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, this emerging new technology that has the potential to
guide is for you. transform your business. It will define the category
and describe the benefits to companies that are
The average enterprise is using hundreds Cloud ready to grow. We’ll cover the following topics.
applications, but struggles to automate processes
that run across them. Similarly, the average • Why companies are now adopting General
employee uses dozens of SaaS applications, yet Automation Platforms
isn’t empowered to improve the processes that
• How General Automation Platforms differ from
fall under their purview. Until recently, automation
other software categories
software required scarce coding skills. But with the
rise of API Integration Platforms that are designed • The common features and advanced functions of
for citizen automators, a new category of software general automation tools
is available to workers of many types. • How to build a business case and convince
stakeholders to act
General Automation Platforms • The future of General Automation Platforms
enable business professionals We’ve also included worksheets that you can use
to automate processes across to figure out whether your company is ready for
any number of applications General Automation Platforms and how it will help
you increase growth and productivity.
and departments so that they
can scale their growth and
productivity.

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

marketing stack to grow faster • Chat capture: Sync the text from chat
conversations into marketing automation and
Here are select use cases organized by marketing CRM tools activity history so that all the context
role and strategy: of the customer journey is in one place.

Demand generation • Selective chat: Show a website chat window

• Centralized data: Aggregate and centralize only to target accounts, so your sales or support
performance data from channels such as SEM, teams do not waste time with low-value chats.
social, retargeting and others to get at a glance • Landing page integration: Connect best of breed
visibility on top-of-the-funnel programs. landing page software to your marketing stack
• Personalized email: Take the digital signals so that form fills flow smoothly.
of user behaviour across your website, trial, Events
or product as captured by customer events
• Lead list ingestion: Make sure those scanned
platforms and logically route them to your
badges and lead lists from events rapidly get
marketing automation tool or email platform for
pushed into your systems.
a hyper-targeted email program.
• Event management: Coordinate your event
• Message orchestration: Coordinate messages
teams by syncing project and task management
across different mediums and channels like
software with CRM and marketing software.
email, chat, print, and advertising.

Web marketing
• Lead capture: Capture leads from web chat tools
and route them to your marketing
systems so that no lead gets left behind, and

5
• Swag automation: Automate the shipping of gifts to Customer marketing Good things happen when you can easily
your trade-show 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 the continuous processes. Lead scoring is more
survey, then trigger the survey from your
amount of data moving across your applications precise, and better equipped to identify buyer
provider.
so that you can stay under vendors strict API intent.
limits. • Happy customer detection: Integrate net
promoter scores into CRM to surface your Workflows as a whole become more agile, easier
• Lead enrichment: Take data from various data
happiest customers to invite to participate in to scale, and increasingly capable of generating
enrichment vendors and integrate it into your
customer programs. substantial leads that move deeper into the sales
marketing automation platform our CRM
funnel.
platforms. • One-click ordering of gifts: Empower sales reps
to send nurture gifts by merely pressing a button
• Lead scoring: Create custom lead scoring by
integrating various systems and applying the
in their CRM which is integrated via APIs to gift Automate your sales
algorithms that fit your needs.
fulfilment vendors.
applications to drive more
• Lead routing: Intelligently route leads to the right
Account-based marketing sales with less effort
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 are
• Lead conversion: Automate processes to converted enhanced when data flows are optimized for
website.
leads and contacts via your CRM’s API. action:
• Lead-to account matching: Match new leads to
• Campaign creation automation: Automatically • Sales data is gathered and enriched in a single
existing accounts to determine whether they
create a new campaign when a lead with a new point of truth more effectively.
belong to a particular sales rep for follow-up.
UTM comes in.
• Account-based ad targeting synchronization: • Save email engagement data into your CRM so
Product marketing that your sales rep knows whether a sales lead
Connect web visitor IP lookup services to your
• High value features: Uncover which features target account lists then trigger IP based ad has clicked on marketing or sales emails.
your users’ love by combining usage behaviour targeting systems to engage further warm
• Custom lead scoring. Hot leads addressed
and qualitative assessment and surfacing them anonymous leads.
instantly
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 deal then trigger outbound emails to engage warm
that could use his expertise to win. 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 and
• Leads are automatically routed to the correct • Track churn can through customer utilization,
to strategically and precisely time the delivery of
people. waning engagement, limited contact and
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 • Efficiently manage upsells by creating bi-

