Demystifying HubSpot Operations Hub + Who Is Responsible for Operations? [HubHeroes, Video EP83]
George B. Thomas, Lizzy Muir, and Max Altschuler break down HubSpot's Operations Hub and what it actually does. They dig into who owns operations at most companies, why data hygiene matters when you scale, and why the role is still fuzzy for most teams.
Well, sadly, Evan is not with us this week, so we didn't need that beautiful bit of legal ease. But George Max right to his gpu.
Right.
But we carry on. We keep. You're done.
Yeah.
What is going on?
That's so weird. Could it. Could it be orange? Here's the thing. So you're like the. You're the host, right? Could there be some kind of like, Riverside bug where, like, the host recordings are shutting off for some reason and maybe it's just temporary?
Yeah, the other. This is so weird. Are you getting a specific error code? It doesn't say hardware limitations or anything.
Do you have. Is your hard drive, like, full? Yeah. I'm wondering if like, wherever it. Wherever it records to locally, if like, like an issue there, you might want to try like.
Shouldn't record locally. It should be recording straight up to.
No, it records locally and then it uploads. And then it uploads.
I'm good at stick to words and content. Hi, guys. I'm the personality hire of the group.
It'd be like a browser caching issue.
Chad also says, try rejoining in an incognito window.
Now. He says, try rejoining an incognito window.
Winder. Cognator.
Cognator. George, you gotta join Incognitas.
See, this is what you get when you join us.
The perk of membership.
Honestly. We should honestly, like, cream these to LinkedIn.
Jesus Christ. So I'm using my friend's desk and, like, I have a thick thighs saves lies kind of issue. And I almost just took out her whole desk.
Tried to stand up and say, that wallpaper is beautiful.
Why don't we do that?
I don't know, because, well, maybe I.
Have to stop making inappropriate too.
And Chad's nice and doesn't report us to the authorities when we fuck up.
I'm like, super nice.
Yeah.
Liz, why are you single? Watch the unedited versions of Hub Heroes.
There you go.
It was so funny. A friend of mine was talking to me the other day, though, and she's like, well, don't you want to be in a relationship? I'm like, well, so here's the thing. This is the longest I've ever been single in my whole life. And now I'm like. I get to be like, weird and have all of my own weird behavior. And I have adult money. I don't know. Although. Oh, my God. I had a situation the other week because I wear a lot of sunscreen, so I've been able. I do not look like I'm about to turn 42, which is very nice.
Yep.
But I did have a young gentleman who tried to ask me out, and then I watched the soul escape out of his eyes when I was like, so wait, how old do you think I am? And you said, oh, that's 34. I'm like, so add seven. Thank you for the ego boost. You may move along.
Thank you. Feels good.
Thank you. Okay, thank you. Go on now.
Back.
George, what did you say that? Just so I know. It just says riverside, stop recording. That's it.
Well. Well, hopefully it doesn't happen again. But if it happens again, I'll tell you exactly what it says. But right now I'm recording, so that's a good thing.
Okay.
That is a good thing. Okay, so let's try this. Let's roll into it.
Okay, so I'm gonna pick us up from the fact that we cut it off while Devon was. While the legal stuff was happening. All right.
Yep.
Let's see what happens. Yeah. Sadly, we do not need all that legal language this week. Devin is out. He has left us to our own devices. Max and George, can we handle it? Do we think we can handle it?
Yeah. Yeah, we're ready to rock and roll.
Okay, I'm going to be perfectly honest, both of you are way too calm and chill right now, which usually means things are about to become catastrophically chaotic.
It might get that way.
All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, hubspotters of All Stripes, welcome back to another episode of Hub Heroes. And George, I want to start off today's conversation by giving you a pretty big shout out. You rolled out probably one of the most epic why go HubSpot Guides for growing businesses I have ever seen.
It's pretty dope.
Your goal was to make the business case for HubSpot overall, but also give a thorough overview of each platform. And this is going to lead us nicely into our discussion. But just for the listeners at home, why was it important for you to make this guide specifically?
Yeah, I mean, listen, there's a lot of. Well, I. I should be ready with the button. There's a lot of humans out there who either aren't using HubSpot in general or aren't using all of the hubs that they could potentially be using to g. The growth, the streamlined processes, just ability to do business in a better way and create a better experience. And also, I think what this guide does really good because it's why go HubSpot. It's not why go HubSpot Marketing. Why go HubSpot Sales like separate pieces. It's one piece that is looking at it as like a holistic, dare I say like customer platform view of what HubSpot is actually building. And so, you know, it's A, let's be honest, attract new folks who aren't using HubSpot, B, educate those who are using parts of HubSpot that maybe should use more and see just a really value packed piece of content around all the things that you could be thinking about and doing with HubSpot.
