The Ultimate Guide to Operations Hub

We’re excited to announce Operations Hub, a suite of tools that supercharges HubSpot’s CRM platform with tools that make data management easier, more efficient, and more accessible for everyone at your company: improved integrations, robust data quality tools, flexible business process automation, and powerful data prep tools.

The new hub is designed to align companies around clean and connected data, to keep processes efficient at scale, and to empower operations teams to spend less time on reactive data tasks and more time on business strategy.

The Backstory

As HubSpot Chairman Brian Halligan once said at INBOUND, starting a business has never been easier. But scaling a business is harder than ever.

Why is that? 

As companies scale, systems snowball. Every employee buys their favorite SaaS app. Every manager maintains their own spreadsheet. Every team builds their own processes. And as time goes on, disconnection ensues. Mistrust and miscommunication flare. Efficiency tanks. 

Learn More About HubSpot's Operations Hub Software

To solve this problem, each department hires its own operations person, hoping to connect the dots and architect a better system. But in reality, ops is brought on too late, tasked with the impossible project of untangling sloppy systems and overly complex processes, all from their own silo. Eventually, this crucial role ends up under-resourced, overworked, and doomed to fail.

If you’re in ops, you know what we’re talking about. Even if you’re not, chances are you know these growing pains too (or you will soon). An ineffective operations strategy can lead to unsubscribes, lost deals, and cancellations.

When you’re looking to scale, operational inefficiency and complexity are the enemy of growth.

Enter Revenue Operations.

At HubSpot, we believe that in order to scale better, companies need to run better. To run better, you need an operations team that’s unchained from disconnected, dirty data and mundane, manual processes. You need an Operations team that’s unleashed to solve real business problems. 

How can you do this? With Revenue Operations (RevOps).

With your operations teams working together under a unified RevOps strategy, they’ll be able to more efficiently set up your go-to-market teams for success, and help delight your customers at scale. But merely adopting a strategy is not enough. You need the right tools and processes to execute and support your RevOps strategy.

That’s why we’re thrilled to launch Operations Hub. HubSpot is now leading the RevOps charge with a new Hub that is specifically designed to empower operations professionals. With Operations Hub, your ops team is equipped with the tools necessary to automate away their daily pain points, and they are fully set up to be a key player to help scale your company.

Explore HubSpot's RevOps & Operations Community.

A Tour of Operations Hub 

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive deeper into the product. Operations Hub has five core features. Here’s the scoop on each:

1. Data Sync

What is data sync?

Data sync is a new, native way of connecting your business apps to HubSpot. It's the next evolution of PieSync, an industry-leading integration platform that was acquired by HubSpot in 2019. With data sync, you can keep all your HubSpot records in lockstep with the rest of your tech stack, freeing you from hours of spreadsheet exports and imports. With data sync, you can rest assured that your customer data is always consistent and up to date. 

Which apps can I sync?

With the launch of Operations Hub, you now have access to 90+ new HubSpot-built integrations, including Google Contacts, Mailchimp, Microsoft Dynamics, Mindbody, Bullhorn, and more. The new apps range from ERPs to email marketing apps, from customer service tools to billing apps. You can find the entire collection of supported apps on the HubSpot Marketplace.

Not finding your favorite app in that list? No worries! We plan to broaden data sync with more new integrations and deepen the existing integrations with more objects and features over time.

What’s the difference between data sync and a traditional integration?

There are four main differences: 

• Traditional integrations sync data in one direction. For example, you might sync contacts from your CRM to your email platform, but not the other way around. Integrations powered by data sync work two ways, passing information to and from any system.
• Traditional integrations are only forward-looking. They pass data between systems, but only data that’s added or updated after the integration is set up. Data sync passes both future and historical data between systems.
• Traditional integrations are trigger-based. When a certain thing happens in one app (e.g. a certain property is updated on a lead record), information gets passed to the other app. Data sync is real time and keeps two databases consistently synchronized.
• Traditional integrations are rigid and one-size-fits-all. Data sync integrations are customizable: you can limit which information passes back and forth between apps, and update your choices at any time.

The best part: data sync doesn’t require a single line of code. You just choose the app, pick which information to include, and save your sync. HubSpot will talk directly with your other app to keep things syncing for you.