• Add conditional logic to the end of a customer

more time to deliver customer directional syncs between your Support

data platform stream to create custom activities success Platform and CRM systems.

and records in CRM based on events being With General Automation Platforms support
Achieving stellar customer satisfaction scores
created in connected systems. professional can spend less time tripping over
is no small feat. But it can get significantly
disparate SaaS apps and more time delivering
• Surface hot leads from web-chat to your sales easier when your systems offer you a full view of
smiles.
team. customer health and also deliver a frictionless
• MAP to CRM bi-directional sync: Keep your experience to your customers.
marketing automation platform entirely in-sync • Easily customize and automate post-sales
with your CRM. processes by connecting CRM and task
• Improve your request for proposal (RFP) process management tools.
by connecting your CRM to Slack to give visibility • Enrich new customer accounts with already
to RFP contributors. Follow-up efficiency as a existing prospect data.
whole improves with automated communication
processes. Consequently, RFP win rates • Streamline new customer on-boarding
increase. processes by connecting CRM, support, and
project management tools.
• Manage your sales approval process via slack

7
Streamline business operations triggering automatic archiving of documents the relevant team and location-based groups,
based on contract provisioning. In complex and granting role-specific access privileges and
across the organization always-changing license deals, this process distributing a welcome email with further
Business ops professionals are tasked with is vital to remain compliant with contract instruction.
driving operational efficiency across an allowances.
Imagine your diverse engineering teams happy to
organization. With so many SaaS apps to connect Holistically speaking, a general automation tool, use best of breed tools, and you’re glad to have
a general automation platform is a godsend. is a business ops professional swiss army knife. these different tools synced up in a coherent and
It’s flexible and powerful and can be used in many efficient process.
• Form requests between different teams: Forms
ways.
are a great way to structure and standardize
requests between groups, creating a simple and Extend IT and empower
transparent process. Operationalize engineering the business
• M&A integration: Post M&A systems integration processes to increase velocity
becomes a lot easier when you have a multi- Information technology teams are overburdened
purpose tool that can migrate data and sync data Engineering ops is a source of advantage. Use with requests coming in from across their
across a wide variety of systems. General Automation Platforms to improve the enterprise to integrate SaaS applications. Use
velocity of a wide variety of processes. General Automation Platforms to address a wide
• Data warehouse integration: Centralize data variety of situations.
from any number of SaaS applications. • Automate the entirety of the deployment
process, from general requests and the • Empower the business: Provide your line of
• BI integration: Use a general automation
generation of deployment branches to the business colleagues with an automation tool
platform to integrate business intelligence or
commencement of jobs and creation and that they can manage.
data visualization tools and data warehouses.
distribution of services.
• Replace outdated middleware: Swap out end-
• Execution layer on BI: Take action automatically
• Automate the process by which bug reports of-life legacy middleware with a modern general
from changes in data values from your business
and feature requests are gathered and added automation platform that both IT and business
intelligence tool by integrating to engagement
to project management tools, and necessary can use.
tools like email and alert platforms.
parties are notified of their creation. Ensure
A clicks-or-code general automation platform is a
• Document management: Automate document requesters are updated as they move through
versatile weapon that can support a wide variety
management based on workflows defined by the product development lifecycle.
of requirements.
you.
• Facilitate efficient on-boarding of new team
• React to changes in other third-party systems members by automatically creating login
like contract management software (NetSuite), credentials for necessary accounts, introducing