You know what was fascinating to me about this guide as I was reading through it because you and I talked about it earlier this week, which is.
What is leading us into today's discussion. Is that what answering the question why go? HubSpot has radically changed over the years because HubSpot has challenged us all as businesses and organizations, marketers, leaders whomever, to grow better. And I think we had a much more one dimensional understanding of what that was many, many moons ago. Growing better was through inbound marketing and then it was inbound marketing and sales. But then they started going deeper into the what makes businesses run their operations. Right. So you and I were talking about this earlier this week because we actually haven't as a group talked about the operations hub specifically since the beginning of last year. It's been a really long time. And the HubSpot operations hub, let's all be clear, has been around since 2021, which was first. I had forgotten that. I thought it was much newer. And George, you and I were talking about this earlier this week because even though it's been around now for three years, it is something that still seems to confuse a lot of people. There's still a lot of confusion around. Well, when we say operations, what does that mean? Who actually is this hub for? So we wanted to take some time today to revisit this hub and specifically talk about operations the way we talked about Customer Delight with Christina Garrett.
Right.
Like what actually is operations? Who is actually responsible for it? And since HubSpot Operations Hub is different, I think, than a lot of the way other hubs are constructed. It's created some gray, some vague. So George, to kick us off, can you give the folks at home a quick refresher on what HubSpot Operations Hub is? And when we say operations, what does that even mean?
Yeah, so the way that I like to look at this and kind of think about operations Hub, by the way, is dramatically different than any hub. And I think that's probably half the problem is like it's called a hub, even Though I wouldn't call it a hub like Marketing Hub. It's marketing a set of marketing tools. Sales Hub is a set of sales tools. Commerce Hub is a set of tools for doing commerce and actually getting paid. Operations Hub is a set of tools that make all of those tools be more awesome. Operations Hub is about data hygiene. Operations Hub is about extending what you can do with things like workflows or custom coded bots. It's about making certain things that right now, if you don't have Operations Hub might feel very manual, making them very automagical. When you start to think about like data quality and properties and automatic deduplication based on properties and some of these other things that we're going to get into, it really does streamline the processes that are wrapped around multiple hubs inside your portal. So that's how I think about Operations Hub. I think that's also why it might be somewhat confusing to people. And, and also, let's be honest, it's one of the hubs air quotes that has kind of the less features than any other hub, but those less features might be more powerful.
Interesting. So let's dig into the second part of my question there, which is really kind of digging into how people define the operations of their business. And I like what you said there just now about the fact that because it has fewer features, it, it showcases fewer bells and whistles, its power might be missed. And I think when we think about growth, we think about the shiny stuff, right? It's kind of the way I like to think about it is when you think about your rebranding a business, right.
You immediately want to jump into like.
Logos, fonts, colors, design, aesthetics, visuals. But that's not where you're supposed to start, right? You start by having conversations about what? Well, who is your audience? What are your goals, what are your core values, the things that inform those decisions. And I always notice people get kind of bogged down. I don't want to do, I want to look at the cut. Have you seen this pretty beep boop thing on the Internet? I want to look like that. And I almost think about operations the same way. Right. We want to have the efficient marketing, the efficient sales, the efficient service. But there is some core operational stuff we need to master as businesses in order to do that.
Yeah, well, and, and let me even go at like, I love your analogy, but it to me, it's even a little bit like this. So when you think about a house, you think about the house as being finished. You think about the house with the drywall and the paint and the wallpaper and all of that stuff. But imagine if when you were building that house, somebody used the two by fours that actually already had termites in it, or they used two by fours or four by fours that are already rotted. And the reason I'm bringing up termites or wood that is already rotted is because if you're not paying attention to your data and your data hygiene and the data quality that you have, if you're not monitoring that, if you're not paying attention to like the properties and formatting issues that lead into personal personalization and segmentation and like, like literally operations. A big piece of this when you think about platform and process is the making sure your foundational pieces don't suck. So when you go to use some of these other bells and whistles tools that the data actually makes sense and shows or acts in a way that it should versus being rotten. K a dirty data formatted improperly. Just a bunch of like. And literally. I got off the phone with a person who wants us to do an audit. Their. Their words, not mine. Our HubSpot portal is garbage. We need to know how to fix it.
Oh my God, a shovel and Jesus. Ax, I want to ask you a question really quick. Hi buddy, I also want to hear from you. Yeah, so you, when you were at HubSpot, obviously you spent a lot of time basically as an organizational and operational therapist for companies right before you went over to Haply. And I'd be curious to hear from you. From your perspective, how did you see most organizations struggle to wrap their brains around what operations within their business actually was? Were there any themes or common misconceptions?
