THE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO

GENERAL AUTOMATION PLATFORMS

Learn how to take advantage of API integration platforms that are designed for citizen automators
Table of Contents

Introduction Part six: becoming successful with

general automation platforms
Part one: What are general
automation platforms? Part seven: Buying general
automation platforms
Part two: Why GAPs are gaining
momentum in the marketplace Part eight: The future of general
automation platforms
Part tree: How are general
automation platforms different? Part nine: Tray’s general
automation platform
Part four: Common features in general
automation platforms Conclusion

Part five: Business case for general About this guide

automation platforms

2
Introduction
Why should you read this guide?

Every business wants to grow faster and spend This Beginner’s Guide to General Automation
fewer resources to do so. If you’re looking for Platforms is designed to educate you on an
technology trends that can deliver you an edge, emerging new technology that has the potential
this guide is for you. to transform your business. It will define the
category and describe the benefits to companies
The average enterprise is using hundreds Cloud that are ready to grow. We’ll cover the following
applications, but struggles to automate processes topics.
that run across them. Similarly, the average
employee uses dozens of SaaS applications, yet • Why companies are now adopting General
isn’t empowered to improve the processes that Automation Platforms
fall under their purview. Until recently, automation
• How General Automation Platforms differ from
software required scarce coding skills. But with
other software categories
the rise of API Integration Platforms that are
designed for citizen automators, a new category • The common features and advanced functions
of software is available to workers of many types. of general automation tools
• How to build a business case and convince
General Automation Platforms stakeholders to act

enable business professionals • The future of General Automation Platforms

to automate processes across We’ve also included worksheets that you can use
any number of applications to figure out whether your company is ready for
General Automation Platforms and how it will help
and departments so that they you increase growth and productivity.
can scale their growth and
productivity.

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Part one: What are general
automation platforms?
WHAT: A General Automation Platform or GAP is a category of software which automates
processes that can span multiple applications across an organization.

GAPs are referred to as “general” because of three reasons.

1 First, business people use GAPs for a 2 Second, GAPs require general skills, rather than 3 Third, GAPS are owned by any
wide variety of processes. They are not specialized ones. They minimize the complexity user, rather than owned by a
limited to front-office only workflows. associated with building automatic, inter-application particular role or department.
They are not limited to IT managed workflows. For example, users of GAPs are not required They can be purchased,
operations. They are not limited to use by to write code. They should understand how to use a administered, and used
one industry or use by one department. drag-and-drop interface and understand when to use by business people in any
They are not limited to simple point-to- logical operators which are the building blocks for department, including IT and
point automation. They are not limited workflow automation. If a user happens to know how to engineering.
IT-driven automation initiatives. They are code, then their skills can also be harnessed in GAPs.
for general purposes. The critical point is that coding is entirely optional and
based on the preference of the user.

These general platforms emphasize the word “automation” because GAPs are not focused on merely the challenges of integrating. In fact, the
standardization of APIs has made the integration part of automation much more straightforward than in years past. While integration is an essential first
step, a significant portion of the value of GAPs comes from automation capabilities. For example, adding math or algorithms to your GAP enables you
to create new workflows like custom lead scoring. The value lies in producing the lead score, not just with the ability to integrated various marketing
engagement tools like lead capture forms, website analytics, and other tools. Automation is the next frontier of innovation.

We use the word “platform” because GAPs offer a broad set of capabilities that are designed for company-wide use rather than solely for a narrow
departmental function. We are not talking about a tool that has only a couple of applications.

4
What general automation platforms do?
General Automation Platforms streamline processes that touch multiple software applications
within a department or across departments. Here is a select list of use cases by each department.

Connect your disparate systems so that no lead gets left behind, and
marketing attribution is more accurate.
marketing stack to grow faster
• Chat capture: Sync the text from chat
Here are select use cases organized by conversations into marketing automation
marketing role and strategy: and CRM tools activity history so that all the
context of the customer journey is in one
Demand generation
place.
• Centralized data: Aggregate and centralize
performance data from channels such as • Selective chat: Show a website chat window
SEM, social, retargeting and others to get only to target accounts, so your sales or
at a glance visibility on top-of-the-funnel support teams do not waste time with low-
programs. value chats.

• Personalized email: Take the digital signals • Landing page integration: Connect best
of user behavior across your website, trial, of breed landing page software to your
or product as captured by customer events marketing stack so that form fills flow
platforms and logically route them to your smoothly.
marketing automation tool or email platform Events
for a hyper-targeted email program.
• Lead list ingestion: Make sure those scanned
• Message orchestration: Coordinate messages badges and lead lists from events rapidly get
across different mediums and channels like pushed into your systems.
email, chat, print, and advertising.
• Event management: Coordinate your
Web marketing event teams by syncing project and task
• Lead capture: Capture leads from web chat management software with CRM and
tools and route them to your marketing marketing software.

5
• Swag automation: Automate the shipping of gifts Customer marketing Good things happen when you can easily
to your tradeshow or prospects after events. • Survey logic: Create customized logic based automate the flow of data through your entire
on data in your CRM that determines which marketing stack. Data enrichment and happy
Marketing Ops
customers are sent a customer satisfaction customer detection become automatic and
• API limits management: Intelligently throttle continuous processes. Lead scoring is more
survey, then trigger the survey from your
the amount of data moving across your precise, and better equipped to identify buyer
provider.
applications so that you can stay under intent.
vendors strict API limits. • Happy customer detection: Integrate net
promoter scores into CRM to surface your Workflows as a whole become more agile,
• Lead enrichment: Take data from various
happiest customers to invite to participate in easier to scale, and increasingly capable of
data enrichment vendors and integrate it into
customer programs. generating substantial leads that move deeper
your marketing automation platform our CRM
into the sales funnel.
platforms. • One-click ordering of gifts: Empower sales
reps to send nurture gifts by merely pressing
• Lead scoring: Create custom lead scoring by
integrating various systems and applying the
a button in their CRM which is integrated via Automate your sales
APIs to gift fulfillment vendors.
algorithms that fit your needs. applications to drive more sales
Account-based marketing with less effort
• Lead routing: Intelligently route leads to the
right resource with flexible and custom logic. • Target account alerting: Alert sales reps when
one of their target accounts lands on your Below are a few examples of processes that
• Lead conversion: Automate processes to website. are enhanced when data flows are optimized
converted leads and contacts via your CRM’s API. for action:
• Lead-to account matching: Match new leads to
• Campaign creation automation: Automatically existing accounts to determine whether they • Sales data is gathered and enriched in a
create a new campaign when a lead with a belong to a particular sales rep for follow-up. single point of truth more effectively.
new UTM comes in.
• Account-based ad targeting synchronization: • Save email engagement data into your CRM
Product marketing Connect web visitor IP lookup services to so that your sales rep knows whether a sales
• High value features: Uncover which features your target account lists then trigger IP based lead has clicked on marketing or sales emails.
your users’ love by combining usage ad targeting systems to engage further warm • Custom lead scoring. Hot leads addressed
behavior and qualitative assessment and anonymous leads. instantly
surfacing them in real-time.
• Account-based email targeting: Connect IP • Alerting with all lead record info and a click to
• Sales enablement: Alert you sales enablement lookup services to your target account lists call hyperlink so reps can flow up fast.
expert when a sales rep has a competitive then trigger outbound emails to engage
deal that could use his expertise to win. warm anonymous leads further. • CRM alerts are triggered based on the most

6
 recent marketing automation platform and The overall result of these and other sales • Prioritize support requests based on client
content management platform data. process streamliners is the ability to drive payment status or service level agreement.
prospects deeper into the sales funnel faster
• Leads are automatically routed to the correct • Track churn can through customer utilization,
and to strategically and precisely time the
people. waning engagement, limited contact and
delivery of hard sells and upsells.
other data gathered from various integrated
• CRM merging and migration. Create bi-
applications.
directional sync between dozens of legacy
CRMs and a singular CRM instance. Less time looking for info more • Efficiently manage upsells by creating bi-
• Add conditional logic to the end of a
time to deliver customer success directional syncs between your Support
Platform and CRM systems.
customer data platform stream to create Achieving stellar customer satisfaction scores is
custom activities and records in CRM based no small feat. But it can get significantly easier With General Automation Platforms support
on events being created in connected when your systems offer you a full view of professional can spend less time tripping over
systems. customer health and also deliver a frictionless disparate SaaS apps and more time delivering
experience to your customers. smiles.
• Surface hot leads from webchat to your sales
team.
• Easily customize and automate post-sales
• MAP to CRM bi-directional sync: Keep your processes by connecting CRM and task
marketing automation platform entirely in- management tools.
sync with your CRM.
• Enrich new customer accounts with already
• Improve your request for proposal (RFP) existing prospect data.
process by connecting your CRM to Slack
• Streamline new customer onboarding
to give visibility to RFP contributors. Follow-
processes by connecting CRM, support, and
up efficiency as a whole improves with
project management tools.
automated communication processes.
Consequently, RFP win rates increase.
• Manage your sales approval process via slack

