses?

Speaker 1: (20:50)
Yeah, that's a great question. So, um, that's a really good question. So I'll, I'll give you a little bit of an anecdote and then also how I think you should tackle these types of problems. So, um, on our team, when we manage a lot of these services for customers, um, we have rev ops consultants that are really familiar with objects and data schema and helping people figure out operational workflows and helping people design solutions to those problems. And then we also have developers who are focused on writing actual code. And so in our world, um, rarely do we look at those as being all in the same skillset. And we really look at those as the rev ops person's job is to identify the problem, um, figure out what the solution to that problem could look like, and then sort of architect how to build that solution, which would include which APIs do I need to look at, which data needs to move, where, which objects are involved, which users are using those objects, and that's really the rev ops problem.

Speaker 1: (21:45)
And then they would manage, uh, or work with a developer, whether internal or external, to write the actual script. Um, the, the main thing I think is important here is that when we talk about the opsa operations hub workflows, using those coded actions, um, the code itself is usually pretty lightweight. We're not talking about incredibly complex engineering. We're talking about a a relatively simple piece of JavaScript. And the elegance is really in defining when should this code run? What API should this code connect to, and what should this code do? Um, and a developer should be able to write that kind of a script relatively easily if they have a background in JavaScript. I don't think that that means that a rev ops professional should go learn JavaScript in order to be useful. I think it'll certainly be an added value skill, but I think that being able to read JavaScript, understand which fields it's interfacing with, and maybe tweak those versus developing an entire script and also understanding the process piece is likely a better combination of skills than, uh, necessarily being able to do all of it. But I think there's certainly value in being able to understand and work with JavaScripts the same way that to a marketer, you know, understanding HT m L and CSS might be really valuable, even if they themselves wouldn't say I'm a full frontend developer, they could probably augment some c s s to control some, some fields on a form, on a page without necessarily need to bother a developer, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: (23:12)
I think it does. Um, we also have another question, uh, . Yeah, amazing. Yeah. Um, uh, a another question is how a HubSpot agency can become an expert in RevUps and offer rev up services to clients. Do technical HubSpot agency have the advantage of becoming rev up agencies?

Speaker 1: (23:30)
Yeah, for sure. Um, I, I think it's certainly a skillset that that can be learned. I think a lot of folks that are in and around the space, um, can, can gather it. I think when we look at making hires, we look at, uh, folks who've been in an operations position, folks who've owned Tech Stacks, people who've been responsible for building and, and connecting different systems. Um, I think if you're a true, uh, marketing agency, I think that there's tons of value still to be had in being a marketing agency. And I don't necessarily mean think that means you need to go and say, we must offer operations sub-services, or we must become a rev ops agency, because that's where, you know, the, the attention is. I think that there's still tons of marketing work to be done. And same with service and sales. Um, what I see as being different is when we look at rev ops projects, it's usually implementations.

Speaker 1: (24:18)
It's usually coming in and building something and then sort of setting somebody up for success and stepping away versus the model where you have some ongoing services you're running every month and you're maybe managing paid media or you're performing in about marketing work. And I think some technical partners, it's usually easier to scale technical development. So sort of what I talked about previously around the skillset of those rev ops professionals or people who can understand process and systems architecture and how to really build something. Um, and it's usually easier to find developers that can support those people. I think that it is to say we're predominantly a technical development shop and we wanna start offering the consulting SI side services. Um, I know my background and, and all the folks in our consulting team's background is largely in being an operations leader and, and building and managing stacks. And I think that that's the skillset that's a little harder to transition into if you have that skillset already. Adding in the technical script writing, I think is an easier lift than going from, we're a full, full force technical shop, and now we're gonna also start adding some of the, the strategy and the sort of rev op consulting services as well. Um, totally in opinion, I think lots of people are capable of lots of things. Uh, so by no means should that discourage or encourage anybody to change the direction of their business.