Well, I mean, operations is such a, like nebulous term. I mean like, did the way that I understood or the way that I kind of like came to terms with the whole word of revenue operations, like entering the HubSpot space when I was trying to like figure out what it actually meant. And to this day, I don't think anyone's really ever agreed on it. You know, for me it's like revenue operations is what you're doing when you're doing all the things in HubSpot together and getting them all to work with each other and all that kind of stuff, at least from a technology standpoint.
Right.
Revenue operations is also strategic and all things that don't have to do with technology.
Right.
But like, you know, a lot of the things that you're doing when you're using like a whole Hub of, of HubSpot Tools is supporting a greater revenue operations strategy from a technology perspective. So I think it's tough because everyone had different definitions of what operations actually meant. On top of that, you know, before the whole revenue operations thing really kind of came around, you saw a lot of the teams kind of siloed, doing their own thing. There were sales ops, marketing ops, service ops, you know, and. And nothing was really kind of like connected under, like a single, you know, title or department or. Or methodology or practice or whatever you want to call it.
Right.
Like, I don't want to say there's one right word for it.
Right.
But, you know, there's certainly a lot of confusion. Businesses had evaluating operations Hub because, to put it quite as nice As I can, HubSpot sales reps didn't even know operations.
Yeah.
Like, I can't tell you how many times I had to explain it to people.
Right.
You know, so again, it's just one of those words that, you know, everyone has a different definition for.
Right?
Yeah. Chris in the chat. And still don't. You're correct. Any HubSpot sales reps that want an easy way to pitch Operations Hub, hit me up.
We love you.
We love you so much. I do love you.
Yeah. Especially all of you folks out there who are like 10. Hub is just AI. We love how. Sorry to bring up something so violent.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, everyone has different. It's just like the word campaign. Everyone has a different definition for the word campaign.
Sales enablement.
Definition for the word enablement. Also, everyone have a different definition for the world word operations.
Right.
So I don't want to necessarily think that, you know, customers were generally confused around it.
Right.
It's more so it either, you know, wasn't something that was paid attention to. They had their own definitions for it. Sometimes they were doing it without knowing they were doing it, and sometimes they didn't have it at all.
Right.
You know, so it's in terms of the businesses themselves. I mean, it's just generally all over the place. And you see that a lot working at HubSpot because you're talking to businesses of all sorts of maturity levels and organization and size and scope and types and, you know, it's. It's never the same conversation, I guess, is the easiest way to say it.
Do you know what I'm hearing? And George, I would be curious to.
Get a pulse on what you think on what I'm about to say. I'm. I'm noticing globally, I made that as a joke. Right. Like the content Hub AI comment. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, go back to our first conversation about Content Hub AI in this feed. Because it was emotional and upsetting. But when I think about what you're saying there, Max, you know, these lack of shared definitions, I think for a long time we didn't necessarily have to have them. I think as, as growth and what it means to do business as a modern business in a digital world has changed. It's forcing organizations to become much more sophisticated in a scalable way that was maybe not necessarily as much of a requirement in a more analog or less digital dependent world. You know, I remember when I first started out in Inbound when I was at Quintain Marketing. This is about 10 years ago. You know, we used to have to talk to our clients and say, you don't have a process. A process isn't a process if it's only in your head. A process is written down. And so I think for a long time we were able to get away without having shared definitions. Because when you start adding technology and automation into the mix, if you don't have shared definitions, if you don't have clear processes, it scales your inefficiencies, it scales your problems, and it starts bringing a spotlight onto the problems or the things you haven't defined, like, into harsh relief. And so I think that's part of what we're seeing. We make jokes about, you know, what can you do, you know, what enablement is, or can you just spell it? You know, I think we're seeing that across the board thematically, as we're starting to automate and scale more parts of our business, as we're being asked to do more with less because of all different factors. This is something that's, I think, becoming more noticeable. A problem that maybe has been there for a really long time, but it's been dormant until we started scaling different parts of our business.
I agree with all of that. The other thing that comes to mind that I think is very interesting is, and you've all kind of probably heard the saying of like, we'll build the plane why it's flying, or build the ship while we're sailing. Literally since 20, it's like we've been in this vehicle called HubSpot and let's just call it like a Volkswagen bug in 2012, right? And we're driving down the road and we're trying to do better business and we're trying to be more human. And all of a sudden we get to like 2014, 2015. We're still driving the VW Bug, but we look around and we realize, holy, I'm in a Mitsubishi Cordia. Like, how'd that happen? I thought I was in a Volkswagen Bug. And we're driving down the road and we're trying to do better business. All of a sudden we realize it isn't an automatic anymore, it's a stick shift. So now we have to figure out what a Frick clutches and how that works. And so then we're driving down the road a little bit further and we get to like 20, 18, 20, 20, 20. And we look around and we're like, oh, my God, like, I'm, I'm in a Lexus. I thought I was driving a Mitsubishi, but originally I was in a Volkswagen Bug. We haven't ever gotten out of the car. We're still using the vehicle that is HubSpot, but it's literally changing around us. We haven't gone in to look at what has changed in the engine. The fact that we now have a turbo in there, the fact that it's a timing chain, not a timing belt, the fact that there's all these. We got a new CD player. It used to be a tape deck. When we started, it was an eight track. And here's the, here's the. Yeah, we're going to get canceled.