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Streamline business operations • React to changes in other third-party team members by automatically creating
systems like contract management software login credentials for necessary accounts,
across the organization (NetSuite), triggering automatic archiving of introducing the relevant team and location-
Business ops professionals are tasked with documents based on contract provisioning. In based groups, granting role-specific access
driving operational efficiency across an complex and always-changing license deals, privileges and distributing a welcome email
organization. With so many SaaS apps to this process is vital to remain compliant with with further instruction.
connect a general automation platform is a contract allowances.
Imagine your diverse engineering teams happy
godsend. Holistically speaking, a general automation tool, to use best of breed tools, and you’re glad
is a business ops professional swiss army knife. to have these different tools synced up in a
• Form requests between different teams:
It’s flexible and powerful and can be used in coherent and efficient process.
Forms are a great way to structure and
many ways.
standardize requests between groups,
creating a simple and transparent process. Extend IT and empower
• M&A integration: Post M&A systems integration Operationalize engineering the business
becomes a lot easier when you have a multi- processes to increase velocity
purpose tool that can migrate data and sync Information technology teams are
data across a wide variety of systems. Engineering ops is a source of advantage. Use overburdened with requests coming in from
General Automation Platforms to improve the across their enterprise to integrate SaaS
• Data warehouse integration: Centralize data velocity of a wide variety of processes. applications. Use General Automation Platforms
from any number of SaaS applications. to address a wide variety of situations.
• Automate the entirety of the deployment
• BI integration: Use a general automation
process, from general requests and the • Empower the business: Provide your line of
platform to integrate business intelligence or
generation of deployment branches to the business colleagues with an automation tool
data visualization tools and data warehouses.
commencement of jobs and creation and that they can manage.
• Execution layer on BI: Take action distribution of services.
• Replace outdated middleware: Swap out
automatically from changes in data values
• Automate the process by which bug reports end-of-life legacy middleware with a modern
from your business intelligence tool by
and feature requests are gathered and added general automation platform that both IT and
integrating to engagement tools like email
to project management tools, and necessary business can use.
and alert platforms.
parties are notified of their creation. Ensure
A clicks-or-code general automation platform
• Document management: Automate document requesters are updated as they move
is a versatile weapon that can support a wide
management based on workflows defined by through the product development lifecycle.
variety of requirements.
you.
• Facilitate efficient onboarding of new

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Make finance flow with control Enhance HR and improve
Specialized industries with especially rigorous, people operations
meticulous processes can also benefit from Human resource professionals juggle many
the ability to control the automated flow of data cloud applications and many processes. The
between applications. key to happy and productive employees
• Automatically gather and consolidate is a smooth, consistent, and professional
diligence artifacts that are needed for risk processes. With General Automation Platforms
management and vendor management. you can:

• Automate secure movement of data through • Automate the new employee onboarding
your organization in such a way that it process.
complies with the law. • Updates to employee status in HCM software
• Recommend new financial services through can automatically trigger credential revokes,
comprehensive product utilization monitoring. account terminations, and other processes.

• Connect payment data to your support • File access management can be automated.
systems to ensure that the support team • Alerts can be triggered when employees
isn’t wasting time supporting non-paying change or interact with privileged information.
customers.
• New employee data can be funneled directly
With General Automation Platforms, finance from an application tracking system into your
benefits from a central source of control of HCM software.
the flow of sensitive finance data while also
empowering the business with vital information. • Automate the employee offboarding process.
Automating these processes frees up time
that can be reallocated toward longer-term,
judgment-based goals: respectively, retain
customers, and retain employees.

9
What are the benefits of general
automation platforms?
Benefits of a general automation platform vary businesses buying from mega-vendors can
widely depending on the use-cases in which rest assured that the many disparate products
they are used. Holistically, GAPs reduce tedious offered can be automated with a general
and costly manual efforts to de-silo data and automation platform.
make use of it. But more importantly, GAPS
enable companies to do things that couldn’t be You can consolidate the number of point
done before. solutions in your stack by adopting General
Automation Platforms. GAPS have abstracted
GAPs streamline processes that touch multiple many of the standard software capabilities
applications within a department or across such as conditional logic, data storage, and
departments. This capability allows workflow data formatting so that you may find a general
builders to leverage their most critical software purpose and flexible tool can replace many
features to optimize operations in less labor- single-purpose applications.
intensive ways.
So companies see general automation tools as
In a general automation platform, data flows a way to grow faster and more efficiently.
between applications are controlled through
simple front-end interfacing rather than
through custom-built, backend integrations.
This improvement makes it much easier for
a company to scale its processes as the
organization grows.

With GAPs companies no longer need to avoid

buying best of breed solutions because they
are not integrated into their stack. Similarly,

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Benefits for marketers: higher Benefits for sales: increased Benefits for customer success:
contribution to revenue revenue with higher productivity happier customers, happier
As an example of automation’s potential, Sales process refinement is the most lucrative agents
consider its demonstrable benefits for form of enablement in modern business. With so many customers and customer support
marketers. According to Aberdeen, an analyst According to Aberdeen, sales streamliners channels to manage General Automation
firm: increase company revenue at 2.2 times the Platforms help support professionals tame the
rate of all other types of streamliners. Example chaos by automating the flow of customer-
• Best-in-class marketers are 74% more likely benefits include the following:
to have a strongly integrated system of related data. So you can spend more time
marketing technology solutions. • Less time researching leads due to better with customers and less time tripping over
data enrichment. technology. Here are just a few benefits that
• Marketing contributed 53% more to year- GAP customers are seeing.
over-year revenues for organizations using • More efficient sales reps due to more
well-integrated systems. qualified opportunities routed more efficiently. • Lower customer churn rates due to
improvements in proactive monitoring of
Here are benefits from specific marketing use • More upsell potential because of better
customer health.
cases. insights into usage and happiness of current
customers. • More efficient customer success reps due to
• An increased conversion rate of marketing the centralization of data from many different
qualified leads (MQL) to sales qualified leads There are many more benefits that sales
systems.
(SQL). organizations are seeing from the adoption of
General Automation Platforms. The only limit is • Measured improvements in customer
• Increased sales team appointments by 13%. your imagination for improving processes and satisfaction to do faster response times and
• Higher email open and response rates due to inventing new ones. quality of interaction.
improved personalization. • Better alignment to revenue retention due
• Save time for thousands of employees to to SLA and payment-status integration and
more efficient event management. automation.

There are many potential benefits to marketers Customer success doesn’t live in a silo and
depending on how many workflows you GAPs help bridge the flow of information across
automate and the size and scale your organizations.
operation.

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Benefits for business ops: less time managing engineering processes. Benefits for HR: more hires,
Because bug and feature request are captured,
productive people and routed, and ranked more efficiently engineering
happier staff
processes teams can improve customer responsiveness Human resources professionals benefit from
scores. streamlining their processes. Benefits include
Business operations professionals benefit
from General Automation Platforms in myriad the following:
ways. GAPs help business ops streamline Benefits for IT: empower the • More efficiently process and route the
processes across many SaaS tools across many
business to automate candidate pipeline.
departments.
IT teams that introduce General Automation • Happier staff due to smoother onboarding
• Avoid consuming costly internal engineering processes.
Platforms to business users are seen as
resources for one-off custom projects.
saviors who empower them to solve business • More impactful operations through the tighter
• Reduce internal friction from negotiating challenges. IT also benefits from a platform that alignment of MBOs/OKRs.
access to engineering resources. surpasses requirements for security, reliability,
General Automation Platforms support hiring,
resilience, and scalability.
• Improve process manageability because training, and retaining employees.
GAPs centralize integration and automation
workflows. Benefits for finance: control data
There are many more benefits of adopting and empower people
General Automation Platforms.
Finance professional appreciate General
Automation Platforms’ ability to simultaneously
Benefits for engineering: faster add control to the flow of sensitive financial
releases that customers value data from application to application as well
as enable business partners with the financial
Engineering teams that use General Automation information that can help them manage their
Platforms report speedier release cycle times business.
because they can spend more time coding and

12
Who uses general automation platforms?
Businesses of all sizes are embracing General Automation Platforms. As long as a company has two or more applications that contain data
or functionality that is part of a more extensive business process, General Automation Platforms can be useful.

Industry adopters at some point. The question is, will data flow The other substantial power-user base
The earliest adopters of General Automation automatically through those junctures, or will is comprised of administrators for one or
Platforms were technology and media it cause process deficiencies that frustrate more core applications. Fine-tuning the
companies, but organizations across all employees? performance within applications is challenging
industries have since discovered their value. enough; however, the modern application
To help prevent the latter scenario, the administrator must also fine-tune performance
The ability to quickly build out and automate following departments, in particular, have turned between applications. Workflows are not
processes between disparate applications their sights to General Automation Platforms: confined to individual apps, which means
translates to greater control over workflows • Marketing app administrators are increasingly being
with less development, which is an industry- • Sales encouraged to zoom out of silos and manage
agnostic benefit. • Support apps more holistically.
• Operations
Adoption among departments • Engineering
A diverse base of professionals has begun to • IT
champion General Automation Platforms, partly • Finance
because there is not a significant learning curve • HR
associated with using it effectively. By distilling
Top users and what they can do with General
otherwise complex integrations into an intuitive,
Automation Platforms
user-friendly interface, self-service automation
becomes a reality. Today’s general automation platform power
users tend to hold operations roles such
Most departments within an organization rely as marketing ops, sales ops, support ops,
heavily on data that originates in a broad swath business operations and developer ops. This
of applications, and not all of these applications is primarily because these professionals are
are confined to a single department. Workflows ingrained in workflows that rely heavily on the
between sales and marketing, for instance, timely movement of accurate, up-to-date data
and sales and support are expected to overlap between critical applications.

13
Worksheet: are you ready for general
automation platforms?
Use this worksheet to determine if your company is ready to use
General Automation Platforms.