Speaker 2: (25:36)
All right. We just got another question. Um, by Kat, as a Revs person, how do we know what is possible using JavaScript and HubSpot? Is there a rundown of the types of problems this feature can solve for?

Speaker 1: (25:48)
Yes. Uh, so we, we, and I think, uh, is is available or will be sent out as a follow up to this, if not, it's on our website. Uh, feel free to check it out, uh, which is, we did the Operations Hub playbook, and our goal was really to help people who don't necessarily have a full understanding of JavaScript and APIs and how some of those technical pieces work to really get an understanding of what's possible. Um, our operations sub playbook does not have any code in it. Uh, it's not a, a sort of like, here's a bunch of scripts you can use. It's very much an, here's a bunch of examples of the types of problems that you could solve, and here's how you would think about solving those problems. Um, I would say if you have an understanding of what APIs are available, what those APIs can do, so if you say, I can with a deal api, I can create a deal, I can update a deal, I can get information about a deal, I can delete a deal.

Speaker 1: (26:36)
Um, and if you understand what's possible in those APIs, you can, you can start to stitch together an idea of, of how those things would work. And JavaScript is really just the language to interface with those APIs. Um, the fact that it's JavaScript versus another language isn't super important. Um, it just happens to be what Operations Hub runs on. Um, and if you have an understanding of some of those APIs and object level pieces, um, you can start to design some of the, the functions you can perform with, um, an Operations Hub workflow. The best way to really think about it is, uh, if you have an understanding of what's possible with code, um, then really the only extension you need to make is Operations Hub will let you write code in a workflow. And so all the logic you may have in a workflow, which could say person is added to this list, or filtered actions or anything else that's really possible that you may do with an advanced workflow tool, um, you can now use a lot of that declarative functionality and then extend it with sort of like that spell, which is the, the operation sub JavaScript.

Speaker 1: (27:36)
Um, and you can weave that into the rest of your functionality.

Speaker 2: (27:43)
Cool. Let me know if that, uh, answers your question, Kat . Um, I have another question for you Con uh, Connor, now the features are now all, uh, a week old. Are there any cool things that you've seen done with lag, the custom coded workflows already, um, with your customers or anywhere else?

Speaker 1: (28:04)
So I internet dropped right at the beginning of that question, which makes me nervous about my answers, but is there any, any chance I can get you to repeat

Speaker 2: (28:12)
It? Sure, sure, sure. So the, the features are now like a recall. What are the cool stuff you've seen happening with those features? Um, yeah, things you may not have thought about, like in in the Playbook or,

Speaker 1: (28:22)
Absolutely. I think I, one of the things that's so exciting about this is, uh, really the breadth of what's possible is just so much bigger than it, than it was before. Um, and one of the things that we just started working on as a customer is we're working with a customer and they sell, uh, different types of, uh, insurance plans and they're managing their deals. And so they're associating a product for each plan to the deal. And then what they want to be able to do is, uh, empower their service team so that once a deal is one, their service team can sort of go through the process of procuring and implementing that plan. And previously pre-Operation Hub, their problem was they could use a standard HubSpot workflow to when a deal was marked, one, create a ticket, uh, move that ticket through a process.

Speaker 1: (29:05)
Uh, and the constraint that they were running into was they didn't want one ticket, they wanted one ticket per product, and then they also wanted those tickets to be dynamic. So they wanted those tickets to have information about all the products associated to a deal. And so with Operations Hub, we can write a coded action and all the coded action is pretty simple. So what that coded action does is when a deal is marked closed one, we run this coded action, the coded action goes to the Deals API and finds the deal that had that id, it pulls the products related to that deal and the information about those products, which is just a get request on the, on the deals api, and then it creates one ticket per product associated to that deal, and then copies all the information in those products into those tickets.