8
Make finance flow with control Enhance HR and improve
Specialized industries with especially rigorous,
people operations
meticulous processes can also benefit from the Human resource professionals juggle many cloud
ability to control the automated flow of data applications and many processes. The key to
between applications. happy and productive employees is a smooth,
consistent, and professional processes. With
• Automatically gather and consolidate diligence
General Automation Platforms you can:
artifacts that are needed for risk management
and vendor management. • Automate the new employee on-boarding
• Automate secure movement of data through process.
your organization in such a way that it complies • Updates to employee status in HCM software
with the law. can automatically trigger credential revokes,
• Recommend new financial services through account terminations, and other processes.
comprehensive product utilization monitoring. • File access management can be automated.
• Connect payment data to your support systems • Alerts can be triggered when employees change
to ensure that the support team isn’t wasting or interact with privileged information.
time supporting non-paying 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 off-boarding 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 assured that the many disparate products offered
widely depending on the use-cases in which they can be automated with a general automation
are used. Holistically, GAPs reduce tedious and platform.
costly manual efforts to de-silo data and make
use of it. But more importantly, GAPS enable You can consolidate the number of point
companies to do things that couldn’t be done solutions in your stack by adopting General
before. Automation Platforms. GAPS have abstracted
many of the standard software capabilities
GAPs streamline processes that touch multiple such as conditional logic, data storage, and data
applications within a department or across formatting so that you may find a general purpose
departments. This capability allows workflow and flexible tool can replace many single-purpose
builders to leverage their most critical software applications.
features to optimize operations in less labor-
intensive ways. So companies see general automation tools as a
way to grow faster and more efficiently.
In a general automation platform, data flows
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,
businesses buying from mega-vendors can rest

10
Benefits for marketers: higher Benefits for sales: increased Benefits for customer success:
contribution to revenue revenue with higher happier customers, happier
As an example of automation’s potential,
productivity agents
consider its demonstrable benefits for marketers. Sales process refinement is the most lucrative With so many customers and customer support
According to Aberdeen, an analyst firm: form of enablement in modern business. channels to manage General Automation
According to Aberdeen, sales streamliners Platforms help support professionals tame
• Best-in-class marketers are 74% more likely to
increase company revenue at 2.2 times the the chaos by automating the flow of customer-
have a strongly integrated system of marketing
rate of all other types of streamliners. Example related data. So you can spend more time with
technology solutions.
benefits include the following: customers and less time tripping over technology.
• Marketing contributed 53% more to year-over- Here are just a few benefits that GAP customers
year revenues for organizations using well- • Less time researching leads due to better data are seeing.
integrated systems. enrichment.
• Lower customer churn rates due to
Here are benefits from specific marketing use • More efficient sales reps due to more qualified
improvements in proactive monitoring of
cases. opportunities routed more efficiently.
customer health.
• More upsell potential because of better insights
• An increased conversion rate of marketing • More efficient customer success reps due to
into usage and happiness of current customers.
qualified leads (MQL) to sales qualified leads the centralization of data from many different
(SQL). There are many more benefits that sales systems.
organizations are seeing from the adoption of
• Increased sales team appointments by 13%. • Measured improvements in customer
General Automation Platforms. The only limit is
• Higher email open and response rates due to satisfaction to do faster response times and
your imagination for improving processes and
improved personalization. quality of interaction.
inventing new ones.
• Save time for thousands of employees to more • Better alignment to revenue retention due
efficient event management. to SLA and payment-status integration and
automation.
There are many potential benefits to marketers
depending on how many workflows you automate Customer success doesn’t live in a silo and
and the size and scale your operation. GAPs help bridge the flow of information across
organizations.

11
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 candidate
processes across many SaaS tools across many
business to automate pipeline.
departments.
IT teams that introduce General Automation • Happier staff due to smoother on-boarding
• Avoid consuming costly internal engineering processes.
Platforms to business users are seen as saviours
resources for one-off custom projects.
who empower them to solve business challenges. • More impactful operations through the tighter
• Reduce internal friction from negotiating access IT also benefits from a platform that surpasses alignment of MBOs/OKRs.
to engineering resources. requirements for security, reliability, resilience,
General Automation Platforms support hiring,
and scalability.
• Improve process manageability because training, and retaining employees.
GAPs centralize integration and automation
workflows. Benefits for finance: control
There are many more benefits of adopting data 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 data
releases that customers value from application to application as well as enable
business partners with the financial information
Engineering teams that use General Automation that can help them manage their business.
Platforms report speedier release cycle times
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 is
The earliest adopters of General Automation automatically through those junctures, or will comprised of administrators for one or more core
Platforms were technology and media companies, it cause process deficiencies that frustrate applications. Fine-tuning the performance within
but organizations across all industries have since employees? applications is challenging enough; however,
discovered their value. the modern application administrator must also
To help prevent the latter scenario, the following fine-tune performance between applications.
The ability to quickly build out and automate departments, in particular, have turned their Workflows are not confined to individual apps,
processes between disparate applications sights to General Automation Platforms: which means app administrators are increasingly
translates to greater control over workflows with • Marketing being encouraged to zoom out of silos and
less development, which is an industry-agnostic • Sales manage apps more holistically.
benefit. • Support
• 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
Today’s general automation platform power users
becomes a reality.
tend to hold operations roles such as marketing
Most departments within an organization rely ops, sales ops, support ops, business operations
heavily on data that originates in a broad swath and developer ops. This is primarily because
of applications, and not all of these applications these professionals are ingrained in workflows
are confined to a single department. Workflows that rely heavily on the timely movement of
between sales and marketing, for instance, accurate, up-to-date data between critical
and sales and support are expected to overlap 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 number. Disagree Agree