For each category, select the appropriate Disagre Agree

number. If you strongly disagree, choose 1. If Factor
1 2 3 4 5
you strongly agree, choose 5. The numbers in
Automation can be a source of competitive advantage.
between 1 and 5 correspond to your level of
agreement, neutrality, or disagreement. Tally We have one or more staff that has to regularly engage in time-consuming
your score when you’re finished, and follow the manual work to move data from point A to point B.
instructions at the end. We're not able to accomplish workflows that just can't be done manually
(e.g., lead management, mapping payment data to CRM, behavior-based
personalization)
To interpret your results, sum your score. Our company would benefit from better visibility of data stuck in different
systems.
• If you scored > 30, you’re ready for a general
Connecting tools and coordinating processes has the potential to improve
automation platform.
the customer experience.
• If you scored between 20 – 30, you’re moving We have two or more applications that should be integrated.
in that direction. You should consider getting
The native integrations available to us are insufficient for our needs.
started with automation very soon.
Our desired solution requires more than a 1-step point-to-point integration.
• If you scored under 20, you might not be ready
We do not have access to developer resources with coding skills.
for a general automation platform quite yet.
The cost of paying a developer to custom code an integration, the cost to
retain him to manage and update the integration and the cost of waiting
for a custom project exceeds the price to buy a general automation
platform and the time to value of doing so.

14
Case Study:

DigitalOcean Uses Tray for Just-in-Time,

Personalized Marketing
Connects Segment, Marketo, Salesforce, GetFeedback, and Slack to
automate sales and marketing workflows handling millions of daily events

It’s the fastest growing and the second largest David Dorman, Director of Growth and
Industry: Technology
cloud computing platform in the total number Demand Generation at DigitalOcean, had a
Location: New York, New York of public-facing apps and websites according vision for connecting the company’s customer
Employees: 300+ to Netcraft. DigitalOcean, founded in 2011, is data platform (Segment) with Marketo and
sailing full-steam ahead in its quest to be the then connecting Marketo with Salesforce for
Solution: Tray.io Sales and Marketing Cloud
top cloud platform for developers in the world. a streamlined, efficient workflow. “Connecting
Highlights: And with nearly one million registered users the systems and workflow would let us be
• Built a data-queuing and segmentation engine taking advantage of its simple and robust smart about how we communicate with users,”
between Segment and Marketo to route platform, DigitalOcean is well on its way. says Dorman.
millions of events for more effective email Challenge: Connect Segment and Marketo Because of the expense and amount of time it
campaigns without using developer resources takes to develop a custom integration solution,
• Enriched Salesforce Service Cloud data for To help it maintain its phenomenal growth, Dorman knew that his team needed an
a single source of truth for the customer DigitalOcean chose Salesforce as its customer automation tool that didn’t require developer
relationship relationship management platform. As the resources. In fact, the DigitalOcean team
company rolled out Salesforce to its customer- already had what they thought would be the
• Connected Segment and GetFeedback to
facing teams, it began looking for a marketing right tool for the job. However, as DigitalOcean
automate and scale Net Promoter Score
automation tool that would work hand-in-hand prepared to deploy Marketo, it became
program
with Salesforce. Marketo was selected by clear that the original plan for integrating the
• Drove broader visibility with alerts in DigitalOcean in part because of the ability to systems was not going to work as the touted
Slack from form fills and status changes in integrate it with Salesforce. integration was not comprehensive enough,
Salesforce especially when it came to event

15
 Customer Success Team is fantastic,” says from Segment and summarizes the results
Dorman. “I can’t emphasize enough just how before putting them into Slack.
good the Tray folks are at what they do.”
- Enriching Salesforce Service Cloud data
Phase II Solution: Continue automating across Using Tray, DigitalOcean enriches Salesforce
the marketing stack service cloud accounts with core data to
provide a single source of truth for customer
With the initial integration under its belt,
relationships. After starting small with one
DigitalOcean began what it views as phase II of
segment of accounts, DigitalOcean now
its Tray journey. Explains Andy Hattemer, Senior
enriches millions of accounts in Salesforce
Growth Marketing Manager and Tray user and
using Tray.
evangelist at DigitalOcean, “We’re constantly
segmentation. That’s when Dorman and his finding new and interesting use cases for Tray - Collecting Net Promoter Scores at
team turned to Tray.io. within our organization. In terms of value from greater scale
the platform, the only limit is in ideas about how
DigitalOcean uses Tray to connect Segment
Phase I Solution: Integrate and automate two to connect data to action, whereas before we
and GetFeedback, and then automatically send
core systems with Tray.io were limited by technical capabilities or level
customer satisfaction surveys within an active
While the team at DigitalOcean was skeptical of effort.”
user base of more than a half-million customers.
at first, it quickly realized that the Tray.io Sales
Some of the additional use cases DigitalOcean
and Marketing Cloud could do everything that - Driving broader visibility with alerts
has already implemented with Tray include:
DigitalOcean needed and more. From Tray’s Tray creates Slack alerts based on form fills and
deep expertise in Marketo to its ability to handle - Adding location data to improve status changes in Salesforce to create greater
data from millions of events per day from customer segmentation visibility into actions.
Segment, the integration platform vendor was DigitalOcean uses Tray to pull in data
exactly what Dorman’s team was looking for. - Results: Use data streaming for just-in-time,
originating in its cloud platform and enrich the
personalized marketing
With help from the Tray.io Customer Success data with geolocation information. Tray then
puts the enriched data into Segment, where Tray is now a core part of the DigitalOcean
Team, DigitalOcean mapped its workload,
it’s made available to other applications within marketing technology stack. “With Tray, we can
defined what it wanted to achieve, and solved
DigitalOcean. update and integrate workflows and transform
its most pressing integration issue. The Tray
data without needing any engineering
solution to integrate Segment and Marketo - Sharing test result data for real-time insight resources,” says Dorman. “Tray is the solution to
was in production in less than 30 days with and agility workflow gaps that we wouldn’t have linked up
no development resources required. “Tray’s
Tray pulls data on email and onboarding tests before because of the effort.” Adds Hattemer,

16
“Lower complexity things that we would have Dorman says that Tray has opened his mind
had to go to the engineering team for, we can to how to make smarter use of his marketing
now handle ourselves by adding or updating a technology stack. “We can look across the
workflow in Tray.” end-to-end stack and connect any of our tools
to gain total control,” says Dorman. “This is
For the DigitalOcean marketing team, the value the next wave of what a marketing stack will
that Tray brings extends beyond being able to look like and Tray lets us fulfill that vision. We
take things into their own hands. “Tray gives us now have live-streamed marketing that lets us
speed, agility, visibility, and cost savings,” says personalize messages and deliver them at just
Dorman. “And better yet, it lets us be proactive the right time.”
with our marketing in a way that we couldn’t
before. Tray has become a core part of our
marketing infrastructure.”

Hattemer explains, “In the past, our marketing

was more reactive and old school. We’d go
and look for an audience, and send a wave
Tray gives us speed, agility, visibility, and cost
of messages. Now, we have a Tray-powered savings. And better yet, it lets us be proactive with
workflow where prospects and customers
are getting the right message at the right time our marketing in a way that we couldn’t before.
as they interact with our platform and our Tray has become a core part of our marketing
marketing.”
infrastructure.

David Dorman,
Director of Growth and Demand Generation

17
Part two: Why GAPs are gaining
momentum in the marketplace
The widespread adoption of cloud applications Other top trends that have catalyzed the Preference for software with good APIs
is the single most significant driver of the general automation platform’s momentum Software buyers now value the capabilities of
general automation platform’s increasing include: robust and well documented APIs. As such,
momentum. The average number of Software- availability of good APIs are a top requirement
as-a-Service applications has spiked in the Changing buyer behavior across many
driving software purchase decisions.
past 15 years, which has led to an increase in different touch points and companies’ quests
the number of operations professionals being to offer a cohesive customer journey. Building your tools around your processes
brought on to act as application administrators. Integration hiccups and a general lack of ability instead of building processes around your tools.
to quickly and efficiently automate processes
Additionally, the proliferation of SaaS now have created far too many friction points in A tool loses its utility if you start catering to its
means that its competitive advantage is the customer journey. Countless organizations capabilities as opposed to it catering to your
dissipating. The value of SaaS is indisputable, choose not to go with the best apps because process needs. As organizations become
but even industry laggards are on board now. they can’t optimize for each stage of their increasingly cognizant of this fact, the need for
As a result, many organizations have a renewed customer journeys. General Automation Platforms becomes more
interest in developing a competitive advantage apparent.
through streamlining processes to optimize the Preference for selecting best-in-breed
applications over all-in-one hubs Great API applications
performance of their existing applications.
Along those same lines, General Automation APIs are enablers of a more complete, flexible
Platforms allow for easy, flexible automation enterprise resourcing architecture that allows
between multiple best-in-breed software that data to move freely in any direction. General
does one thing very well. This is in contrast to Automation Platforms help realize this potential
all-in-one tools that do many things that are without creating additional complexity for users
“good enough.” The result is increased overall and department heads. For all of these reasons
value potential in the form of fewer customer and more, General Automation Platforms have
friction points. risen to prominence in the past few years.