Speaker 1: (29:48)
And that's a workflow that we hadn't conceived of, hadn't thought about as being valuable HubSpot themselves, right? You guys would never think, oh, we should build a, an action in HubSpot that lets you create a ticket for every product on a deal. Cuz that particular use case is so specific. But I think what's so exciting about Operations Hub is it really empowers users to build those types of functions without necessarily knowing what that feature set's gonna look like upfront and really unlocks the potential, uh, and kind of on a, in kind of an unlimited way.

Speaker 2: (30:19)
Cool. Like, I think your internet fell away like in those last parts, . Yeah. Do, do you mind like repeating the last couple of sentences that you, uh, you said

Speaker 1: (30:28)
Where, where did I cut off?

Speaker 2: (30:31)
Um, I'm not sure of it. It was right before you finished

Speaker 1: (30:34)
. Okay. Uh, what I would say is, um, we being able to think through those workflows and, and that type of a feature is something that HubSpot wouldn't create for you because it's super specific and it's, it's something that not a lot of people would want to use, but it is a feature that's possible. Uh, and you could build, you know, using the API and using custom functionality. And so what's really exciting for us is seeing not just what we think is an out-of-the box thing that you might be able to set up, but really that you can build any custom solution to support any type of workflow you might want to. Um, and that's where I think Operations Hub is really exciting and we're just really seeing and scratching the surface of what's possible.

Speaker 2: (31:14)
Yeah, I totally agree. Um, we had another question in learning the use, uh, of HubSpot within the context of Rev ops, what are, what aspects of the learning do you recommend prioritizing to maximize one's grasp of the basics, like creating simple, uh, plus effective workflows, supporting data, mapping data, creating ways to track all KPIs. He's new to, to HubSpot. So you just want to see that it's very powerful. And I think, uh, scrolling down a little bit, he's in a process of potentially becoming a res professional, so how can you help him?

Speaker 1: (31:47)
What's up? A, uh, I'll talk to you very soon. Uh, a is currently in our, in our hiring process, uh, but I'll I'll tell you the answer to this question, which is I would start with, um, the basic workflow automation and understanding the objects in HubSpot. I think the data model and the schema is really important. So what is a company, what is a deal? What is a contact? How do these things relate to one another? And how do you think about the data schema? And then really understanding what's possible out of the box workflows. So creating records, updating records, and really starting to see where the limitations are when you start to run into things that you can't do this in the standard workflow tools. There's, there's something that's really you, you, you can't make that jump, you can't make that association, you can't manage those things as dynamically.

Speaker 1: (32:30)
And that's where I think the operations, uh, hub functionality starts to really shine, is it eliminates those limitations entirely. And I think you really need a, a good grasp on what can I do with the tools I have, uh, before you can start thinking about how would I potentially push that feature further. Um, and I would suggest sort of like having a really deep understanding of standard objects and schema and standard workflow automation, uh, and then thinking about what would I want to do that I can't? Um, and that's where I think Operations Hub really starts to shine is patching some of those. How, how would I do this? Even though there's not a native way to do it.

Speaker 2: (33:09)
Like I was thinking about AK and he's in, in the hiring process, like what does, what does a career in Rev actually look like? Like, thank you. For instance, you have a bit of a, you, you run an agency of course, but you've been in Revs a long time. Like Rev ops isn't really, doesn't really seem like a fad. It's here to say, like, what does that career look like if you start now?

Speaker 1: (33:30)
Yeah, I think, um, I, I think the space is, is exploding. I think anybody who's considering a career in rev ops, um, I think you're really setting yourself up for 10, 20, 30 years of, of ongoing growth in the space. Uh, and so I just definitely encourage anybody who is evaluating it. Um, I think when we look at a career in Rev op, if, if you're internal, uh, it's really focused on how can I make the lives of the people who work here easier, uh, and how can I make the customer experience better? Um, and that's really the problems you're focused on and the tooling to solve those problems is what's a database and how does a database work? Um, what are automation tools and, and where do automation tools drive value versus what, what's a what's overkill on, on what's possible? Um, and I think really understanding what those tools are capable of, what tools in the space, and then you can really start to get an understanding of the differences between various platforms and tools and, and what's good and, uh, not good at different types of tasks.

