Everything You Need to Know About HubSpot Operations Hub

If you’ve worked with Lynton before, you know we’re a HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner. We love HubSpot. Our teams use it daily, both internally and within our partnerships. So, you can only imagine the excitement we felt when HubSpot told us of a forthcoming new addition to the growth stack: Operations Hub.

Ready to be as thrilled as we are? Then, let’s dive in.

Announced in April 2021, Operations Hub is HubSpot’s latest tool to help organizations run their companies more efficiently. There are three current tiers - Free, Starter, and Pro. The solution was built to empower operations professionals, teams, or entire departments. Often, these teams are tasked with a wide array of responsibilities -- from balancing revenue with costs, finding the right job applicants, looking for ways to streamline tech stacks, and more.

In fact, if you were to browse job postings for operations roles, you may find verbiage like:

An operations manager is responsible for keeping track of the “big picture.” Responsibilities include:

Long-term planning that moves the company’s overall goals forward

Coordination of different teams for cross-functional learning opportunities and growth

Analyzing budgets to find ways to optimize profits and maximize revenue

Communication with leadership about shifting priorities that align better with end goals

Motivating employees and continuously finding ways to improve morale and productivity

Identifying potential problems and opportunities to find technology or process solutions that improve efficiency

To achieve these goals, they must find ways to automate specific business processes, integrate appropriate systems and platforms, ensure good data quality, and make strategic decisions. We could name more, but our list may overwhelm you. And while yes, it is a lot to handle, the end goal is worth it. By performing these jobs, operations teams can increase the value of their services and products sustainably, so internal teams aren’t burnt out.

But there’s just one problem. In today’s operations landscape, processes and teams are often siloed and reactive, causing the business to run slowly, the customer experience to be fragmented, and internal teams scrambling.

So how does a business become more united? Strategic? How do they create a better customer and employee experience and run their business more seamlessly?

You guessed it. Operations Hub.

Section 02

The Features of Operations Hub

Scratching your head at “custom coded workflow actions” or “Data Sync?” Don’t worry; we weren’t going to name-drop several Operations Hub features without digging into them.

After all, they’re integral pieces of the platform. Let’s take a look.

Data Sync

In 2019, HubSpot acquired PieSync, a highly-rated data syncing iPaaS. Data Sync is the evolution of PieSync and offers both a current and historical two-way data synchronization, connecting HubSpot to 25 of the most used and most requested integrations. Why? When your tools, data, and experience are fragmented, your processes can slow and suffer. Data Sync eliminates this problem by providing a unified view of your customers across all your tools. And not just operation departments can tap into Data Sync’s standard and custom features. Everyone from your marketing, sales, and IT departments will benefit from Data Sync, too!

"Data sync will take the pain out of integrating your apps and managing your data" - Hubspot

Examples of available platforms within Data Sync:

Examples of Data Sync

Programmable Automation

Operation Hubs has various automation features to make the most of your data and workflows. They include:

Custom Coded Bot Actions - HubSpot’s chatbot capabilities are vast. However, they can still be limited in some situations. Custom-coded bot actions extend your chatbot’s current abilities and allow you to create complex algorithms that answer your leads’ or customers’ most pressing questions, all with the data from your portal. For example, you could set up custom code on the backend to trigger a specific sequence of questions that lead your prospect to a perfect-fitting selection or product (based on their answers).
Custom Workflow Actions - Custom actions let you define a specific, tailored action that can be executed within a workflow. They specifically work by enabling custom JavaScript code blocks right into your workflow. If you’ve exhausted standard options within workflows, go for this. It’s beneficial if you’re trying to recreate customization or functionality you had in another system like Salesforce or perform all your business processes (marketing, sales, service, accounting, operations) without having to leave HubSpot.
Webhooks - HubSpot is generally not the only system a company uses within their organization. Like Data Sync, webhooks are a way to sync data across platforms. Webhooks in workflows allow you to pass real-time information from HubSpot to another web application. With a webhook, you’re automatically notified when the system you’re tracking (like an outside accounting platform, for example) is updated. This lets you keep all of your tech stack up to date without multiple requests.

Section 04

How You Can Extend Data Sync’s Integration Capabilities

We can all agree that Operations Hub comes with some extraordinary features, but there’s one worth highlighting because there are methods to enhance its integration capabilities. Namely, Data Sync.

As described, Data Sync, which comes with all Operations Hub tiers, syncs current and historical customer data bi-directionally and in real-time, connecting HubSpot to 25 popular applications. Another way to look at Data Sync is to refer to it as an integration, or connection, of HubSpot’s data with an external platform.