If you strongly disagree, choose 1. If you strongly Factor
1 2 3 4 5
agree, choose 5. The numbers in between 1 and 5
Automation can be a source of competitive advantage.
correspond to your level of agreement, neutrality,
or disagreement. Tally your score when you’re We have one or more staff that has to regularly engage in time-consuming
finished, and follow the instructions at the end. manual work to move data from point A to point B.
We're not able to accomplish workflows that just can't be done manually
(e.g., lead management, mapping payment data to CRM, behaviour-based
personalization)
To interpret your results, sum your score.
Our company would benefit from better visibility of data stuck in different
• If you scored > 30, you’re ready for a general systems.
automation platform. Connecting tools and coordinating processes has the potential to improve the
• If you scored between 20 – 30, you’re moving in customer experience.
that direction. You should consider getting started We have two or more applications that should be integrated.
with automation very soon. The native integrations available to us are insufficient for our needs.
• If you scored under 20, you might not be ready for Our desired solution requires more than a 1-step point-to-point integration.
a general automation platform quite yet. We do not have access to developer resources with coding skills.
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 Demand
Industry: Technology
cloud computing platform in the total number Generation at DigitalOcean, had a vision for
Location: New York, New York of public-facing apps and websites according connecting the company’s customer data
Employees: 300+ to Netcraft. DigitalOcean, founded in 2011, platform (Segment) with Marketo and then
is sailing full-steam ahead in its quest to be connecting Marketo with Salesforce for a
Solution: Tray.io Sales and Marketing Cloud
the top cloud platform for developers in the streamlined, efficient workflow. “Connecting
Highlights: world. And with nearly one million registered the systems and workflow would let us be smart
users taking advantage of its simple and robust about how we communicate with users,” says
• Built a data-queuing and segmentation engine
platform, DigitalOcean is well on its way. Dorman.
between Segment and Marketo to route millions
of events for more effective email campaigns Challenge: Connect Segment and Marketo Because of the expense and amount of time
• Enriched Salesforce Service Cloud data for without using developer resources it takes to develop a custom integration
a single source of truth for the customer To help it maintain its phenomenal growth, solution, Dorman knew that his team needed an
relationship DigitalOcean chose Salesforce as its customer automation tool that didn’t require developer
relationship management platform. As the resources. In fact, the DigitalOcean team already
• Connected Segment and GetFeedback to
company rolled out Salesforce to its customer- had what they thought would be the right tool
automate and scale Net Promoter Score program
facing teams, it began looking for a marketing for the job. However, as DigitalOcean prepared
• Drove broader visibility with alerts in Slack from automation tool that would work hand-in-hand to deploy Marketo, it became clear that the
form fills and status changes in Salesforce with Salesforce. Marketo was selected by original plan for integrating the systems was not
DigitalOcean in part because of the ability to going to work as the touted integration was not
integrate it with Salesforce. comprehensive enough, especially when it came
to event