Speaker 1: (34:32)
Um, and I think that the biggest thing is really understanding how a customer experience is delivered across sales teams and marketing teams and service teams, and how all of that really branches from that same base point, which is, who is this customer? Who is this person, uh, and what do they want and care about? And how can I give that to them? Um, and ultimately when you're looking at, at a career in rev ops, I think that there's tremendous amounts of a deep understanding on business process and what that means and how it works. Um, some technical understanding to be able to build and, and configure those tools, uh, and then being able to really help people and extract from people what their needs are, um, is, is really the, the skills that I think are most valuable and some of the technical chops you can learn along the way and you can manage other people to execute. Uh, I think the magic is really understanding a process and understanding what it takes to improve it, uh, and then being able to sort of put that into place.

Speaker 2: (35:37)
Yeah. So we have another question, uh, from Mike Rizzo. At what point do you consult a client to remove Zapier integration in favor of Operations Hub? I think this is a good

Speaker 1: (35:47)
One. , this is a really good one. Um, I, this one we're really excited about. I think, I think Operations Hub is, uh, much more powerful, uh, than Zapier, especially if HubSpot is the core of your stack. And, and the reason that I say that is, um, if you're working with Zapier, uh, you need a enterprise level hub to be firing web hooks over to Zapier, um, you then need to parse those web hooks using Zapier's functionality, and then you can now run other actions with Zapier, but you're going to be limited by, uh, sort of the ways that you can configure itself and you also are gonna always need to manage kind of that data handoff. Um, and the amazing functionality I think of Operations Hub is that because it's built on Lambda, um, and operations hub coded action can both send and, uh, make callouts to other places and process the responses from those call outs.

Speaker 1: (36:41)
Um, so our, from, from Aptitude eight, from the way that we're looking at the universe, we, we really plan on on not pushing people towards Zer at all anymore really, uh, and managing almost all that functionality with HubSpot. Um, the only other exclusion to that would be if you, if you're really trying to drive triggered events from systems that aren't HubSpot at all. So the, the system that actually causes that trigger is, is not HubSpot. Um, but as you start to see HubSpot become more and more of your stack, having that live directly outside of HubSpot is, is incredibly valuable because you can use all of those workflow branches and the logic and then the after steps inside of HubSpot as opposed to sort of like, and I assume Mike, you've, you've sort of like built these things before and ping pongs data from HubSpot to Zapier, back to HubSpot, back to Zapier, uh, and with Operations Hub you can eliminate a lot of those pieces and, and just run it directly inside of HubSpot, which I think is really the power.

Speaker 2: (37:38)
Yep. , thanks Mike. Uh, we have a question by Bill. Um, for portals that are currently using PieSync, how will this transition happen? Um,

Speaker 1: (37:50)
My answer unfortunately on this one is probably like, I don't know, uh, , I can tell you that I think the answer is, uh, PieSync is now Operations hub, and if you're using operations Hub starter, it's already in your portal and, and that that is pi and it's just moving some of those pi sync connectors into the marketplace. Um, but expanding beyond that, I would, I would suggest talking to your account manager to, to whoever you have a hub. So in terms of how it affects your specific contract, um, I don't know how the billing or any of those other pieces work. I do know that some of the base level pricing functionality can all now be found in the solutions, uh, marketplace in HubSpot. So if you go to the app marketplace and you search for one of the systems that you would connect to via PieSync, so some of the ones out of the box like the NetSuite contact sync or some of those other ones, um, those are actually in the app marketplace inside of HubSpot. Now, um, if that doesn't answer your question, then I, I may not know the detail you're looking for, but hopefully that gets you some, some of the direction.