How does information flow using it? Data Sync works by connecting default and custom properties (depending on your tier) from contact or company records. For instance, let’s say you choose Salesforce as one of the applications to sync using this feature. Utilizing Data Sync, a Salesforce contact would flow into HubSpot as a HubSpot contact, and vice versa. That means all the details related to your Salesforce contact would instantly appear in HubSpot, letting you use that information with HubSpot’s tools. You’d also benefit from having HubSpot contact or company details appear in Salesforce.

All of this is excellent and can help align your different teams by keeping data up to date and available in multiple systems. Yet, you could potentially need a little more – particularly if you have a more customized platform you want to sync with HubSpot. Or, if you want more than just contact and company records moving in and out of HubSpot and another system, you’d also need a more in-depth integration.

Luckily, with the higher tiers of Data Sync, there is customization available. However, you still may need to go just a little further. In situations like these, Lynton and our child brand, SyncSmart, can help (that’s right, we do more than simply write about integrations!)

SyncSmart

SyncSmart offers a series of packaged, downloadable HubSpot integrations for different systems that go beyond simply syncing contact and company fields. Take Salesforce again as an example. SyncSmart’s packaged app syncs Salesforce Leads, Users, Accounts, Opportunities, and more bi-directionally. All of these may be useful to operations teams or managers as they dig deeper into their company’s processes and workflows.

See SyncSmart's library of integrations here.

Integration

Lynton

Sometimes, a packaged integration that lets you sync Activities, Members, and other data is just what you need. Other times, your organization needs to go even further with your HubSpot integration. The Lynton team can build custom solutions to move your most unique business processes from one system to another. We do this through custom field mappings.

The best way to describe a custom field mapping is to provide a real-life scenario. You may have non-standard fields in your HubSpot portal that don’t exist in a typical CRM or ERP system. You could have a field titled, “What is the best method to contact you?” on a HubSpot form. Mapping this field back to your CRM or ERP system can provide helpful information to your dashboards that your sales, marketing, and operations teams look at regularly. With a custom field mapping, you can have that data remain in your HubSpot portal and flow into your CRM or ERP to utilize it as needed.

Think a custom integration fits your needs? Learn more about out-of-the-box vs custom integrations.

Section 05

Why Operations Hub?

"To grow better, your business needs to run better" - HubSpot

HubSpot’s mission is simple: Helping millions grow better. Operations teams are crucial to an individual company’s growth. Without an operations department or someone performing that role, companies may struggle to manage their daily activities. They could miss opportunities to streamline business processes that not only impact their bottom line but their employees’ well-being. And without operations professionals, the role of ensuring better services and products for their customers may land on other team members who may not be suited for the job.

With so much at stake when it comes to operations, HubSpot naturally wanted to offer support in Operations Hub. As detailed throughout, the platform provides these teams with the easy-to-use yet powerful tools needed to maximize their efforts. Having the resources to make the operations easier is beneficial to those within the department and essentially every other aspect of a business.

Section 06

Getting Up and Running with Operations Hub

Congratulations, you’ve reached the end! If you’re on your way to sign the dotted line of Operations Hub, we have one last thing to address and that’s onboarding. While expanding your technology stack is exciting, it can be overwhelming. HubSpot’s software is comprehensive and if you have little to no experience, it may seem impossible to use.

It doesn’t have to be that way. With thorough training and commitment, you will see success with Operations Hub. And with an onboarding partner, you may see even more success.

That’s where we come in. Again!

At Lynton, we have an entire team dedicated to helping onboarding different HubSpot hubs - and we’re happy to help you navigate Operations Hub. Whether it’s building out your custom workflows or learning how to leverage Data Sync, we’re here for you. Feel free to contact us today to learn more about how we approach onboarding, including different explanations of features, set-up, and training on the functionality itself.

Section 07

Migrating to HubSpot from Another CMS

If you want to take advantage of CMS Hub, you can migrate your existing site to HubSpot by working directly with HubSpot or partnering with Lynton. At Lynton, we offer complete migrations of your site’s content, structure, processes to HubSpot. We have deep experience and expertise in what we consider standard and complex website migration processes. Those projects include:

Standard –A migration of your site pages (template of your webpages, landing pages, blog) and data from one system to HubSpot, then recreating and developing the site as-is.
Complex – A total migration of all your site’s pages, functionality, and content, plus any training and onboarding HubSpot’s tools.

To make the most out of your investment, we recommend having in-depth conversations with all your stakeholders, defining any new processes, and determining who needs to use different HubSpot functionality. If you’re new to website design and development, we advise that you discuss HubSpot themes. You can even explore some on the Asset Marketplace to start better understanding HubSpot.