18
Case Study:

AdRoll Integrates Disparate Lead Data to

Target the Best Opportunities
Integrates Clearbit and BuiltWith with Salesforce to
continually enrich 650,000 opportunities

AdRoll is a leading performance marketing

Industry: Marketing Platform
platform with over 35,000 clients worldwide. Its
Location: San Francisco, California suite of high-performance tools works across
Employees: 500 devices, helping businesses attract, convert,
and grow their customer base. The company
Solution: Tray.io Platform is home to the world’s largest opt-in advertiser
Highlights: data co-op, the IntentMap™ with over 1.2 billion
digital profiles. AdRoll’s goal is to build the
• Integrated lead enrichment sources with CRM
most powerful marketing platform through
to enrich 650,000 global opportunities
performance, usability, and openness.
• Checks website ranking in Clearbit weekly and
updates Salesforce as needed Challenge: Identify top opportunities for
account field to denote the company that owns
targeted sales and marketing the web property.
• Updates Salesforce with data from BuiltWith
Like many B2B companies, AdRoll relies
on over 200 different attributes Adapting Salesforce fields for customized
on Salesforce, its customer relationship
management system, to track and manage sales uses can present a major challenge when
opportunities. However, how AdRoll uses some integrating Salesforce with other systems. “The
of the fields within Salesforce is unique. Brendon overall rank of a website is integral to how our
Ritz, marketing operations lead at AdRoll, company operates,” says Ritz. “Because our
explains: “We use the opportunities object in sales teams are organized by this rank, we need
Salesforce as an account object and that lets us to enrich every opportunity in Salesforce with
track ‘advertisable’ web properties as individual this information and keep it updated as rankings
opportunities.” AdRoll then uses the Salesforce change.”

19
While a standard integration is available between code didn’t include the logic needed to identify With the two integrations to date, Tray manages
Clearbit, the company that AdRoll uses to provide and remove attributes that were no longer five million pieces of data for AdRoll each week.
the website rank and other enrichment data, being used. This led to out-of-date information Ritz knows that he can easily increase the volume
and Salesforce, that integration couldn’t support in AdRoll’s Salesforce opportunity records and, and type of data he’s automating and integrating
AdRoll because of how the company uses the consequently, unhappy sales teams. Ritz used with Tray. “We used to track only a handful of
opportunity field. AdRoll needed an easy, fast Tray to rapidly create an integration between attributes, and now we’re tracking upwards of
way to accurately refresh the website rank for BuiltWith and Salesforce that correctly refreshes 240,” says Ritz. “That’s because adding a new
approximately 650,000 Salesforce opportunities the data and removes it when attributes are no attribute to track is so easy with Tray.”
on a weekly basis. longer being used.
Tray helps Ritz and the rest of the revenue
Solution: Use Tray.io to create flexible and Results: Enriched, fresh, and accurate operations group make sales and marketing
powerful integrations opportunity data drives success processes run as efficiently as possible and
deliver everything needed to maximize revenue
Based on a referral from Clearbit, AdRoll turned Today, the 200 strong sales and marketing
opportunities. “Tray is the most powerful and
to Tray.io to help it solve its integration problem. organization has the data it needs to target top
flexible process management tool out there,” says
Tray is an API integration platform that uses no- opportunities with the greatest propensity to
Ritz. “Any time you have a use case where two
code configuration to empower business people convert, based on website rank and attribute
systems need to talk to each other, Tray is ideal.”
to integrate and automate processes. data. “We used to get a lot of complaints that
sales and marketing didn’t have the data they
Tray helped Ritz create the integration, then needed to succeed,” says Ritz. “We don’t hear
test and deploy it. The result is a flow within that anymore.”
Tray that runs each weekend and checks every
opportunity website in the Salesforce database
against the Clearbit database, refreshing and
enriching the data if needed.

With the website rank problem solved, Ritz Tray is the most powerful and flexible process
quickly identified the next use case for Tray: management tool out there. Anytime you have a
updating analysis data on other website
attributes in Salesforce. “We can correlate these use case where two systems need to talk to each
attributes with the propensity to convert,” says
Ritz. “The data we use for this comes from other; Tray is ideal.
BuiltWith, which analyzes website source code to
identify various website characteristics.” Brendon Ritz,
Marketing Operations Lead
AdRoll previously used custom code to take data
from BuiltWith and put it into Salesforce, but the

20
Part three: How are general
automation platforms different?
With so many software categories and noise, it’s easy to get confused on what software
does what. Here’s a summary of where General Automation Platforms fit in the world:

• In application automation features: Many • Point-to-point integration software: these • Enterprise service bus (ESB): These IT-
software categories promise “automation” vendors often are designed for SMBs and centric integration platforms that require
but you will find that their purview is limited are limited in scope, support, or scalability. developer resources and are perceived as
to a more narrow set of functions and data GAPs provide a platform that can scale from complex because they require maintaining
than what a GAP can handle. For example, simple workflows to enterprise-level complex coded interfaces. ESBs are typically used for
Marketing Automation Platforms can workflows. Some buyers graduate from application integration and managed by an
automate the collection of data from web point-to-point integration software to GAPs integration competency center. ESBs often do
forms and also automate the sending of but pay a transition cost. not support cloud applications. GAPs do not
emails. require dev resources but have many of the
• Extract, transform, load (ETL): ETL software
capabilities of ESBs.
• Native integration: Native integration typically supports batch processing of data.
offered by software vendors can be a decent Sometimes this is a one-time operation or can • Business process management (BPM):
solution for some situations. However, the be a schedule and recurring operation. GAPS Business process automation tools are
more flexible the software, the less likely can support real-time data movement as well designed for IT teams to document and
that native integrations will work out of the as batch processing. Many organizations create processes. GAPs are designed for
box. Software vendors can only build so require a platform that can support batch and business teams to integrate and automate
many native integrations before they run out real-time. ETL tools are often managed by processes. Because of GAPs visual workflow
of engineering capacity. That means you data warehouse team whereas GAPs can be builder and customizable labeling, there is
may not be able to integrate all the different handled by both data warehouse teams or by typically no need for a separate BPM tool in
parts of your stack. If you have multiple business teams that manage line of business addition to a GAP.
native integrations, it becomes harder to cloud applications.
troubleshoot and fix many point-to-point
integrations.

21
Case Study:

Outreach.io Supports Incredible Growth

by Closing Workflow Gaps
Improves productivity by integrating and automating processes across Slack,
Salesforce, Marketo, Google Sheets, email, CSV files, data storage, MailLift,
web forms, and G2Crowd
One of the most important parts of the sales Despite deploying tools and systems to
Industry: SaaS
process is communication. Sales teams need an automate the marketing and sales process,
Location: Seattle, Washington effective and efficient means of following up with Ahmadi was frustrated by the gaps that still
contacts. That’s the premise behind Outreach. existed.
Employees: 150
io, a cloud-based engagement platform that
Solution: Tray.io Sales and Marketing Cloud automates and personalizes communications “In an organization that’s growing as fast as
so that sales teams can provide each and every Outreach, one of the biggest challenges is
Highlights: Closes automation gaps and
lead, opportunity, and customer with targeted providing a funnel that can scale at the same
improves communication and responsiveness content to accelerate and increase sales.
across the sales and marketing work ow, rate across all parts of the sales cycle,” says
including: In just a few short years, Outreach has garnered Ahmadi. “As great as marketing automation
hundreds of big-name customers, attracted tools are, they can’t give you full integration
• Extracts and enhances lead list data sent from and automation across the entire sales
millions of dollars in investment capital, and is
vendors via email and automatically loads it into growing by leaps and bounds as it transforms workflow. As a result, you’re constantly cutting
the Marketo marketing automation solution to the way sales professionals communicate. and pasting to get the info where it’s needed.
get leads to sales people in seconds. I knew that wherever we were doing this, we
Challenge: Close gaps in the sales funnel should instead be integrating and automating.”
• Triggers automated Slack alerts based on
keywords in content to improve communication While Outreach.io helps its clients make their
sales team’s outreach more effective, the While the applications that Outreach uses offer
with the sales enablement team
company’s director of demand generation, open APIs, it requires engineers to learn how
• Provides an automated work to request items Dan Ahmadi, is focused on helping the to use the APIs and create the integrations.
be sent out such as thank you notes and Outreach.io sales and marketing team reach Outreach needs its engineering resources for
swag, improving sales productivity more prospects and close more sales, quickly more strategic tasks such as developing the
and effectively. sales workflow solutions that drive the business