Why would I need data sync?

While HubSpot has a lot to offer, chances are you don’t rely on HubSpot alone to run your business. And you shouldn’t have to. With data sync you can seamlessly integrate your apps and have all your customer data unified and centralized, keeping your team aligned and efficient as you scale.

How much does data sync cost?

Data sync starts for the low price of free ninety-nine. That’s right — you can connect any of the supported apps to HubSpot for free and sync all the foundational information about your contacts two ways. If you want to go beyond the foundational information — to sync custom properties and change your field mappings — Operations Hub Starter unlocks those features and costs $50 per month.

How can I learn more?

Check out the data sync feature page, the help documentation, or the Academy lesson. Ready to start setting up your first sync? Head over to the App Marketplace to test drive the new integrations. 

2. Programmable Automation 

What is programmable automation?

Programmable automation enables you to execute code directly within HubSpot workflows. Programmable automation encompasses three automated actions in HubSpot: a new “custom code” action in workflows, the “create a webhook” action in workflows, and custom-coded bot action in chatflows. In the past, your automation in HubSpot was only as powerful as our menu of predefined workflow actions. Powerful, but not flexible enough to support the most advanced and custom use cases. With programmable automation, your HubSpot automation is as powerful as your imagination. 

What’s so cool about this?

As your company scales, customer touchpoints multiply. Maintaining a consistent customer experience across all those channels without sacrificing internal efficiency requires strong automation. But your business isn’t cookie-cutter, so your automation shouldn’t be either. With the new custom workflow actions, your operations team can quickly adapt your processes to the ever-changing needs of your customers, ensuring that your company runs smoothly as it scales. 

How does it work?

Programmable automation encompasses three automated actions:

• Custom code actions in workflows. Find the help documentation here.
• Webhook actions in workflows. Find the documentation here.
• Custom code actions in bots. Find the technical documentation here.

Note that the latter two actions aren’t new. They’ve previously been included in other hubs. With the launch of Operations Hub, webhook actions and custom code actions in bots are now available only in Operations Hub. Existing customers with access to these features as of April 21 will retain access to them moving forward, regardless of whether they purchase Operations Hub.

What are some popular use cases? 

With custom code actions, you can create custom workflow or bot actions using JavaScript or Python. These custom actions can be used to make API calls, run SQL queries, model objects, and more. Here are some recent examples to spark your imagination:

• Enriching HubSpot records with third-party data. For instance, when a lead fills out a form, query another database (like Zillow or Clearbit) and append that data to the HubSpot record, then create a task if the data is worth following up on.
• Automating your renewal management. For example, when a deal closes, automatically create a new deal in the future and remove a discount from the price.
• Creating complex lead rotators with nuanced logic and external app dependencies. One example: look up lead zip codes in a third-party database, map those zip codes to regions, and assign leads to reps in those regions based on availability.

Curious to dig even deeper? Check out our use case library, or explore  HubSpot Solutions Partner Aptitude 8’s Operations Hub Playbook.

Is this safe?

If you're nervous about security, HubSpot has you covered. API keys and such can be added as secrets, which ensures that they will be encrypted and safely stored by HubSpot. Secrets can be referenced by any other custom code actions in your account. This means you can create actions that access information from other systems, and use them to power other business processes within HubSpot. 

I don’t know code. Help!

Know code and ready to rock? Don’t let us stop you; try out Operations Hub now. Hate code and avoid it at all costs? That’s okay too! You can create powerful automations without code (HubSpot’s automation engine is the best in the industry). If you’re curious to explore what’s possible with programmable automation but need help, reach out to a HubSpot Solutions Partner.

How can I learn more?

Check out the programmable automation feature page, the help documentation, or the Academy lesson.

Or try it for yourself: Programmable automation is available in Operations Hub Professional. Sign up for a free 14-day trial now.

3. Data Quality Automation 

What is data quality automation?

Dirty data slows teams down and ruins customer experiences. With data quality automation, cleaning data isn’t just easy; it’s automatic. Data quality automation entails a new set of workflow actions that format property values in certain ways: capitalizing letters, fixing date properties, updating phone numbers, and more. With a CRM that cleans itself, your operations team can focus on sparking growth instead of putting out data fires.