That was a, that was a little.
Late, but we're still going to get canceled.
But like, yes, because you always say the worst stuff.
This is literally what's happening in the HubSpot ecosystem is all sudden we're driving down the road and it's a completely different vehicle. And so if we take this and we dive into this conversation specifically to Operations Hub, when all of a sudden we're driving a vehicle that has this additional part on it, which, by the way, if you were to ask people before Operations Hub came along, what are the two places that you have the most difficult time in with HubSpot? One would have been reporting. The second one would have been workflows. Well, holy crap. What does Operations Hub actually leverage in a couple of Its major pieces? HubSpot workflows with reoccurring, you know, things that you can do and different custom coded workflows. And like all of a sudden something that was already complex in the vehicle that they're driving becomes more complex, or at least feels like it now has this level of complexity of features which then, going to your point, Liz, creates this thing of like, not shared definitions or what we can easily say is lack of understanding. Like, we haven't gotten out. We haven't checked the oil, we haven't checked the coolant. We don't understand what the engine is. We're not even sure how the seats changed right underneath us as we were driving down the road. So, of course people are confused and they need this, you know, terminology and new understanding and. And they need to be able to be okay with what's happening in the ecosystem. We talked about it last week, but this rapid development of this car called HubSpot that we're driving down the road is. Is somewhat insane at this point of trying to keep up with right now. Today you're in a freaking Lamborghini or a Bugatti. You. You pick. It's up to you. But what vehicle are we going to be driving in three months or six months? I have no clue because it's always.
Hopefully with bigger bucket seats.
Well, yeah, big bucket seats is good.
No. So, you know, George, when I hear you saying these things, you know, honestly.
When you said that whole thing, you know, build the bolt while we're sailing it, I had just like Vietnam level flashbacks to all the different startup cultures and agency cultures I have been a part of. Because whenever people say that, it's like, guys, you know, at some point we do actually have to have a boat. We can't perpetually be in a state of building. And what I think operations hub does nicely and what it throws a spotlight on is the fact that if you have, like, if you're telling everybody to build a boat, right, you're talking to your marketing team, you're talking to your sales team, you're talking to your service team. They're all going to focus on building a boat in a way that serves them. At some point you need someone who's focusing on the entire boat, all the teams together to make sure none of us sink. And that's where holistic overall operations comes in. But I just want to say this one more time for my agency pros who are listening right now, it is okay to keep saying we need to build the boat while we're sailing it, but once more with feeling. At some point you need a boat. Yeah, at some point you actually need to get to boat status. So, okay, let's. We talked a lot about. So we've talked a lot about why folks are confused by the idea of operations and HubSpot operations, Hub overall and its potential. But I want to lob a potentially. I don't know, let's see what happens when I just ask this question. Who is actually Responsible then for business operations, who is it?
See, my brain goes in two different directions. Max, what's your thoughts before I go?
I mean, I, I, I. Again, this is one of those things where I don't think there's one right answer for it, right? And it also, I think depends on, like, I mean, ultimately the answer is the coo, right? If you don't have a CEO, I mean, whoever is in charge, making sure people are setting up processes and things like that, you know, if you have that, if we're looking at it through the, through the lens of HubSpot, the product, right. I mean, that's falling on your admins, right? The people who have the most line of sight to everything going on, right. You know, maybe you have a revenue operations team, maybe you just have one or two, you know, more siloed teams, things like that. It's got to be somebody, right? And I think it's not so much more like who's responsible for it is like, why is it important to have someone responsible for it, right? Especially when you're using a tool like HubSpot, if you've got a whole bunch of different teams in there all doing their own different stuff, right? And again, this is, this is true for any system you're using. Not just, it's not just a HubSpot thing, right? If you've got, you know, multiple teams that are all using their own technology or in charge of their piece of that same technology, and no one is, you know, considering, like, well, what if we do this thing here? How's that going to affect, you know, team number two and what they're doing and the things that have, they've set up for team number three and like all this kind of stuff, like, you need someone to be responsible for how it's all tying together and how it's all working together, because that's where you have, you know, bad customer handoffs, really shitty marketing communication, you know, really, you know, tough processes that customers have to go through that no one cares about fixing. Things like that, right? So it's not necessarily, I think, who is supposed to be, it's just someone needs to be right in terms of making sure it's all working together and functioning properly.