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

16
 to the engineering team for, we can now handle Dorman says that Tray has opened his mind
ourselves by adding or updating a workflow in to how to make smarter use of his marketing
Tray.” technology stack. “We can look across the end-
to-end stack and connect any of our tools to gain
For the DigitalOcean marketing team, the value total control,” says Dorman. “This is the next
that Tray brings extends beyond being able to wave of what a marketing stack will look like
take things into their own hands. “Tray gives us and Tray lets us fulfill that vision. We now have
speed, agility, visibility, and cost savings,” says live-streamed marketing that lets us personalize
Dorman. “And better yet, it lets us be proactive messages and deliver them at just 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 savings.
of messages. Now, we have a Tray-powered
workflow where prospects and customers are And better yet, it lets us be proactive with our marketing
getting the right message at the right time as they
in a way that we couldn’t before. Tray has become a core
interact with our platform and our marketing.”
part of our 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 is Other top trends that have catalyzed the general Preference for software with good APIs
the single most significant driver of the general automation platform’s momentum include: Software buyers now value the capabilities of
automation platform’s increasing momentum. robust and well documented APIs. As such,
The average number of Software-as-a-Service Changing buyer behaviour across many different
availability of good APIs are a top requirement
applications has spiked in the past 15 years, touch points and companies’ quests to offer a
driving software purchase decisions.
which has led to an increase in the number of cohesive customer journey.
operations professionals being brought on to act Integration hiccups and a general lack of ability Building your tools around your processes instead
as application administrators. to quickly and efficiently automate processes of building processes around your tools.
have created far too many friction points in
Additionally, the proliferation of SaaS now the customer journey. Countless organizations A tool loses its utility if you start catering to
means that its competitive advantage is choose not to go with the best apps because they its capabilities as opposed to it catering to
dissipating. The value of SaaS is indisputable, can’t optimize for each stage of their customer your process needs. As organizations become
but even industry laggards are on board now. journeys. increasingly cognizant of this fact, the need for
As a result, many organizations have a renewed General Automation Platforms becomes more
interest in developing a competitive advantage Preference for selecting best-in-breed apparent.
through streamlining processes to optimize the applications over all-in-one hubs
Great API applications
performance of their existing applications. Along those same lines, General Automation
Platforms allow for easy, flexible automation APIs are enablers of a more complete, flexible
between multiple best-in-breed software that enterprise resourcing architecture that allows
does one thing very well. This is in contrast to all- data to move freely in any direction. General
in-one tools that do many things that are “good Automation Platforms help realize this potential
enough.” The result is increased overall value without creating additional complexity for users
potential in the form of fewer customer friction and department heads. For all of these reasons
points. and more, General Automation Platforms have
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 is
Solution: Tray.io Platform
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
• Integrated lead enrichment sources with CRM to
the most powerful marketing platform through
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 on
Like many B2B companies, AdRoll relies on
over 200 different attributes Adapting Salesforce fields for customized uses
Salesforce, its customer relationship management
system, to track and manage sales opportunities. can present a major challenge when integrating
However, how AdRoll uses some of the fields Salesforce with other systems. “The overall rank
within Salesforce is unique. Brendon Ritz, of a website is integral to how our company
marketing operations lead at AdRoll, explains: “We operates,” says Ritz. “Because our sales teams
use the opportunities object in Salesforce as an are organized by this rank, we need to enrich every
account object and that lets us track ‘advertisable’ opportunity in Salesforce with this information
web properties as individual opportunities.” AdRoll and keep it updated as rankings change.”
then uses the Salesforce

19
While a standard integration is available between remove attributes that were no longer being used. With the two integrations to date, Tray manages five
Clearbit, the company that AdRoll uses to provide This led to out-of-date information in AdRoll’s million pieces of data for AdRoll each week. Ritz
the website rank and other enrichment data, and Salesforce opportunity records and, consequently, knows that he can easily increase the volume and
Salesforce, that integration couldn’t support AdRoll unhappy sales teams. Ritz used Tray to rapidly type of data he’s automating and integrating with
because of how the company uses the opportunity create an integration between BuiltWith and Tray. “We used to track only a handful of attributes,
field. AdRoll needed an easy, fast way to accurately Salesforce that correctly refreshes the data and and now we’re tracking upwards of 240,” says Ritz.
refresh the website rank for approximately 650,000 removes it when attributes are no longer being “That’s because adding a new attribute to track is
Salesforce opportunities on a weekly basis. used. so easy with Tray.”