How does it work?

The new data formatting actions can be added to your workflows, just like any other action. 

Data quality automation doesn't just improve the data inside your HubSpot account. If you’re using integrations powered by data sync, that cleaned data can flow into all of your other apps as well, giving your team the high-quality data they need to do their jobs in all their apps.

How can I learn more?

Data quality automation is now available in Operations Hub Professional. Learn more about it here. Or sign up for a free trial now.

4. Datasets

What are datasets?

As your business scales, your data proliferates. More objects, more fields, more metrics. It gets harder and harder for business users to build meaningful reports. Too often, they’re forced to lean on ops teams and analysts to answer one-off reporting requests. The result: slow, inconsistent, and often ad-libbed reporting for business users, and a reactive ops team struggling to stay afloat.

With datasets, ops teams can curate data into clean and reusable tables that can then be used by downstream users to create reports. This saves ops teams time and gives them more control over their data, and gives their downstream business users faster, easier, and more consistent insights.

What does that really mean?

Take a look at this "before" and "after." Put simply, datasets make custom reporting in HubSpot more accessible and more robust. Building a dataset gives all your company's reporting users an easy jumping-off point for analysis.

How do datasets work?

To build a dataset, navigate to Reports > Datasets, and follow these instructions. 

Anything else? 

Datasets pack an extra punch: 

As a part of datasets, for the first time, you can now calculate formulas directly in the context of HubSpot reporting — no need to bog down the CRM with additional fields solely for reporting purposes. With this new feature, you can calculate date differences (e.g. time to first conversion), sales cycle speed (e.g. time in deal stages), sales commissions, and more. 

How can I learn more?

Datasets is a part of Operations Hub Enterprise. Try it out for yourself in a free 14-day trial or talk to sales for a guided demo.

5. Snowflake data share

What is Snowflake data share?

A fast, secure, easy integration between HubSpot and Snowflake

Back up. What's Snowflake?

Snowflake is an industry-leading data platform, and can be combined with an enterprise reporting tool like Looker to create a best-in-class business intelligence stack. 

While many customers choose to do all their front-office reporting in HubSpot, some of HubSpot’s most advanced users prefer to unite their data in Snowflake (or another data warehouse). To make this process  easy, Snowflake data share gives you easy and secure access to your HubSpot data in your Snowflake instance. For all the technical details, read through the technical documentation.

Any limitations to know about?

HubSpot’s Snowflake data share integration is currently available only if the region of your Snowflake account matches the region of your HubSpot account.

How can I learn more?

Snowflake data share is a part of Operations Hub Enterprise. Try it out for yourself in a free 14-day trial or talk to sales for a guided demo.

Operations Hub FAQs

How much does Operations Hub cost?

Operations Hub starts free. For no fee, you can sync almost 100 of your favorite apps with HubSpot (more on that in a moment). Operations Hub Starter unlocks additional syncing features and clocks in at $50/month; Operations Hub Professional costs $800/month; Operations Hub Enterprise costs $2000/month.

*Standard API limitations apply. For more details please see the HubSpot Product and Services Catalog.

I’m not in Operations. Can I still use Operations Hub?

Of course! The features in Operations Hub solve operational challenges for scaling companies: disconnected tools, dirty data, clunky processes, and inaccessible reporting. If you’re in charge of solving those problems for your company, Operations Hub is for you, whether or not you have “operations” in your title.

I already pay for another HubSpot product. How do I get Operations Hub?

If you already use HubSpot, great news: you now have access to the free Operations Hub features. Curious to try the paid version? Click your name in the upper-right of your HubSpot account, then “Pricing and Features,” and sign up for a 14-day free trial.

Blog posts are cool and all, but I’d rather watch HubSpot Academy videos.

You got it. Check out HubSpot Academy Professor Kyle Jepson’s deep dive on Operations Hub here.

That concludes our grand tour of Operations Hub. Questions or comments? Let us know in the HubSpot Community.

Ready to get your hands dirty? If you’re already a HubSpot user, check out the free Operations Hub tools (including data sync) in your account now, or sign up for a free trial of Operations Hub. Not yet using HubSpot? There’s never been a better time to start. Get started for free today.