22
and working with external customers on their integration platform immediately,” says Ahmadi. organization can take advantage of this
own integrations. Plus, says Ahmadi, “I wanted “Our contact at Tray helped us draft out what automated workflow.”
control of the process and the ability to build we wanted and within a week he delivered fully
those integrations on my own.” built-out solutions.” Those solutions then made Another integration includes using Tray to
it possible for Ahmadi to learn how to use Tray “listen” to Slack channels, filter conversations
on his own. for certain keywords, log those conversations
to a Google Sheet, and generate alerts to the
Use cases: Streamline and automate sales enablement team whenever a relevant
processes and communication conversation is happening that the team needs
Ahmadi focused first on the leads that a third- to know about, without requiring the team to
party lead-generation vendor emailed to the join every channel on Slack to get notifications.
company on a regular basis. Now rather than
Results: Increase organizational knowledge
manually inputting those leads into Marketo
and enhance productivity
(a marketing automation platform), the emails
are fed directly into Tray via webhook from For Ahmadi, one of the greatest benefits of
the third-party vendor, which uses business Tray is the fast and effective dissemination of
Solution: Link applications and teams logic to enhance and enrich the data before information throughout the sales organization.
with Tray.io automatically feeding it into Marketo (which in “With every conversation and notification in
turn is integrated with Salesforce). Slack being piped into Tray, I know that the
Luckily for Ahmadi, he knew just the solution
right people are being notified about the
that would allow him to do so. Having
The Outreach team is also taking advantage right things,” he says. “This allows the sales
discovered the advanced integration platform
of Tray’s Form Connector, Data Storage enablement team to respond rapidly.”
offered by Tray.io on a product search for his
Connector, and Slack Connector features to
previous job, Ahmadi realized that Tray.io Sales The fast response times facilitated by the
trigger a flow of information that automates the
and Marketing Cloud would serve his needs at Tray integrations have also made Outreach’s
process of requesting items such as thank-
Outreach. Although he evaluated integration sales and marketing teams work in a much
you notes or swag be mailed out to customers
solutions from other vendors, Tray was the only more connected—and thus productive—
or prospects. Now, everything from creating
one to offer the branching logic that would fashion. Says Ahmadi, “Not only can our
the request form to approving the request via
deliver the sophistication and versatility that sales reps now expect to receive requests
Slack or email, and routing confirmation back
Outreach required. for product demos (and more) within minutes,
to the initial requestor is built within Tray with
integrations to MailLift. Best of all, says Ahmadi, our sales enablement team has a far better
Once Ahmadi and team decided on Tray,
“No work on our part is required to make this understanding of the sales reps’ pain points at
implementation was swift and easy. “We
happen. Anyone in our sales and marketing any given time.”
were eager to start getting value out of the

23
Perhaps best of all, the leads being delivered Next steps: Integrate and automate across
to the sales team are of a higher quality than the company
ever before because of the data enrichment With 20 percent of the company already
made possible by Tray-facilitated integrations. employing Tray, Ahmadi expects usage to
Says Ahmadi, “I’d definitely recommend Tray. grow steadily. “Our company uses somewhere
io to any company that has problems that can between 50 and 100 different SaaS systems, all
be solved by connecting cloud systems. You of which could be integrated and automated to
can take data, transform it, load it exactly the make processes more efficient,” says Ahmadi.
way you want, and own that process—that’s the “This means that there’s enormous potential for
beauty of Tray.io.” other departments (such as human resources)
to use Outreach to gain the same kind of just-
in-time intelligence that the sales team has
already started to enjoy.” And because Tray.
io Sales and Marketing Cloud is flexible and
scalable, it’ll handle any complex workflows and
future integrations that Outreach needs
to automate.

I’d definitely recommend Tray.io to any company

that has problems that can be solved by connecting
cloud systems. You can take data, transform it, load
it exactly the way you want, and own that process
—that’s the beauty of Tray.io.

Dan Ahmadi,
Director of Demand Generation, Outreach.io

24
Part four: Common features in general
automation platforms
General Automation Platforms offer a wide range of
capabilities and features including connecting any API enabled
service, authentication, triggers, visual workflow builder,
dashboards, data formatting, logical operators, logs, data
storage, processing scalability, multi-user access management,
alerting, security, resilience, compliance, and system status.

One of the most important features of General Automation

Platforms is that they do not require coding to configure or
manage.

Each vendor has different capabilities and strength and

weaknesses across categories of features. We’ve offered a
quick table to help you assess vendors by using three handy
labels:

• Standard: most vendors offer this feature.

• Occasional: some vendors offer this feature.
• Unique: few vendors offer this feature.

25
Connecting to services
Accessing and connecting to different applications is a fundamental building block of General Automation Platforms. This is a critical aspect of vendor
selection because if you can’t connect to it, you can’t automate it. There is broad variance in connector coverage and depth of integration across
vendors. It’s also critical to consider the responsiveness of vendors to customer requests for new connectors or enhancements to current ones.

Standard Occasional Unique

Pre-built connectors Full API access Connector builder
These are the services logos that Not all vendors can access all portions of an API such a custom fields. The building of pre-built connectors
you’ll see on many vendors websites. Make sure you verify that a vendor can not only connect to the services is historically a manual and labor-
The vendor has already done the you need but are also able to access all fields within the services. intensive process for most vendors.
work to build a connection tailored to Because of the highly technical
a particular cloud application. Universal Connector nature of building connectors,
Universal connectors allow a vendor to connect to any standard API typically only engineers working for
REST API support even if they do not offer a pre-built connector to it. This capability is an a vendor has the skills to do so. This
Rest APIs are the standard modern important reason not to rule out a general automation platform because limitation means that requests for
way to build API connections. They they do not have a particular pre-built connector on their website. new connectors or enhancements
are somewhat easier to work with to current ones can take weeks to
than older methods. Automated retries
This feature is vital in ensuring that your workflows run smoothly. APIs can turn-around. Now, there are only
often have hiccups and produce a failed call request. Automated retries a few vendors that have made the
continue trying the API until it succeeds in accessing the requested data. building of connectors easy enough
for customers and third parties to
Connector versioning build themselves. Connector builder
Software vendors frequently update their APIs and when they do software speeds-up the turnaround
integration and automation platforms are forced to upgrade their time to hours and democratized the
connectors. Some vendors are more adept at versioning their connectors ability to do so.
in a way that minimized interruption.

SOAP API support

SOAP is an older and more complicated method for building APIs. If you
happen to use one or more SaaS applications that only offer SOAP API
support verify that your general automation vendor can connect to it.

26
Authentication and user access
Authentication is the key to unlock access to APIs. Again, if you can’t authenticate, you can’t automate. While some authentication features are black
and white in that either a vendor offers them or not, there are some features that grey and are more related to ease of use. These authentication
features can have the ability to improve productivity.

Standard Occasional Unique

Credential-based authentication OAuth-based authentication API credential keychain
This feature is as simple as typing in your login Some cloud applications use this open standard A keychain manages access to all of your
and password to access the API of a particular for access delegation. Companies such as apps in a central place. This feature can save
service. Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and time from having to enter authentication
Twitter use OAuth. credentials multiple times across different
Token-based authentication automations.
Some services control API access by granting Permission scope controls
a unique token (usually a long string of letters This feature makes it as easy to manage access
and numbers) to a user. That way you don’t to certain parts of your apps’ API as clicking a
have to enter your login and password into a checkbox.
third-party software.
Multiple authentications per workflow
In multi-step workflows, it’s often necessary to
access various accounts.

Multi-user access
Manage user access and permissions.

27
Triggers
Triggers “listen” for events in your connected apps to initiate workflow automations. There are a variety of ways to kick-off workflows.

Standard Occasional Unique

SaaS service trigger Webhook trigger Form trigger
Events from your Cloud app proactively send Webhooks allow you to catch callouts for any Create custom web forms and trigger your
out a signal to your General Automation service that offers to send a signal to a custom workflows upon their submission.
Platform when data changes. URL.
Callable trigger
Manual trigger Scheduled trigger Callable triggers break up a workflow
Test your workflow at your convenience by Grab data from a service at a specified time or and call them from another workflow. This
clicking a “run” button. interval. Some platforms will enforce limits on feature enables users to build more complex
how regularly a schedule runs while others have workflows and reuse one workflow across
no limits. many workflows.

Data formatting
Data formatting tools help users transform data across systems that have different formatting requirements.

Standard Occasional Unique

Text formatting Math Crypto formatting
Filter, format, and transform strings. Run basic arithmetic on number values in your workflow. Encrypt and hash data, so you know it’s safe.

Data and time formatting List formatting Object formatting

When different apps use different date Retrieve data and manipulate items in a list with simply Easily extract data from any object.
formats, you can too. named operations.

28
Visual workflow builder
Workflow builders are fundamental to General Automation Platforms. There is a lot of variation in the marketplace with this capability.

Standard Occasional Unique

Pre-built automation templates Drag-and-drop workflow builder Multi-pull workflows
In a few clicks, configure multi- Configure automation with an easy drag-and-drop Get data from one or more sources in a single
step workflows via an online workflow editor. process. Some vendors can only support simple
wizard for many popular operations that pull in data from one source.
Point-and-click data field selection
automations.
Interactive field lists that show all available field from a Multi-step workflows
No downloading necessary connector make it easy to select the fields to connect. This feature is critical in creating more complex
Believe it or not but not all workflows.
Dashboards
integration and automation
This feature allows you to check workflow success without Multi-push workflows
platforms are 100% web-based.
manually inspecting each one. Post and create data in one or more sources in a
Some require downloading
single process.
programs or third-party tools. Workflow labeling and search
Quickly find the one workflow you need out of many Bi-directional syncing workflow
It’s non-trivial to keep two different software
Clone workflows
applications in sync with the same data. Only some
The ability to clone and modify workflows is a feature that
vendors can support this in a process efficient way.
can save you time.

29
Logical operators
Logical operators are the brains behind workflows. They decide what to do with the data that is flowing along your workflow. Conceptually, logical
operators are similar to formulas and functions available in spreadsheets.

Standard Occasional Unique

Data mapper Branch Boolean condition
Easily map data between steps in Compare a single value against Use powerful “if/then” logic and run part of your workflow only some of
your workflow; join or transform multiple different options and follow the time.
the data type. the match. CSV
Call workflow
Get CSV file details, get rows from
Break up large workflows, pass data between workflows, and reuse one
CSV files and parse CSV text.
workflow in multiple workflows.
HTTP client
Data storage
Make a REST-based request to a
Store data for recall between steps.
specified URL.
Delay
FTP client Set a time delay on an event to begin when you need it.
Download a file or list all files in a
directory in both FTP and SFTP. Loop collection
Extract fundamental data points out of arrays or objects.
Send mail
Use a workflow to send emails to Mustache template
yourself or anyone else. Use the template connector to pass data through a mustache template.