Solution: Use Tray.io to create flexible and Results: Enriched, fresh, and accurate Tray helps Ritz and the rest of the revenue
powerful integrations opportunity data drives success operations group make sales and marketing
processes run as efficiently as possible and
Based on a referral from Clearbit, AdRoll turned to Today, the 200 strong sales and marketing
deliver everything needed to maximize revenue
Tray.io to help it solve its integration problem. Tray organization has the data it needs to target top
opportunities. “Tray is the most powerful and
is an API integration platform that uses no-code opportunities with the greatest propensity to
flexible process management tool out there,” says
configuration to empower business people to convert, based on website rank and attribute data.
Ritz. “Any time you have a use case where two
integrate and automate processes. “We used to get a lot of complaints that sales and
systems need to talk to each other, Tray is ideal.”
marketing didn’t have the data they needed to
Tray helped Ritz create the integration, then test succeed,” says Ritz. “We don’t hear that anymore.”
and deploy it. The result is a flow within 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 quickly

identified the next use case for Tray: updating Tray is the most powerful and flexible process
analysis data on other website attributes in management tool out there. Anytime you have a use
Salesforce. “We can correlate these attributes with
the propensity to convert,” says Ritz. “The data we case where two systems need to talk to each other; Tray
use for this comes from BuiltWith, which analyzes
website source code to identify various website is ideal.
characteristics.”
Brendon Ritz,
AdRoll previously used custom code to take data Marketing Operations Lead
from BuiltWith and put it into Salesforce, but the
code didn’t include the logic needed to identify and

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

• Point-to-point integration software: these

vendors often are designed for SMBs and
are limited in scope, support, or scalability.

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

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

23
possible by Tray-facilitated integrations. Says Next steps: Integrate and automate across
Ahmadi, “I’d definitely recommend Tray.io to any the company
company that has problems that can be solved With 20 percent of the company already
by connecting cloud systems. You can take data, employing Tray, Ahmadi expects usage to grow
transform it, load it exactly the way you want, and steadily. “Our company uses somewhere between
own that process—that’s the beauty of Tray.io.” 50 and 100 different SaaS systems, all of which
could be integrated and automated to make
processes more efficient,” says Ahmadi. “This
means that there’s enormous potential for 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. Make The building of pre-built connectors
you’ll see on many vendors websites. sure you verify that a vendor can not only connect to the services you need is historically a manual and labor-
The vendor has already done the work but are also able to access all fields within the services. intensive process for most vendors.
to build a connection tailored to a Because of the highly technical
particular cloud application. Universal Connector nature of building connectors,
Universal connectors allow a vendor to connect to any standard API even if typically only engineers working for
REST API support they do not offer a pre-built connector to it. This capability is an important a vendor has the skills to do so. This
Rest APIs are the standard modern reason not to rule out a general automation platform because they do not limitation means that requests for
way to build API connections. They are have a particular pre-built connector on their website. new connectors or enhancements
somewhat easier to work with than to current ones can take weeks to
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 integration software speeds-up the turnaround
and automation platforms are forced to upgrade their connectors. Some time to hours and democratized the
vendors are more adept at versioning their connectors in a way that ability to do so.
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 apps
and password to access the API of a particular for access delegation. Companies such as Amazon, in a central place. This feature can save time
service. Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter use from having to enter authentication credentials
OAuth. multiple times across different automations.
Token-based authentication
Some services control API access by granting a Permission scope controls
unique token (usually a long string of letters and This feature makes it as easy to manage access
numbers) to a user. That way you don’t have to to certain parts of your apps’ API as clicking a
enter your login and password into a third-party checkbox.
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 out Webhooks allow you to catch callouts for any Create custom web forms and trigger your
a signal to your General Automation Platform service that offers to send a signal to a custom workflows upon their submission.
when data changes. URL.
Callable trigger
Manual trigger Scheduled trigger Callable triggers break up a workflow and
Test your workflow at your convenience by Grab data from a service at a specified time or call them from another workflow. This feature
clicking a “run” button. interval. Some platforms will enforce limits on how enables users to build more complex workflows
regularly a schedule runs while others have no and reuse one workflow across many workflows.
limits.

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-step Configure automation with an easy drag-and-drop workflow Get data from one or more sources in a single process.
workflows via an online wizard for editor. Some vendors can only support simple operations
many popular automations. that pull in data from one source.
Point-and-click data field selection
No downloading necessary Interactive field lists that show all available field from a Multi-step workflows
Believe it or not but not all connector make it easy to select the fields to connect. This feature is critical in creating more complex
integration and automation workflows.
Dashboards
platforms are 100% web-based.
This feature allows you to check workflow success without Multi-push workflows
Some require downloading
manually inspecting each one. Post and create data in one or more sources in a single
programs or third-party tools.
process.
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 the
your workflow; join or transform multiple different options and follow 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 the
and instead have differing amounts of lag in the how alerts are triggered. workflow or its execution.
kick off of processing a workflow.
Data storage Infinite scalability
When building workflows, it is helpful to store data Scale up or down for an unlimited number of
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 to
authentication, and tokens. policies designed to fit your requirements. 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 HTTPS.
Monitor sessions by IP address, location, time, Behaviour modeling
browser and operating system and revoke access to To detect unusual or suspicious activity on a user’s account, we use
prevent unauthorized access to your account. technology to build intelligent models of user behaviour.