Right?
And I think that's kind of like, you know, where you start to think about revenue operations. It's like someone who's not just looking at, you know, the, has the responsibility for operations within their own segment of the business, but someone who's actually saying, how, how are we, you know, orchestrating if you will, the operations across all areas of the business. So we're all working in the same direction and not, you know, bucking things up for each other. Oops, sorry. There we go. Anyway, got two. Yeah, yeah.
Just as effective afterwards. Just as effective.
But, you know, that's how I think about it.
So it's. It's interesting because our. Our answers are going to slightly rhyme. Here's the thing. I totally agree with you, Max. Where it should be somebody, because somebody's better than nobody. But be careful, because it shouldn't be everybody. This is definitely a place where too many chefs in the kitchen is not going to make a good soup. And the place that I'll go, like, typically, when you think about operations, Max, you're right. It's like a chief operating officer. It might be an operations manager. It might be a business operations analyst. It might be even in some organizations, IT manager or director. Heck, it might even be a department head. But here's where. When I said my brain goes in two different directions, that's almost like just getting started with HubSpot or pre HubSpot, maybe business mindset that might be in place. But when you talk specifically people listening to this podcast, if you have HubSpot and you have multiple hubs, like, literally, this is the super admin should be the person paying attention to operations and what the operations hub can do. And if you're sitting here listening this, you're like, well, I don't have a super admin in your organization. Actually, you do. You just haven't. Yeah, you haven't defined them yet. And it might be you, by the way, because if you're doing the thing and paying attention to multiple departments and multiple hubs, you're a super admin. You just don't know it yet. And so when. When the conversation comes to should we upgrade to operations hub, Start or Pro or enterprise or who should be digging into these features and seeing if they're right for what we need to fix the potholes that we have. Guess what? It's probably you with a slight conversation to whoever pays the bills to be able to actually buy the dang thing.
I am having way more thoughts and opinions during this episode than I thought I would, I'll be honest. Because, like, I'm the content nerd, right? I didn't think I was going to get as. As hyped up about this, but I have a thing I need to throw out here to you, George and Max. Because when I think about the pat, the organizations that I have worked with some of the organizations that I do.
Work with and I think about the.
Way most people hire and have historically hired HubSpot expertise into their. Into their company, usually they're not hiring.
A HubSpot specialist specifically.
Often in many cases, they are hiring a marketer with some sort of marketing.
Automation expertise where it is a delegated responsibility that falls under a much more focused discipline, a marketing person of this, of that.
And so I love this idea of what we're talking about from the ideal state of you likely already have a.
HubSpot super admin in your care. That's true. But that also may look like for many of the people listening to this podcast, a in an inbound marketing or con specialist or marketing content marketing manager, where they.
That's part of what they do, but it's not all of what they do.
And they were brought in as part of a specific team. So when we look at it through that lens and I all like George, you.
Even when I said earlier when Max.
Was talking about, you know, whomever is in charge of your operations, part of me want to go. Bold of you to assume that many of these organizations have someone in charge of operations. Often it's like delegated as weird responsibilities. You kind of own what you own. And I. Most of the organizations I talk to do not have that. They're not that mature or sophisticated. Not because they aren't mature or sophisticated organizations. Besides, just their size just doesn't require a coo. I don't know, George.
I see. Yeah.
Yeah.
The other thing I want to add in too is like, I don't want to draw a false equivalency from, you know, saying Operations Hub is for operations team. Teams.
Right?
Like, if anything, Operations Hub should really be called Data Hub, like, because it's, it's really just, you know, it's the best way to get control of your data inside a HubSpot.
Right?
And like, you know, a marketing operations team or revenue operations team or whatever. An operations operations team, whatever. It doesn't really matter, right? Like, if they're using HubSpot, it's them using. The sum of all the parts is doing operations at HubSpot. It's like how you set your stuff up, how you set your customer handoffs off, how do you build processes? Like, how does the thing work?
Right?
Like Operations Hub can play a role in that, right? But it's not like it's like the hub built for the operations team, right? It's really just the. It's saying, hey, super Duper admin You want to get hella control of your fricking data. Like this is going to give you some extra tools to be able to do that.
Right.
So Data Operations is probably like a, I guess a better, more specific way to say it. But you know, I don't know. Operations Hub, like the name to me is like, you know, it's, it's a little too broad and a little, it's misleading.
Yeah, it, it literally is misleading to like, to, to be honest, like, and I think that is why it adds to the confusion. And I agree with you. Like if it was Data Operations and Hygiene Hub or something like, it would make a lot more sense.