Script
Write custom code and execute a block of JavaScript code
synchronously or asynchronously.

Map data between historical steps

Use the data from any previous workflow step later in your workflow.

List handling
Lists at higher scale, including pagination and volume.

30
Logs
Logs are the place to troubleshoot and inspect a workflow that is running or has run. Well thought out features and user experience can save users
a lot of time in finding errors and correcting them.

Standard Occasional Unique

Log history Real-time logs Advanced debugging of logs
Most vendors offer a repository of workflow Run logs in real time to spot small issues quickly. Search and filter logs on any property for fast
history. debugging.
Customizable log retention
Customer-defined log retention time to comply
with your security policies.

Data processing
General Automation Platforms differ widely on the speed and volume of data that they can process. Make sure that you test your use case with the
vendor to ensure that processing latency or capacity isn’t an issue.

Standard Occasional Unique

Processing latency Alerting Real-time workflow processing
Many vendors do not offer real-time processing Know when a workflow process fails; customize Never a delay in the scheduled start time of
and instead have differing amounts of lag in how alerts are triggered. the workflow or its execution.
the kick off of processing a workflow.
Data storage Infinite scalability
When building workflows, it is helpful to store Scale up or down for an unlimited number of
data temporarily. workflow tasks.

Log data storage

Store log data for you to inspect workflows that
executed in the past.

31
Trust
General Automation Platforms offer differing degrees of transparency, security, compliance, and resilience. If your running mission-critical workflows
and your company has security policies, this section will be an essential read.

Transparency
Information on service availability and performance

Occasional
System status
A publically available system status page offers
full transparency with a real-time and historical
performance view of all technical components.

32
Security
How vendors safeguard your data can differ.

Standard Occasional Unique

Encryption Log data retention Two-factor authentication
Encrypt all of our sensitive data, Some vendors offer flexible log data retention Add a second layer of security to protect fraudulent access
authentication, and tokens. policies designed to fit your requirements. to your account.

Network security Virtual private cloud Password prompting

All communications between Data is held on servers, not open to the public. Any significant account action will prompt a user to re-enter
your browser and a vendors her password.
Session management
website are encrypted via
Monitor sessions by IP address, location, time, Behavior modeling
HTTPS.
browser and operating system and revoke access To detect unusual or suspicious activity on a user’s account, we
to prevent unauthorized access to your account. use technology to build intelligent models of user behavior.

Resilience
How vendors ensure high availability can differ. This is an important criterion for any organization that intends to depend on their workflows.

Standard Occasional
On-call policy Workflow backup
Most vendors have an around-the-clock support network of engineers who work very hard Vendors’ should store snapshots of their customers’
to keep a vendor’s software running all of the time. They typically have an on-call policy for business logic so they can revert them if necessary.
their engineers to be available just in case.
Infrastructure backup
Data backup endors’ infrastructure should be replicated and backed
Vendors’ platforms should have automatic back-ups built in so data is never at risk of being lost. up so that no capabilities are at risk of shutting down.

33
Compliance
Technical certifications comply with industry standard requirements. Vendors should be able to provide a comprehensive compliance program
with certifications and attestations.

Standard Occasional Unique

Privacy policy SOC 2 Penetration testing
Privacy policies are standard for most vendors The American Institute of Certified Public A vendor can and should undergo regular
and assure customers that data will be held Accountants (AICPA) Service Organization penetration testing by independent third
privately in almost all situations. Controls (SOC) reports give assurance over parties to ensure that their platform is secure.
control environments as they relate to the
retrieval, storage, processing, and transfer of
data. The reports cover IT General controls and
controls around availability, confidentiality, and
security of customer data and are issued for
6-month periods each year.

The SOC Type 2 reports cover controls

around security, availability, and confidentiality
of customer data. Regular SOC 2 audits are
conducted by an independent, third-party
auditing firm. You should be able to contact a
vendor to request the latest copy of their
SOC 2 audit.

34
Part five: Business case for
general automation platforms
The return on investment of General Automation Platforms includes measurable
improvements in business metrics and harder to quantify new capabilities that
have the potential for step-function improvements to your business.

The core business case for General Automation

Platforms include the following: Top marketers grow contribution to
• Faster revenue growth revenue by integrating tech
• Lower costs Integrated Technologies All Others

• More productive workers 32%

GAPs produce faster revenue growth due to the 11% higher

21%
benefits of streamlining marketing and sales processes.
7,7%
Benchmark studies from analyst firm Aberdeen Group
53% higher
show the following: 5.0%

Contribution to Grow contribution to

revenue revenue year over year

Source: Aberdeen, ”The state of marketing technology: controlling the chaos”

35
 Automated organizations grow revenue faster More ROI as organizations mature in their use
Effective sales streamliners increase company revenue at 2.2x the rate of All Others, YOY. of GAPs
Streamlining Sales Workflows – The Killer Competency The benefits of a General Automation Platform
14% 13.3% depend on where your organization is in the
12.5%
12% Ef f ect ive Sales St reamliners technology maturity curve. Companies that are
All Ot hers more mature in their use of GAPs will see a
Percent improvement year-over-year

10%
7.9% 7.9%
higher impact from their investment.
8%
6.2%
5.7% 5.6%
6%
4.6%
3.9%
• Level 1: Point-to-point integration
3.6%
4% 2.7%
2%
• Level 2: Multiple point-to-point integrations
0.8%
0%
0.1% within a department
-2% -0.8%
• Level 3: Multi-app, multi-step integrated
-2.6%
-4% -3.3%
workflows
Total company Overall attainment Average deal Profit margin Customer Average sales Annual sales Customer
-6% revenue of organization- size / contract retention rate cycle length employee turnover acquisition
wide sales global value (shortened) (reduced) cost (reduced) • Level 4: Core system of one department
Source: Aberdeen, ”The competitive edge in effectively streamlined sales workflows” • Level 5: Multi-department workflows
• Level 6: Company-wide standard
Use-case specific improvements GAPs contribute to gains in worker
productivity We see companies progress through these
Depending on your particular use cases for
levels reasonably rapidly. It’s not uncommon for
a GAP you could see improvements in many GAPs can eliminate wasted time by staff on any an organization to mature from level one to level
different business metrics. Here are just a few manual process involving moving or manipulating six in twelve month time. This progression means
measure improvements by Tray customers: data. For example, if your marketing managers that organizations can see an acceleration in ROI
• Outreach.io measured an increase in the regularly have to load lead lists into their over time.
marketing automation platform then a GAP can
conversion rate of marketing qualified leads
free up that time to be applied to more valuable Lower software costs
to sales qualified leads.
tasks.
GAPs often lower software costs for companies
• AdRoll measured a 13% improvement in sales
GAPs improve process agility due to the following:
team appointments
• Vox Media estimated a 20X reduction in lag Because GAPs provide a central place to Reduce the need to buy additional users licenses
manage all integrations and automation, you can to other software
time to create a new customer onboarding
rapidly iterate your processes.
project Reduce the number of single-purpose
The benefits you will see depend on the process applications in your stack
that you automate.

36
Bringing it together Investment and costs Time to value
Now you can summarize the return that your Now that you’ve considered the return of a Executives prefer investments that have high
organization will see from an investment in a General Automation Platform, now it’s time to ROI and low time to value. Time to value is
General Automation Platform. estimate your investment. calculated from the project start date to the
point where the project starts to deliver value.
Follow these steps: The product pricing model for GAPs are a Be sure to compare the time to value for the
function of the following factors: options that you are considering. Depending
1. Measure the baseline metrics of the
processes that you seek to improve with the • The edition or packing of value-added on the processes that you are automating you
power of automation. features required could estimate a wide range of times to value
between one week to several months.
2. Quantify the amount of time that it takes to • Number of workflows
accomplish each step in a process.
• Volume of data flowing through your
3. Estimate the cost of the resources that are workflows
currently engaged in manual processes.
The support and training pricing model for
4. Document if there are any processes that GAPs depend on the following:
just cannot be accomplished without an
automation platform. • Service-level agreements on support
availability and turn-around time
5. Calculate any cost savings due to reducing
spending on other software tools. • Amount of training required

Now you can drop the results into a simple The configuration consulting portion of the
spreadsheet and track the “before” and “after” costs can vary as follows:
in side-by-side columns. • Zero cost if you have the time and skills
necessary to configure the software yourself.
• A fixed amount of configuration consulting to
get you started.
• A customized statement of work that is
scoped to your particular needs.
Now just add these three cost items into your
handy-dandy ROI spreadsheet.

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Getting stakeholder buy-in to move forward
Once that you are convinced that investing in a General Automation Platform makes sense, then your task turns to persuade executives and
stakeholders in your organization to support a decision. Use this section to create a game plan to align company priorities and make your dream of
automation a reality.