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 to Vendors’ should store snapshots of their customers’
keep a vendor’s software running all of the time. They typically have an on-call policy for their business logic so they can revert them if necessary.
engineers to be available just in case.
Infrastructure backup
Data backup Infrastructure should be replicated and backed up so that
Vendors’ platforms should have automatic back-ups built in so data is never at risk of being lost. 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 parties
privately in almost all situations. Controls (SOC) reports give assurance over control to ensure that their platform is secure.
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 benefits of 11% higher
21%
streamlining marketing and sales processes. Benchmark
7.7%
studies from analyst firm Aberdeen Group show the
53% higher
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 of
Effective sales streamliners increase company revenue at 2.2x the rate of All Others, YOY. 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%
12.5%
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 higher
Percent improvement year-over-year

10%
7.9% 7.9%
impact from their investment.
8%
6.2%
5.7% 5.6%
6%
4.6% • Level 1: Point-to-point integration
3.9% 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 levels
Depending on your particular use cases for a GAP GAPs can eliminate wasted time by staff on any
reasonably rapidly. It’s not uncommon for an
you could see improvements in many different manual process involving moving or manipulating
organization to mature from level one to level six
business metrics. Here are just a few measure data. For example, if your marketing managers
in twelve month time. This progression means that
improvements by Tray customers: regularly have to load lead lists into their marketing
organizations can see an acceleration in ROI over
automation platform then a GAP can free up that
• Outreach.io measured an increase in the time.
time to be applied to more valuable tasks.
conversion rate of marketing qualified leads to
sales qualified leads. Lower software costs
GAPs improve process agility
GAPs often lower software costs for companies
• AdRoll measured a 13% improvement in sales Because GAPs provide a central place to manage
due to the following:
team appointments all integrations and automation, you can rapidly
iterate your processes. Reduce the need to buy additional users licenses
• Vox Media estimated a 20X reduction in lag time
to create a new customer on-boarding project to other software

The benefits you will see depend on the process Reduce the number of single-purpose applications
that you automate. in your stack

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 ROI
organization will see from an investment in a General Automation Platform, now it’s time to and low time to value. Time to value is calculated
General Automation Platform. estimate your investment. from the project start date to the point where the
project starts to deliver value. Be sure to compare
Follow these steps: The product pricing model for GAPs are a function the time to value for the options that you are
of the following factors: considering. Depending on the processes that you
1. Measure the baseline metrics of the processes
that you seek to improve with the power of • The edition or packing of value-added features are automating you could estimate a wide range
automation. required 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 workflows
3. Estimate the cost of the resources that are
The support and training pricing model for GAPs
currently engaged in manual processes.
depend on the following:
4. Document if there are any processes that just
cannot be accomplished without an automation • Service-level agreements on support availability
platform. and turn-around time

5. Calculate any cost savings due to reducing • Amount of training required

spending on other software tools. The configuration consulting portion of the costs
Now you can drop the results into a simple can vary as follows:
spreadsheet and track the “before” and “after” in • Zero cost if you have the time and skills
side-by-side columns. 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.

37
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 how other proof to bolster your business case for
have responsibility for process improvement? Do an investment in a GAP aligns with management investment. Doing so will boost the confidence
you have the trust of the organization to make objective on a qualitative and quantitative basis. that your executives will have about you and the
investments? Do you have the authority to sign Create a high-level spreadsheet that estimates proposal. Give them a reason to believe.
agreements? If not, who do you need to go to the project ROI
get approval? If you haven’t had the experience and levers. Have a roll-out plan ready
of buying a software platform before in your Be prepared for success. Create a project
organization, interview someone who has been Ask discovery questions that uncover interests timeline with milestones. Outline resources
successful in acquiring tools in your organization. and objections required.
Before going into “hard sell” mode, uncover
Determine management objectives the interests of your stakeholders. Ask them
Discover the objectives of your executive team smart discovery questions that will show what
and management. Are they more concerned a successful project could look like. Also,
with top-line revenue growth or bottom-line understand if there are any hot-button issues
cost reduction? Look at any company-wide that could derail your investment in a General
communications that outline the priorities for Automation Platform.
your organization. A little bit of reading can help
you formulate smart discovery question before
meeting with executives.