CMS Hub went to Content Hub, maybe Operations Hub. You're gonna get that Data Hub reboot. Yeah, that would make so much more sense to people because like, if you think about all the cool core features across everything, all for each, each ver, whether it's free to pro or enterprise or whatever, every single feature that it adds in there that's unique to Operations Hub has something to do with data, right?
Yep.
You could argue, you could argue scheduled workflows is not necessarily like a data specific thing.
Listen, listen, I'm using that, you know what I'm using that for? I'm using that to delete contacts out of different lists because, and which is cleaning up my data because it's people I shouldn't be talking to anymore. So like that's the thing. If you pull a thread, all of.
It leads back is. I just think, I think gating scheduled workflows behind Operations Hub is trash. I think everyone should just have it.
Right?
That's just me. I don't think you should have to buy because a lot of people need that.
Right.
And oftentimes that was like, it would be super awkward for me as an search when someone said, well, I want to, I want to be able to, or can I build a workflow that'll, you know, every day at five it'll do this thing. And I go, yeah, but you got to buy a whole nother hub for that. And they're like, that's. I don't have any other use case for it.
Right.
And so like that to me is like kind of goofy. Like I could understand putting it at like maybe a enterprise level of any other hub.
Right.
But having it be its own separate hub just for that seems like a, you know, weird way to just get people onto it for that one reason.
Well, but, well, don't even get me started on that. We once had had web hooks and Then we didn't have web hooks. Anyway, that's not what we're here for, so I'll be quiet.
George, do you need a hug?
No.
I'm already part of HubSpot user group.
And here I like how it's a shots fired when I was trying to be nice to you, but we'll just go ahead and move along. Look at you carrying your heavyweight championship belt when I was just trying to be nice. Let this be remembered. You know what I think is fascinating about this conversation though? When we think about business operations and whether it's called Data Hub or Operations Hub, what I think as a part of this messaging that was missed and is an opportunity is that HubSpot, with the introduction of Operations Hub, is encouraging people to stop looking at your HubSpot data through the lens of a specific team. Don't just look at your marketing data and then look at your sales data and then look at your service data. It is encouraging them to put a human resource, a human perspective. Somebody who looks at your data overall and says, how is it moving around my organization? How is it moving between teams? Is it moving as efficiently and effectively as possible? Because again, when you think about it, it's. It's like the boat thing earlier, right? If the marketing team is always going to look at it through the marketing lens, the sales team is always going.
To look at it through the sales.
Team and that's what they should do. Like they have KPIs, they have goals.
It is really this p toward your operations are now more sophisticated.
You used to be able to have.
This as a decentralized set of responsibilities, maybe a delegated set of tasks that rolls up under somebody else on a specific team. It just doesn't work that way anymore. So I'd be curious to hear from both of you who HubSpot Operations Hub is actually right for. Because I think to your point, George, earlier when we were talking about the confusion around it, it makes it hard to understand who should be investing into it, particularly since it has powerful features but fewer shinier ones.
Yeah, Max, you want me to take this one? You want to take this one first? Like what?
What?
Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of thoughts on this. Like a lot of time. I think it's. It's great for people who have a particular need that Operations Hub solves for. I know that's like a really boring answer, but like one of the biggest things that like made my blood boil, right, Is when I would watch sales calls on Gong and you know, the salesperson would identify that somebody needs an integration to some tool that doesn't exist on the App Marketplace and they'd go, oh, you can do it with Operations Hub, right? And it's like, no, like, Operation Hub does not mean easy button integration with anything that doesn't have an existing integration, right. What I will say it is, is it's a great companion to integrations in that not all integrations are built the same, right? There are probably, you know, there's an infinite amount of ways that integrations can push data into HubSpot. That data may not be clean, right? It may be in a weird format, it might be coming through in strange ways, right? Operations Hub gives you a lot of really cool tools and workflows to clean it up and to format it in a correct way, right? And sometimes HubSpot serves as a destination point for data to come in and then go land somewhere else in some other system, right? And oftentimes you can use. Yep, HubSpot or like your central point of truth, or however you want to kind of think of it as a place to cleanse that data before it makes it to its final destination, right? So I think, you know, while Operations Hub doesn't let you just create integrations out of thin air, right, with tools that don't have native integrations, it serves as a great companion to integrations that you've either built or integrations that do exist on the HubSpot app marketplace that throw data into HubSpot in a really shitty way.
Right?
So that's one thing, I think it's also like a lot of the, you know, if this is happening to you, you probably could benefit from Operations Hub, right? So like, for example, if you're planning on using any of HubSpot's data sync integrations, you at least want Starter because that gives you the ability to do custom field mappings, right? If you want to be able to run workflows on a schedule, right? So every day do this instead of dealing with like weird roundabout ways to do workflow re enrollments and stuff like that, then, yeah, Operations Hub makes sense if you want to be able to make workflows do almost anything. It makes sense because you could do custom coded workflow actions, right? What is the other one? So it's, it's. Oh yeah, it's triggering web hooks, right? So you've got to send data to Systems outside of HubSpot and you just have like an API endpoint you can send stuff to.