Speaker 2: (38:53)
Yeah, let us know, bill. Um, we have another, uh, question by, by, uh, Noran John, what new important RevUps KPIs with the, uh, with the track now with Operations Hub, um, can be tracked now? Sorry, .

Speaker 1: (39:08)
So this one I think is a little, a little difficult to answer, but I'll speak to what I think this is asking, um, which is that we're seeing, uh, essentially the ability to, so one of the examples in in operations Hub Playbook is around SDR reporting. So one of the things that we saw people struggle with was they wanted to on a deal, so they wanted to create a deal report inside of HubSpot that said, which SDR booked this, booked this deal booked to the meeting that created this deal, uh, which, um, marketing event that occurred, you know, within the last 90 days on a primary contact led to this deal. Um, and using a coded action, we can sort of configure a lot of those parameters. Um, and then when a deal is marked closed one, we can go and look up the contacts that are associated to that deal and say, you know, tell me which contact associated to this deal had a discovery call, uh, within the last 90 days.

Speaker 1: (40:03)
And then we can grab which SDR booked to that meeting and we can stamp their name on the deal and a custom field, and we can do the same thing for the marketing activities on those contacts, and then we can stamp those on the deal. And so I think one of the things that we see a lot, and this is around like data orchestration, um, which is something we see a lot, is people wanna be able to build reports that pull information from 15 different places. And getting that all into one report is really challenging. And so being able to instead, uh, run a coded action, find that information, pull it all into a single deal, and then you could build a report that says, show me all of my deals and which marketing channel generated the, the meeting and which sales rep booked that meeting. And it's show all of that on a deal with like a summary of remedy or something. Um, and instead of pulling a bunch of Excel files from a whole bunch of places and aggregating all that data and trying to get it into one report, you can sort of do that directly within HubSpot by pulling that information from various places and, and stamping it all into a single record.

Speaker 2: (41:08)
Okay. Let us know if that answered your question. Um, it says, thanks, um, I got a dm, uh, by someone, um, asking where do I start with an automation strategy, the, do I just use one system or do I start with multiple systems?

Speaker 1: (41:25)
That's a hard question. , uh, I'm gonna do my best. Um, what we do, uh, when we're working with a customer, so one of our most popular service offerings is we do a lot of, uh, audits. So we'll do systems and strategy audits, and we'll work with companies to really map out what are all the different tools on their stack, how did those tools connect to each other? How are you managing all of your business process today, and how should you do it if everything was more, much tighter? Um, and we do those services a lot, and the way that we start those is we dive through all the systems, we interview, uh, all of the staff, and we really build out what we call a current state model, which is like a big diagram of all of those components connected. And then what we do from there is, is we really sort of started to figure out which one of those parts is the most painful, um, which part slows things down the most, which part, um, prevents information from getting where it needs to go.

Speaker 1: (42:23)
And then we'll sort of like figure out, that's where I would start, right? Instead of sort of saying, how do we boil the ocean? I would look at like, what is a process that happens internally that is incredibly painful, slows people down, creates a negative customer experience, and, and which is something that we can focus on. Um, a really like tangible example. Uh, and this is somebody that we were talking to recently. He's new to an operations role at his company, um, and he's trying to figure out like which problem to solve first, uh, which is similar to I think the position you're in. And what he picked was, um, the sales reps in their process have to submit a, uh, a credit, uh, check against new potential customers. And that has to get, go from sales, go to finance, come back to sales, give the person payment terms, then they have to adjust the contract manually, send that out to the customer.

Speaker 1: (43:09)
And so that's the process he's focused on automating, and it involves multiple systems and multiple teams, but the output is sales reps should spend less time managing credit requests, finance should have to be bothered less by sales, asking them for credit requests, and customers get faster turnarounds on their contracts. And I think when you can check off the box of makes internal employees' lives easier, creates a better customer experience, eliminates manual work, that's really sort of like the thing that I would focus around automating, um, versus expanding to, you know, whatever might be the, the easiest.