Do you and your department have credibility? Create a financial case that aligns with Offer proof-points
The first step is a situational assessment of your management objectives Use case studies, analyst research, and
standing in your organization. Does your role Before meeting with executives, understand other proof to bolster your business case for
have responsibility for process improvement? how an investment in a GAP aligns with investment. Doing so will boost the confidence
Do you have the trust of the organization to management objective on a qualitative that your executives will have about you and
make investments? Do you have the authority and quantitative basis. Create a high-level the proposal. Give them a reason to believe.
to sign agreements? If not, who do you need spreadsheet that estimates the project ROI
to go to get approval? If you haven’t had the and levers. Have a roll-out plan ready
experience of buying a software platform Be prepared for success. Create a project
before in your organization, interview someone Ask discovery questions that uncover timeline with milestones. Outline resources
who has been successful in acquiring tools in interests and objections required.
your organization. Before going into “hard sell” mode, uncover
the interests of your stakeholders. Ask them
Determine management objectives smart discovery questions that will show what
Discover the objectives of your executive team a successful project could look like. Also,
and management. Are they more concerned understand if there are any hot-button issues
with top-line revenue growth or bottom-line that could derail your investment in a General
cost reduction? Look at any company-wide Automation Platform.
communications that outline the priorities for
your organization. A little bit of reading can help
you formulate smart discovery question before
meeting with executives.

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How to position General Automation Platforms for each executive

Role Chief Concerns Align Interests

CMO • Grow pipeline cost effectively • GAPs are proven to improve revenue pipeline metrics.
• Drive alignment with sales • Integrating and automating the processes running between the sales and marketing
• Provide a world-class and consistent organization we’ll get both teams working on the same page and with full transparency.
customer experience • Automating the messaging along each step of the customer journey will improve the
customer experience.
VP Sales • Hit revenue targets • GAPs, through customized lead scoring, can surface hot opportunities that have a higher
• Provide an accurate forecast likelihood of closing.
• Empower the sales team • By bringing together more deal signals, GAPs can improve forecast accuracy.
• Sales team members often want to try new sales enablement tools. A GAP can make it easy
to try new tools and integrate them into your standard sales processes
CIO • Enable the business with tools and • GAPs are a great investment to enable your business counterparts because they can own
technology and manage a solution that will help them run their business themselves.
• Manage risk and security • GAPs, because they provide a central point to automate processes, are better at managing
• Control costs data access than point-to-point native integrations that obfuscates who has access to what.
• Because GAPs are typically priced on successful workflows rather than access to connectors,
there is much less chance of shelfware.
CFO • Empower the business to make smart • GAPs can automate in the movement of financial data to various departments which will
financial decisions empower them to make smarter decisions.
• Control of sensitive financial information • You can specify the amount of access that any person or process has of financial information.
• Managing the business to hit financial • GAPs can provide real-time data on a wide variety of signals that are leading indicators on
targets. the financial health of the business.
CEO • Attract and retain talent • Talent is attracted to companies that use leading-edge technology like GAPs because they
• Innovate and outmaneuver the can gain valuable skills.
competition. • GAPs provide a competitive advantage regarding inventing new and more efficient processes.
• Align the organization • GAPS increase the visibility of results and tasks to the benefits of automation.
• Deliver return on investment to • An investment in a General Automation Platform often lifts all boats and improves the ROI of
shareholders investments in teams and technology.

39
Overcoming Objections
Here are recommendations on overcoming typical objections to moving forward with a General Automation Platform.

Objection Handle

It’s possible that a General Automation Platform can help you be more successful transitioning to a
We have to implement software X first, before
new software. Often, you’ll need to integrate that shiny new application into your stack. And if you
starting this project.
need to integrate, a GAP can help you move data into new apps and out of old ones.

It’s possible that a General Automation Platform can help you be more successful transitioning to a
We have to implement software X first, before
new software. Often, you’ll need to integrate that shiny new application into your stack. And if you
starting this project.
need to integrate, a GAP can help you move data into new apps and out of old ones.

We don’t have the bandwidth to manage GAPs are easy to manage because of their intuitive drag-and-drop interface. That said, your vendor
another application. may offer managed services to configure and administer your instance as a way to offload the work.

We don’t have the budget to move forward. Use your ROI estimate to show how the investment will pay for itself over a calculated payback period.

Don't underestimate the time and resource it can take to develop sophisticated integration and
automation software from scratch. The time to value will be significantly longer than using a ready to
Our CTO thinks he can build this in-house.
go GAP. Also, there will be maintenance and upgrades requiring ongoing resources. Wouldn't your
scarce resources be better applied to core competencies like building up your product and services?

40
Part six: Becoming successful with
general automation platforms
Now that you’ve proven the ROI and made a decision to move forward with a GAP it’s time to start planning for success. Create a plan to ensure a
smooth roll-out of your new general automation platform. Make sure that your project includes these key components:

• Workflows identified Workflows identified Alignment

• People Make sure that you have one more specific workflows Make sure that everyone involved in a process is on-board
• Alignment selected to automate. While General Automation Platforms with the changes that you’d like to make. No one likes to
are very flexible and can do almost anything, you’ll want to get surprised on a process change.
• Metrics
make sure that you focus on concrete outcomes.
• Quick wins Measure metrics
• Build on success People Make sure you define and communicate the metrics that
Select someone to administer you GAP. While GAPs you’ll be tracking. Knowing this will align everyone to what
don’t require a computer science degree, it’s helpful to success will look like.
pick someone who thinks about processes logically and
can break them into steps. If you have experience using Quick wins
spreadsheet formulas and functions you’re likely a good You might want first to tackle the gnarliest process.
candidate to manage a GAP. We think it’s lower risk to start automating less complex
processes early so that you and your organization gain
Also, identify if you’ll need to work with any other confidence in the platform and your skills to automate.
application administrators. For example, if the process that Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, then try automating
you are automating touches your marketing automation more complex processes.
platform and CRM, you’ll likely want to involve the
administrators of the applications. They’ll be able to point Build on success
out key fields that you may need to use and also grant API Once that you’ve gotten a series of quick wins on the
access to the tools that they manage. board, now is the fun part. Start looking for more processes
that lend themselves to automation. You could be the

automation superhero that comes to the rescue of other
teammates or departments.

41
Case Study:

Vox Media Connects and Automates Pre-

and Post-Sales to Streamline Workflow
Improves efficiency, transparency, and cross-team collaboration
by integrating Asana, Salesforce, and Gmail

Challenge: Connect pre- and post-sales for

Industry: Media
greater transparency
Location: New York, New York Vox Media’s sales team relies on Salesforce
Solution: Tray.io Sales and Marketing Cloud to manage leads and customers throughout
the sales process. The revenue support teams
Highlights:
needed a way to streamline the tracking and
• Integrated three disparate systems (Salesforce, managing of advertising projects, including
Asana and Gmail) to eliminate duplicative, proposals for sales opportunities, onboarding
manual processes and automate information of new clients, and ongoing management of
flow across systems campaigns. The team selected Asana and soon
• Reduced project creation lag time 20X looked for a way to link it with Salesforce.
What does it take to build a digital empire in
• Improved transparency and collaboration today’s rapidly evolving media landscape? It According to Mike Atwood, Executive Director
across sales and design teams takes a powerhouse house of brands that serve of Client Success at Vox Media, the company
up more than 1 billion content views each month first began by manually re-entering data from
to content-hungry audiences. Salesforce into Asana. A member of the sales
team would add data into Salesforce about an
The owner of that house of brands is Vox Media.
The company’s eight editorial brands serve up upcoming opportunity and then summarize the
everything from sports coverage on SB Nation to data and send it to an email alias for the rest
gaming news on Polygon, politics on Vox to the of the team. A member of the revenue support
latest shopping trends on Racked. It’s a modern team would then create a new Asana card and
media success story. copy and paste the opportunity information into
this new project.

42
“It was a very inefficient process that lacked To create even greater transparency across easier sharing of data in real time, increased
transparency across our teams,” says Atwood. teams, Vox Media uses Tray to update status integration stability, and transparency across
“Plus, it added an unnecessary layer of fields in Asana automatically as they are the client lifecycle,” says Atwood.
complexity to everyone’s jobs.” Atwood knew updated in Salesforce. “Before Tray, status
that the integration between the two systems information was only available in Salesforce Ultimately by streamlining and automating steps
needed to be automated so the company to the sales team,” says Atwood. “If a deal within the pre-sale and post-sale workflow, Vox
quickly chose an off-the-shelf, self-managed was closed-lost or closed-won, the rest of the Media is hoping to shift team attention away
integration tool to solve the problem. However, team didn’t always get notified.” Now with the from process and onto more important business
when that tool failed to handle the volume Tray integration, everyone on the project is goals of increasing close rates and ensuring
and complexity of Vox Media’s requirements, automatically alerted via Gmail when the status positive customer experiences to meet account
Atwood had to pursue a better solution. changes and the status updates are reflected growth and client retention goals.
in Asana. Next up for Atwood and his team is to go
Solution: Integrate and automate Salesforce
and Asana with Tray.io Results: Increase transparency, collaboration, deeper into the integration and automation
sharing, and efficiency capabilities within Tray to automate even more
Atwood quickly began soliciting recommendations
of the end-to-end workflow. And he can count
for alternatives and was referred to Tray.io by a While it’s still early days in the Tray integration
on Tray to help uncover new opportunities for
trusted partner. “From the very beginning, I felt that of Vox Media’s backend CRM and project
automation. Adds Atwood, “The support we
we were in good hands with Tray.io,” says Atwood. management systems, the pre-and post-sales
get from Tray is amazing. With Tray, we have a
“The personalized service and attention to detail teams are already seeing the benefits. “Tray
group of experts who can help us explore all
really sold us on the solution.” enables better cross-team collaboration,
the possibilities we haven’t even thought of yet.”
Once the decision was made, the initial integration
of the three, disparate systems (Salesforce,
Asana and Google Gmail) happened in a matter
of weeks. Now Tray is being used to import Tray enables better cross-team collaboration, easier
opportunity data from Salesforce into Asana
in real time, a twentyfold reduction in project sharing of data in real time, and transparency across
creation lag time compared to the prior integration
the client lifecycle.
vendor. Then Tray automatically assigns users to
tasks within the project and assigns due dates,
Mike Atwood,
eliminating several duplicative, manual steps to
Executive Director of Client Success
streamline the workflow.

