Last month, the HubSpot Marketplace reached the milestone of 1000+ apps. An incredible achievement! Did you know? On average, our customers install seven apps, and more than a quarter of customers install more than 10. That reminded me of Juli Durante's INBOUND talk last year. When considering automating our processes, how do we navigate that burden of choice?

It can be straight-up overwhelming. Should you spend time building it yourself, hire a contractor, or finally install that integration that Bobby from sales has been suggesting for months? Yes, technology is great, but here's what Juli said, "Tech doesn't solve your problems". Understand your processes first, map out your automation second, consider your tools third.

So to start, sit down with your teams and review the operations they're carrying out manually, and why. You may come across examples like marketing exporting their list each week, or success managers typing up each onboarding email. What are their goals, and how does it affect the customer experience? 

Second, to figure out the type of automation you need, here's a pro tip: Rank the process on complexity and scale. Use the diagram above as your guide. A task is generally more complex the longer it takes to be carried out, or when it requires someone of skill or rank. Then consider scale: as your company’s revenue grows or headcount increases, will the job need to be carried out more frequently or not?

Once you've done all that, you can start to consider the tools you need to get the job done. As the diagram suggests, for operations of lower complexity that will scale as you grow, a Drag-&-Drop workflow tool like HubSpot's should do the trick. When you're facing a recurring and highly complex task, go tell Bobby the good news because that's where the HubSpot App Marketplace becomes very appealing. 

However, some manual processes are too complex and unscalable. Like deal renewals, territory management, referral programs,... That's where you should consider HubSpot's custom code actions. They let you automate anything. Not code savvy? We've got you covered! Just copy-paste the code you need from our Use Case Library, or sign up for our Masterclass in Custom Automation this February and learn how to write them yourself.

Now go forth, and automate. See you next month! 🚀

By Jan Bogaert

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