Speaker 2: (43:43)
Right. Um, Robin asked, do you charge of the systems audits? I'm, I'm not sure exactly what it means. Uh, if you could expand on that, Robin? Um, I,

Speaker 1: (43:53)
I can answer. I mean, the answer is, is yes. We do charge on systems audits, um, okay. And we sell a lot of systems audits as like, that's the service. Um, and we have, we sell those to, like, we have private equity groups that buy those and they buy them, but it's part of their due diligence on, on potential acquisitions. Um, we do a lot of audits with, uh, new executives to companies that are trying to get a handle on, on what their tech stack is. Um, it's very much a service we offer versus something that we do upfront, uh, in order to sell additional services. And the deliverables are, you know, big, big consulting style like decks and diagrams and all that kinda stuff.

Speaker 2: (44:29)
Okay, cool. Uh, everyone please, uh, leave your questions in the chat or send them to me via dm. Um, in the meantime, let me ask you one more question, um, because we're talking about this audit, I had this idea, like when, when I, when I was back in support, I used to do, uh, pie support. There was always when, when a, when when a customer came to me with, with like a, a case, I, I needed to, needed to do like a bit of consulting, I needed to check like, how does his processes work? Um, like what kind of workflow is does he have? What, what data is man manipulated? Wh which way cuz that could Im impact of course the way his data is syncing through PieSync. Um, so I had like a a, a minor checklist that I went through. Like when you get asked by a company to, to just do some operational consulting, is there a a certain check checkbox that you have in your mind that you go through to see like where things go wrong operationally or like gauge the, the healthiness of, of their operations?

Speaker 1: (45:29)
Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think, I think the, the, the thesis to this is like the elegance I think in being an operations professional is, is helping people zoom out. Uh, people will often, I think you experience this obviously sort of in, in your experience Jan, which is that people will come in and be like, Hey, this particular field isn't sinking, can you help me fix that? And, and what you wanna do is be like, wait a minute, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to achieve? What's like the outcome that you're trying to get to? Um, and tell me about the problem that you're having and tell me about what an ideal solution looks like. And then on our end, our role is to help you connect to those two dots. Um, and the, the elegance is really extracting from people what's, what's the problem, what's the pain point that they have and what's their version of what an ideal solution looks like?

Speaker 1: (46:14)
And I think the area that's most common to get mired and stuck in is people that want to focus on, well, all I really want is to get this, you know, from A to B and that's all I care about. And you're like, well, what's the reason it needs to get there? What's, what's the, what does B look like? Why is this a pain point at all? And really focusing on those pieces. And that's usually where we like to start, is getting a really good understanding of what the problem we're trying to solve is, and then having a really good understanding of, of what their ideal version of the future looks like. And sometimes you can't deliver the ideal future, and that's true. Uh, and so you wanna sort of understand what makes that ideal, what, what makes it the best possible situation, and how can I get as close to that as possible without compromising either critical business data or, you know, ruining things for other teams. Because every sales rep will tell you, I just want to hit one and then, and then get a commission check instantaneously. Uh, and that's, that's their version, right? Like that's, that's like, and they're not wrong, but what you have to do is make sure, how can I make that as easy as possible for you? But also making sure that we manage the finance side and we manage the, you know, the rev rec side and, and really taking into account all those different perspectives.

Speaker 2: (47:19)
. Yeah, that makes sense. I think you had to nail the head there. Um, we have one more question. Uh, I think, do you personally, do you partner with any other, uh, HubSpot agencies?

Speaker 1: (47:29)
Yeah, we do. Uh, we have, we have tons of customers on the hub side agency side. We, we collab with different folks. Um, if shoot me a note, more than happy to chat about it. Um, the biggest thing on our end is we, we don't white label cuz we're set up for a lot of, uh, security requirements, um, with our customers. Cause we tend to work with folks that are, uh, a little more sizable and so they, they worry a lot about InfoSec and other pieces. So we have a lot of the check boxes on that end, but more than happy to chat about it, just shoot us a note and we can figure out if there's some way that we can help you. And we'd be super excited if it's uh, if it's a possibility.

