Data quality is one of the most important concepts when it comes to your CRM and company success. Data, at the end of the day, is the engine that drives the company's strategy, giving you a competitive advantage over others.
HubSpot understands how companies need to take care of their most valuable resource: information and they launched one of their most powerful Hubs, the Operations Hub. This tool is key to helping companies grow because you can ensure that your data will flow seamlessly between different platforms in your tech stack. Being customizable can be the key that opens a universe of opportunities.
Why is Data Quality Important?
Although it is very likely that you know the answer to this question, we continue to find clients who are still not convinced of how much they lose by not having their systems in order with the correct data. Although having information is a tool, it can also be a double-edged sword if you are not taking advantage of it. One of the elements of data quality is how the information that is obtained must be relevant, accurate, and purposeful. These characteristics allow you to make better business decisions and grow in a more organized way.
Having thousands of contacts in a table can be considered a database, but being able to work with that table and see how the database behaves is only possible when the data is clean. Once the data has been cleaned, it is time to work on them, add more context, and make strategic decisions with the potential to revolutionize your business.
What is Data Quality?
Having quality data depends on different factors that benefit most from being aligned, meaning it is useless to have one of the following characteristics if the rest are not going to be there. For example, having precise data is good, but if it is not complete, you will not be able to do much with it. The 6 pillars that you must take into account are:
- Accuracy: This refers to how accurate the data you have in your database is. It is one thing to have a lot of information and quite another for it to be accurate. Inaccurate data creates friction in your team and it can make the final customer experience awful. Without accurate information, it is very difficult to establish trust.
- Completeness: More is not always better. In many cases, having less information on each client with a better capture percentage is more efficient. Having 20 data points from a prospect is completely irrelevant if most of it does not match what you need to know. Make sure you are clear about which data you absolutely need and which is additional data that can provide extra value but is not the focus of the strategy.
- Relevance: Are you requesting data that really contribute to your strategy or are you just going with the flow of the industry? If you gather the information that is going to provide no real value, it is dispensable and, on many occasions, better not to have it.
- Consistent: If there is information running within different systems and it is always structured in a similar way, it is easy to translate data from one tool to another. Using completely alienated objects threatens the effectiveness of your strategy, jeopardizes the trust of the entire organization, and may lead to the information being questioned.
- Accessible: If not everyone involved in the operation has the ability to see the information and data that is being generated and analyzed, the previous points are of no use. It is essential that the information is not divided into sections. Instead, it should always be accessible by the right people within the company
- Updated: Data is a living entity that is in constant movement and a database must be the same. A correct update of the data is key to maintaining the organization of the database. It allows you to know that the information you plan to use is the most recent and, therefore, useful.
Where Does HubSpot Come In?
As you probably already know, one of HubSpot's main strengths is the automation and workflows that help free your team from monotonous and repetitive processes so they can focus on activities that add greater value to the company.
However, one of HubSpot's main weaknesses was, a couple of years ago, how difficult it was to program and connect systems that were not already within the HubSpot marketplace. But today, this weakness has remained in the past, since the Operations Hub arrived to solve these problems between data and systems.
The Operations Hub is designed primarily for the RevOps or Revenue Operations area, whose job is to align marketing, sales, and customer service in a more agile process with the customer at the center of everything. If your company does not have a RevOps area, it is very likely that it is even more necessary to have Operations Hub implemented in your company.
When the different areas cannot align with each other because the information is not shared equally and some of the tools within the company's technological stack are not well connected, a company cannot grow exponentially because their efficiency stagnates and processes break down.
The Operations Hub is HubSpot's solution to help your business achieve a well-integrated technology stack, keep databases clean, and automate processes that can otherwise hold back growth. Furthermore, it becomes crucial for developers who can create new connections through APIs or custom integrations. Imagine workflows on steroids :-)
This Hub benefits the company in three main ways:
Data Synchronization
This is especially useful when your company has a large technology stack and wants to connect two or more systems to its CRM. Thanks to the data synchronization functions, the information will travel bidirectionally between systems, in addition to giving you the possibility of creating custom field mapping, filtering, and having a historical synchronization of the data so that everyone in the company can be aligned. In addition, with the data deduplication, cleaning, and correction functionalities, you can save time and ensure that your data is in optimal condition and in the same format.
As you well know, data is the fuel that drives your CRM and, therefore, your company. The better the data quality and the greater the trust that everyone has in it, the more scalable your business operation is.
Automating Processes
The second area where the Operations Hub can significantly help your business is automation. While HubSpot's other Hubs already include workflow creation, this Hub enhances those capabilities with some extensions and third-party applications. Moreover, where it really shines is in the possibility of designing custom flows using programming (you will most likely need the support of a partner agency), giving you the freedom to adapt powerful flows to the needs of your company.
Reporting
It is commonly said that what is not measured cannot be improved. Thanks to this tool, worries about creating valuable reports disappear. With this Hub, you can organize your data in groups or in collections that provide you with a segmented and curated database based on the requirements of your business. This organization generates better reports, meaning you waste less time creating and extracting data. And, if you want to report in a BI tool, you can connect your data sources through Snowflake. You can also create custom reports directly from HubSpot, which creates a visual of your customers, sales, behaviors, and marketing campaigns.
Other Advantages
In addition to the pillars on which the Operations Hub is built, it has some other functions that help keep your company in order, such as the segmentation of users and permissions, This aspect maintains the efficiency of your company and the health of your data by giving you personalized access and permissions to the different roles that exist in your company. Another tool (still in BETA) is the Data Quality Command Center, a central system where you have a simple overview of the health of your database, as well as details on the status of your system and integrations. This helps you solve issues before they become a much bigger problems.
Who is the Operations Hub for?
It is essential for anyone who uses two or more Hubs or for companies with a tech stack made up of multiple technology tools that require a central piece to unify them, keeping the data in one place. It is also highly recommended if your company has complex sales or marketing processes that require custom adaptation or configurations that go beyond what HubSpot originally offers or if you have plans to work with a Partner agency on custom development.
The Operations Hub is the master key that companies like us use when it comes to writing some custom code, creating a custom webhook, or a special API.
Even if you don't have an Operational Income or RevOps area, this tool is very useful for aligning areas and improving the quality of the data you use on a daily basis. If you are not so sure about how this Hub can add value to your company, but still think that it could have an interesting place in your current operation, let's talk.
At CRM Toolbox, we have been helping companies with their integrations for years and we have seen many of our clients grow with different Hubspot Hubs. Feel free to schedule a call with me. I am more than happy to listen to what your pains are. how much you need this Hub or not depends on your current operation, your short-term plans, and the systems you use.