Right?
Triggering web hooks is great. But then I think also Like a big one is if you're using up, if you're using business units and you have like multiple teams with multiple brands and a lot of different like teams working inside of HubSpot and they're all putting like their own properties and like all this stuff that's like relevant to one team but not another. Data sets in Operations Hub Enterprise is going to be your best friend because you can enable those teams to create reporting using data that's just relevant to them instead of going into the custom report builder and seeing everything in there and making it really confusing and adding a ton of friction to those different teams needing to report on stuff.
Right.
I guess also you could say like if you're, if your company uses Snowflake and you want to dump your HubSpot data into there.
Right.
Enterprise is also great. But I think also too the reason it's good as well is like for folks like stepping into a HubSpot portal for the first time and doing like an audit of like what the heck is going on in here, right. You've got your data quality command centers, you've got your property analytics or like whatever it is that'll kind of show you how your properties and stuff are being used, right. You know, a lot of the duplicate management stuff is super sweet. So it's like if you have like specific problems like around data, there's likely something in Operations Hub that's going to help you out.
Right.
If you're, if you're sinking a ton of data from other systems into HubSpot through either homegrown integrations or just third party tools, you're almost always going to find a use case for it, at least on like the data hygiene and formatting and cleanliness side of things.
Right.
So you can kind of get a handle on all that stuff, right. So yeah, really, if any of those like use cases like you know, come up in someone's head as they're listening to this and you don't have Operations Hub, you should probably check it out. I think everyone should have pro at least just because of scheduled workflows alone, right?
Yeah, but yeah, so I'm gonna go. I agree believe with everything you said, Max, I'm gonna go at this a little bit different. And I know usually I start with the humans, but this time I'm gonna start with the humans. I'm not gonna start with the humans this time. If you're a company looking to streamline your processes and automate the operational needs in your organization, doesn't matter if you're small or enterprise. If you're a company trying to do those two things, then Operations Hub is probably a good fit for you. If you're an operations team or a professional in a team that might not be called that, but is focusing on managing data quality integrations and process automation, then the Operations Hub might be right for you. If, if you are handling the system integrations and you require these deep dope custom automation solutions that will tie into like Max kind of said the partner or the sidekick, if you will, to those then like, it would be good technical, you know, teams. These would be reasons why they might be a good fit for operations. If you start to think about individual departments, all of the individual departments will enjoy clean data, will enjoy automated workflows, will enjoy integrated systems that are tightly integrated together with things like data sync to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness. So this could be marketing, sales service. Who? Heck, if your company is sitting here and you actually have a position that is a data analyst, you know, the individuals who have to focus on advanced reporting and data manipulation capabilities. Max mentioned data sets. But even just being able to report on freaking clean data is. Is beautiful, right? So any of those things that you need or if you're any of those types of people, humans or companies, then you're probably heading in the right direction. And Max, I would agree with you. Like, starter's cool, you can do data sync and custom fields. But when you get into pro Operations Pro now all of a sudden you're really unlocking some sweet stuff. And I think it's Yamini, she calls it like the secret sauce or the sweet sauce or something like that. That Operations Hub is like the sweet sauce of HubSpot. Because again, it's just helping everything be better than it potentially is. Even though as it is, it's pretty dang cool. So there's my thoughts.
So, Max, I want to come back to you for a second because a little birdie told me you've been doing some really cool and interesting stuff in HubSpot. Operations Hub.
What?
What, what can you share with the rest of us in the class?
Yeah, I mean the. You know, I'm not a coder by any means, except I've been going crazy building custom CMS modules using Hub.
I wish you could see how happy he is.
I've just been. I literally just built a. I built a module today that like sends an email to someone who registered for an event and shows all the different sessions they signed up for. And I felt like a God. But anyway, that's not Operations, hub stuff. I. One of the more cooler use cases that I've. I've kind of done. And like, this is great for any HubSpot sellers out there or solution engineers, whether you're at HubSpot or you're at a partner agency. Something that I really always struggled with. You know, when I was in a role selling HubSpot was having like, good demo data to be able to, like, demo HubSpot with, like, make it look like the portal is lived in and alive and breathing, right? And so, like, things like contacts moving through life cycle stages, deals getting created, and, you know, being able to like move through different stages and either close win or close lose and stuff like that. So, like, when I brought up reports, I wasn't bringing up a report that had like a bunch of data that was brought in like two years ago, and I had to like awkwardly filter it to make the report recording not look stupid, right? And so for a while I got really obsessed with the idea of like, yo, how can we make a HubSpot portal kind of go on autopilot and make it look like people are using it, right? And things are happening, like deals are getting closed, contacts are getting created.