Speaker 2: (48:00)
Right. And then Mike has another, uh, interesting question. Of course, Mike's is, uh, like the, the, the head of the morose community and he's asking like when it comes down to marketing operations versus revenue operations, who owns Operations Hub? I think it's an interesting

Speaker 1: (48:16)
Question. Yeah, yeah, it is an interesting question. Um, I'm gonna sort of weasel outta your question a little bit, but try to answer, uh, which is I would challenge like, I don't think no WEAs operations. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah, no, I, I just, I don't think that marketing operations and revenue operations should be different teams, uh, is like kind of my answer. I think that like the, when we look at like revenue operations as it's really the how do we do this group? Um, and I think marketing ops get stuck inside of the marketing world sometimes and, and they're not knowledgeable of the rest of the stack or they're not knowledgeable of how they can leverage those other pieces cause they just didn't know what's going on across other parts of the organization. And so I think that having marketing ops as a function of rev ops makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1: (48:59)
Um, because then it becomes marketing saying, I want to do this campaign. Here's who I want to send it to, here's the messaging I want to send and like, here's how I want it to work and here's the data that I care about. And then the Ram ops team, and, and by extension, the marketing ops folks are really saying, okay, cool. How can I build that? What data do I need from which system to deliver that experience? And where do I need to put data that that comes out of this campaign in order to deliver you on the tracking and analytics and KPIs that you care about? And so I don't think that marketing Ops is necessarily separate from the Rev ops team. Um, and I think that both if it is separate have use cases for Operations Hub, but I think that the, because Operations hub starts to expand to Core Tech stack automation, um, it starts to move a lot more to the rev op side of saying, Hey, what do you need?

Speaker 1: (49:49)
And, you know, depending on, on your org structure, you might have some tension there, but I would suggest solving it instead of saying who should own the tool as solving it as like, where does marketing ops live in the organization and are they a marketing function or are they in our Rev ops team? And, and more interestingly, does Rev ops have a seat at the table when, when marketing and sales and everyone else is talking about what we should do and how, um, because I think marketing really defines here's what we want to do and here's what we want to deliver on. And uh, rev Ops gets to say, cool, how can I make that happen for you?

Speaker 2: (50:24)
Yeah. Uh, I got another DM by, uh, ing John. Is Rev Ops more strategic or admin?

Speaker 1: (50:31)
Uh, I think Revs is

Speaker 2: (50:32)
both

Speaker 1: (50:33)
? Yeah. I think it's a little bit of both, but I do think it's much more strategic. Um, I, I think like a good, a good rev ops, uh, leader, good rev ops team should probably say no to more requests than they say yes to. Uh, and they're less about just executing things other people want and much more about being like, I, I mean, we get requests. I think it's a lot of like, Hey, we want to do X. And you're like, wait, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Is that the same thing that another team is doing and you're just calling it a different name? Uh, and really helping the organization understand what's the goals that they're trying to achieve and which direction are they trying to go and how can I helped them get there? Um, versus just fulfilling on requests from other people.

Speaker 1: (51:10)
And I think that that's really where the need for Rev ops arises is people are used to, like, I submit things to the IT team and they make a change in my crm. And like, no one's saying , is that a change that we should make? Uh, and I think that that's really the goal of, of the Rev ops group, is to understand what should you be doing and how should it be done versus just executing against it. Um, I do think that they own the implementation of it as well, but I do think that the, the administration is, is a sub-bullet point to the strategy, which is the primary lead.