43
Part seven: Buying general
automation platforms
Not all General Automation Platforms are created equal. Here’s advice on selecting the right solution for you.
Our recommended purchase process:

Step #1: Document your project goals Step #4: Identify your stakeholders Step #6: Talk to references
Writing down your goals will focus your attention Make sure that you involve your economic Ask your finalist vendors for references of
on the details that matter. It will also help you decision-maker in the decision process. You customers that have similar needs to yourself.
communicate the goals to your stakeholders. wouldn’t want to spring it on her to sign off Interview those references for technical and
Include a list of qualitative and quantitative on a significant investment. Make sure that non-technical factors. Understand how the
metrics that you are looking to achieve. you identify anyone that has the potential to vendor delivered success overall.
Step #2: Create a timeline of milestones block the agreement and make sure they are
Step #7: Make a decision
Jot down your ideal sequence of events from on-board early in the process. Finally, define
You’ve compared capabilities, evaluated ROI,
the vendor selection process to configuration, up-front with your stakeholders how you intend
and assessed the value-added services of
go live and first value. This practice will keep you to run the process and make a decision.
vendors. Now it’s time to bring it all together
moving forward at a deliberate pace and help Step #5: Evaluate vendors against your and choose the vendor that will help you to be
you from getting bogged down in the minutia. requirements the most successful.
Step #3: Define your requirements Create a vendor long-list by researching
Step #8: Get started
Think broader than just feature requirements. product comparison sites, asking friends or
Now you can roll-up your sleeves and dive into
How vital are more general concepts like reaching articles. Whittle down this long-list to
the exciting world of automation. Get access
usability, flexibility, and scalability? Consider a short-list of two to four vendors. Engage your
to the APIs that you’ll need for your process.
support and training requirements. Consider the shortlist vendors and schedule demos, trials
Either start building workflows yourself or ask
security, compliance, resilience requirements or a proof of concept. Make sure that vendors
for configuration assistance from your vendor.
that your IT policies will mandate. Also, can support your current requirements but also
Once you have your first workflow made, be
consider the responsiveness of the vendor to have the flexibility to support your future needs.
sure to validate the results. Once it’s validated,
enhancement requests. You don’t want to be you can set it and forget it and move onto your
beholden to a slow to respond vendor. next automation.

44
Step #9: Iterate and improve
General Automation Platforms, like most software, has a
learning curve. The chances are that you’ll think of new
and better ways to accomplish and automation in six
months from now. You might want to go back and tinker
with older workflows to make them more comprehensive.
Subscribe to a vendors blog to stay abreast of new
product enhancements as well as new ideas that can
inspire you to make greater use of your GAP.

Additional factors
Remember to evaluate vendors for more than features
and functions. Much of your success will depend on other
factors such as:

• Is support by a human available?

• Do they offer configuration consulting?
• What kind of documentation and training is available?
• How responsive is the vendor to questions and
requests?

45
Case Study:

Northwell Health Automates Event

Management Workflow for Outreach Program
Improves efficiency, accuracy and collaboration by using Tray
to integrate Google Forms with Asana

As New York state’s largest healthcare provider Shortly after joining the community relations
Industry: Healthcare
and private employer, Northwell Health serves department, DePace set out to automate the
Location: New Hyde Park, New Yorkk more than two million people annually in the event planning and management function,
New York metro area and beyond. The depth creating a centralized location for all event
Employees: 65,000
and breadth of its services extend beyond data, both past and present. After evaluating
Solution: Tray.io its 22 hospitals, 550 outpatient facilities and
off-the-shelf project management tools,
nearly 15,000 affiliated physicians and into the
Highlights: Northwell Health chose Asana to manage
community itself.
events and tasks and improve collaboration
• Automatically creates projects and tasks in
Challenge: Streamline the management of and communication around events.
Asana from event data submitted via Google
Forms community outreach efforts
While Asana provided a centralized way
Contributing $1 billion back to the community to manage events, the effort to get event
• Populates fields in Asana for the appropriate
every year takes a great deal of work. information into Asana was still manual.
hospital from Google Forms data
Responsibility for coordinating, managing DePace decided that there had to be a way to
• Improves efficiency, communication and and reporting on that effort resides with the automate getting the data on each approved
collaboration community relations department at Northwell. event from a Google Form into Asana. “We
“We manage more than 5,000 community were manually taking the data such as who
events and programs each year,” says Matthew was going where, who was speaking, which
DePace, regional director of corporate materials were needed, and more and entering
community relations manager at Northwell that data into Asana,” says DePace. “It wasn’t a
Health. “And we used to do it all by hand using very efficient way of handling it.”
email.”

46
Solution: Integrate Google Forms with Asana Results: Improved efficiency, communication With the success of the first integration
using Tray.io and collaboration under his belt, DePace is looking forward to
After searching for the right solution to the With its event management process automated, continuing to use Tray to automate workflows,
integration problem, DePace found Tray.io, the the community relations department and the including the event approval process. And
automation platform for integrating any process hospitals it works with have all the event data, he knows that as the healthcare company
and automating any event, and an Asana global tasks and communications in one centralized continues to grow, that it’s easy to add new
strategic partner. He was impressed by both location. “With Google Forms, Asana, and hospitals to the community relations workflow.
the technology and the customer service Tray Tray, our team stays on track, communicates Adds DePace: “I’m happy that we found Tray.
delivered. “Tray is very innovative and the more efficiently and effectively, and can The solution works flawlessly, the customer
solution makes processes like ours truly flow access historical data to help us understand support is great, and the continued innovation
automatically,” says DePace. “Tray makes the how best to support an event,” says DePace. will help us automate more in years to come.”
business behind the business work.” “It’s definitely streamlined and improved our
process.”
In short order, the Tray solution was deployed
at Northwell Health to integrate Google Forms
and Asana. “It worked seamlessly on day one,”
says DePace. “Tray automates the creation of
projects and tasks in Asana based on the data With Google Forms, Asana, and Tray, our team
in Google Forms.”
stays on track, communicates more efficiently and
Originally, the new event management
effectively, and can access historical data to help
workflow was used for the eastern region
community relations staff. More recently, the us understand how best to support an event. It’s
department became a corporate function,
responsible for coordinating events for the
definitely streamlined and improved our process.
entire Northwell organization. “When we
became responsible for all events, Tray helped Matthew DePace,
us incorporate enhancements to support our Regional Director of Corporate Community Relations
corporate-level efforts,” says DePace. “Now
we have 75 staff members using the solution
to automate management of all our community
outreach efforts across all of our facilities.”

47
Part eight: The future of general
automation platforms
There are several general automation trends to look out for over the horizon.
Use them to your advantage.

Trend #1: GAPs are spreading within Trend #3: GAPs have the potential to replace
organizations as companies mature from one-trick-pony software.
point-to-point integration to companywide
With the explosion of single-use case software
automation.
over the last five years. Former buyers realize
Organizations typically start-off with GAPs that they have too many applications and are
as a way to solve one pain point. As their looking for ways to replace multiple software
understanding grows of what GAPs can do, with one broader, or more generalized software
then we see an acceleration in the number of that can accomplish many use cases. For
use cases that they are used for. Before too example, GAP users have successfully replaced
long, we’ve seen companies standardize all lead scoring software, marketing automation
automation on a GAP. software, lead-to-account matching software,
and multiple point-to-point integration software.
Trend #2: The office of the CIO are embracing
GAPS as a way to empower business users.
The CIO of a Fortune 100 pharmaceutical
company remarked that he needed a way to
handle the growing volume of integration and
automation requests originating from business
users. He realizes that his IT team isn’t big
enough to deliver on all the demands and that
the tools used in IT are too technical and not
appropriate for use by business users.

48
Part nine: Tray’s general
automation platform
Why Tray.io?

The right combination of a flexible and Never outgrow your GAP

powerful platform With Tray, you can start simple and then scale-up
your processes. We support start-ups and vast
Easy. Quickly build integrations using an Fortune 100 organizations.
easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.
Enterprise-grade

Flexible. Easily map and transform data to Tray offers all the scalability and security
multiple applications without writing any code. required by some of the most demanding
organizations in the world.

Powerful. Construct complex workflows Customer success included

including conditional branching, looping and
storing data. With Tray.io you don’t just get access to a great
platform. You get a team of experts that you
can call.

49
Conclusion
So that is it: everything that you would want to know about
General Automation Platforms. Whether you are a fast-growing
startup or a well-established enterprise, General Automation
Platforms are a great way to equip citizen automates with a
smart way to achieve superior growth.

This topic is evolving quickly so we’d encourage you to

subscribe to the Tray.io blog to keep-up-to-date.

50
About this guide
Written By:

Alex Ortiz
VP Marketing, Tray.io

Additional
Contributors:

Rich Waldron Hank Taylor

CEO, Tray.io Director of Revenue Operations, Tray.io

51
Contact Tray.io
Telephone: +1-415-418-3570
Email: [email protected]
Website: tray.io
Blog: tray.io/blog

Copyright © tray.io Inc. All rights reserved.