Like, this thing's up and life cycle stages are being changed, life cycle lead statuses are being used.
Yeah, all this kind of stuff. Different records are getting created. All this kind of stuff, right? And I sat there for a while and I was just like, man, if there was an app that you could just do a random number and then split a branching workflow based on that random number and be able to do a different outcome, either create a record or move a stage or do something. You could simulate some pretty cool stuff, right? And so I was sitting around waiting for happily to build, you know, this app that, you know, generates a random number, right? You know, something simple, Nice, nice little easy utility app. And then I was talking to. I can't remember who I was talking to. I think it was Carter McKay. And he's like, dude, it's really easy just to, like, generate a random number using a custom coded workflow auction. I'm like, sick. Show me how he showed me. Or whoever it was showed me. You know, I ended up building this whole portal out that would take contacts that were like, dumped into HubSpot and then run them through these workflows that would hit a custom coded workflow action that would simply just generate a random number. And then what I could do is I could build branching workflows that would look back and say, if that Number from that action equals whatever. And I basically did it like a dice roll. So I just did choose a number between one and six, right? And then I could build these branches that say, all right, if the number is 1, 2, or 3, do this. If it's not do nothing, or if it's one, do this. If it's two, do this. If it's three, do this, Whatever. And so it's like a cute little use case that let me do some stuff like that. But the other thing too, is for us, on the happily side, it's a really good way for us to prototype workflow actions that we build into our apps. We could easily build a proof of concept instead of standing up a whole, you know, app and everything, we can be like, all right, well, have one of our delves build the code that, you know, makes the workflow action do what we want it to do, and then we could test it and see how it works and all that stuff. And then they can go build an app, or build it into an app that does it using a workflow extension. But, like, you know, there's cooler things you can do besides that, right? But, like, if you ever wish a workflow action could do something else, like custom code of workflow actions, like, are the way for that, because you could literally code it to do almost anything with your HubSpot data, right? Whether it's looping through something or. Or changing some properties in certain ways, if then statementing things like, within, you know, one single action and, like, just doing stuff that's hard to do just by, like, stringing actions together, like individual ones.
It's great, right?
And you can even reference data in, like, a outside source to make a decision about something that you do. Like, inside HubSpot, there's literally, if you can code it, you can do it, right? You know, sure. I'm pretty sure there are, like, some limitations in terms of different things that custom code workflows can do, but they're so way above my head and developery that I'm not even sure they're even worth talking about.
Right.
But yeah, I've been doing that, which is really cool. I do a lot of stuff with, like, scheduled workflows as well. So, like, you know, I built our whole partner payout system to run on, like, monthly, you know, workflows that will, you know, combine a bunch of data from, you know, stuff that we know about in terms of, like, which partners are associated to what app subscriptions and payments being made and, like, all that stuff. So there's just like an infinite amount of stuff you could do with it, really.
But I heard there is Max is a nerd.
Yeah, Max is a nerd.
That's what I heard.
He's our happy little nerd, happiest little nerd. George okay, I need you to put on your simplifying the complex hat. Although actually I'm not sure you ever take it off. But we've had some pretty complex discussions.
Today about what business operations actually means, who the HubSpot operations hub is actually for. We've covered a lot of ground, so if our listeners today only walk away with a few takeaways from today's discussion, what do you want them to be?
Yeah, I think there's a couple things. Whether you can get Operations Hub or not, my hopes is that in the future, by the way, this is not an upsell, but in the future I hope that if you don't have it, you can get it. Fundamentally, data hygiene, de duping contacts, keeping a shiny clean HubSpot portal is one of what should be your main focuses on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. There's ways that you can do all of this manually, but again, much of this becomes automagical if you have HubSpot Operations Pro. The other thing that I would want people to think about is as fast as everything is changing business, the way we sell, the way we service, the things that humans need from us. Knowing that you can reach into your pocket, aka HubSpot workflows and custom coded workflows, and you can extend what is already super powerful for all of your departments with a with a nicely strategized, optimized and created custom coded workflow that when, when it's in place, people just step back and go holy crap, that feels like magic. Right? So that's the two things is one, be hyper focused on how do you have the dopest, cleanest data hygiene portal possible to man and how can you enable yourself to extend the needed functionality for the teams to do the things that they need to do?
Fantastic.
Love it.
I. I think we got it.
Okay, well then, bye everybody. See, I miss the days where we used to have like a poem or like something weird or dude, the poems.
Are probably crazy that we could make.
A Roses are red, violets are love HubSpot Operations Hub and you should too.