Speaker 2: (51:41)
Yeah. Um, so we're almost at time, and just before we leave, I just wanted to ask, uh, of you O'Connor and of the audience a bit of a, like an anecdote to Andis AMA on a bit of a, on a light notes. So we've all been there. Uh, now we'd love to hear like what is like a number one interaction that you still think about from time and time of a, of an interaction that you had with a company that was either absolutely delightful or just downright horrible? Um, you don't need to name any companies. Sure. Uh, but I, I'd like to, yeah, I, I think it's something that we can all learn from either to avoid or to adopt

Speaker 1: (52:17)
. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I'll tell one that, that I love. Um, and, uh, also I've, I've been on the road. I used to be on the road all of the time, uh, but I've been, I've been moving across the country over it last couple of weeks. And as a result, I've stayed in a fair number of hotels. Uh, but I'm a huge Marriott fan. And one of the reasons I'm a huge Marriott fan is that Marriott heavily leverages their CRM and they create amazing customer experiences as a result. So, uh, we have a, a cute little, uh, dog named Logan. Uh, he goes with us most places and, uh, when we go to a Marriott, they can see in our, in our visit history that we've had a dog with us a bunch of times. They have his name in their system. When we check in, they're like, oh, is Logan with you?

Speaker 1: (52:57)
Like, do you want to be on a lower floor so that you guys can easily get out? Like, do you need a late checkout? Um, and those sorts of things really change. I, I'm interacting with somebody I've never talked to before, uh, sometimes in a city I've never been to and this person is interacting with me is like, Hey, we know who you are. Like you've already told our company what you want, what you're looking for, what type of experience you want to have. And from a customer experience that's this really unique and delightful and positive interaction. And the backend architecture to make that possible is actually incredibly complex and vast. Like they have to have the, all of the stays have to get logged as objects. They have to have me and the crm and when I come in, they can pull me up by knowing my, my loyalty number, reservation number or name or an email and unifying all of that data across web experience in different branches and different places. And like that I think is the perfect example of where Rev Ops really thrives, is really making it so that all of the backend architecture that makes that experience possible is invisible to that customer and no one's ever bouncing back and forth and running into your backend systems and instead figuring out how can we deliver on an amazing customer experience by empowering the person that's interacting that with, with that customer, with the data they need to make that interaction really personalized and amazing.

Speaker 2: (54:12)
Yeah, I think that's an amazing example. If anyone else wants to jump in here and share an example, feel free to do so. Um, in the meantime, let me share, uh, like this is not as, uh, extensive as you just talked about, uh, Connor, but here in Belgium we had a bit of an issue, uh, with web web shops not being up to date. Um, and not a lot of companies adopting that. So that's been, they, they've been making a lot of stripes lately here in Belgium and making a lot of good, uh, web shops. And one company that really nailed it here was actually a Dutch company that moved in here and they just really nailed the whole customer experience as well. Um, from shopping to, to shipping, everything's fun. Everything is youthful. Everything, uh, is is very nice. And now from time to time when I think about where should I shop this certain, uh, where should I look for this certain electronics piece, if I don't go for that shop and I have a, a slightly less, uh, good experience, I always like hate myself for not just paying that extra five, you know, euroes just to go for that, uh, for another, uh, retailer.

Speaker 2: (55:21)
So I think yeah, customers experience is what it comes down to, right? Um, for free, everybody here to share your own examples with us. Um, if no one jumps in, I think we can close off. If we haven't discussed your question, feel free to post it in the HubSpot community. Uh, I'll make sure that Connor gets through those questions or you can also just ask him directly on LinkedIn. Um, I don't think anybody is jumping in here. So thanks so much Connor for being here today and talking about Absolutely Operations Hub. Uh, congrats with the Operations Hub Playbook as well. And thanks everybody of course for joining.

Speaker 1: (56:00)
Thanks everybody so much. I through my email and chat, feel free to shoot me a note. LinkedIn, HubSpot community, wherever is the easiest for you. More than happy to chat hop stuff anytime.

Speaker 2: (56:10)
Yeah. Alright. Thanks everyone and have a great rest of your day. Bye.