38
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 organization
• Provide a world-class and consistent 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 likelihood
• Provide an accurate forecast 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 and
technology 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 data
• Control costs 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 empower
financial decisions 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 the
targets. financial health of the business.
CEO • Attract and retain talent • Talent is attracted to companies that use leading-edge technology like GAPs because they can gain
• Innovate and outmaneuver the 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 new
We have to implement software X first, before
software. Often, you’ll need to integrate that shiny new application into your stack. And if you need to
starting this project.
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 new
We have to implement software X first, before
software. Often, you’ll need to integrate that shiny new application into your stack. And if you need to
starting this project.
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 may
another application. 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 go
Our CTO thinks he can build this in-house.
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 get
are very flexible and can do almost anything, you’ll want to 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 don’t you’ll be tracking. Knowing this will align everyone to what
require a computer science degree, it’s helpful to pick success will look like.
someone who thinks about processes logically and can break
them into steps. If you have experience using spreadsheet Quick wins
formulas and functions you’re likely a good candidate to You might want first to tackle the gnarliest process.
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 application confidence in the platform and your skills to automate.
administrators. For example, if the process that you are Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, then try automating more
automating touches your marketing automation platform and complex processes.
CRM, you’ll likely want to involve the administrators of the
applications. They’ll be able to point out key fields that you Build on success
may need to use and also grant API access to the tools that Once that you’ve gotten a series of quick wins on the board,
they manage. 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, manual proposals for sales opportunities, on-boarding
processes and automate information flow across of new clients, and ongoing management of
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 across today’s rapidly evolving media landscape? It takes According to Mike Atwood, Executive Director
sales and design teams a powerhouse house of brands that serve up of Client Success at Vox Media, the company
more than 1 billion content views each month to first began by manually re-entering data from
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.
upcoming opportunity and then summarize the
The company’s eight editorial brands serve up
everything from sports coverage on SB Nation to data and send it to an email alias for the rest of
gaming news on Polygon, politics on Vox to the the team. A member of the revenue support team
latest shopping trends on Racked. It’s a modern would then create a new Asana card and copy
media success story. and paste the opportunity information into this
new project.

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

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 that your IT policies will mandate. Also, Step #5 Evaluate vendors against your
Writing down your goals will focus your attention consider the responsiveness of the vendor to requirements
on the details that matter. It will also help you enhancement requests. You don’t want to be Create a vendor long-list by researching product
communicate the goals to your stakeholders. beholden to a slow to respond vendor. comparison sites, asking friends or reaching
Include a list of qualitative and quantitative articles. Whittle down this long-list to a short-
metrics that you are looking to achieve. list of two to four vendors. Engage your short-list
Step #4 Identify your stakeholders vendors and schedule demos, trials or a proof
Make sure that you involve your economic of concept. Make sure that vendors can support
Step #2 Create a timeline of milestones decision-maker in the decision process. You your current requirements but also have the
Jot down your ideal sequence of events from the wouldn’t want to spring it on her to sign off on flexibility to support your future needs.
vendor selection process to configuration, go live a significant investment. Make sure that you
and first value. This practice will keep you moving identify anyone that has the potential to block the
forward at a deliberate pace and help you from agreement and make sure they are on-board early
getting bogged down in the minutia. in the process. Finally, define up-front with your
stakeholders how you intend to run the process
and make a decision.
Step #3 Define your requirements
Think broader than just feature requirements.
How vital are more general concepts like
usability, flexibility, and scalability? Consider
support and training requirements. Consider the
security, compliance, resilience requirements

44
Step #6 Talk to references
Ask your finalist vendors for references of customers that
have similar needs to yourself. Interview those references
for technical and non-technical factors. Understand how
the vendor delivered success overall.

Step #7 Make a decision

You’ve compared capabilities, evaluated ROI, and assessed
the value-added services of vendors. Now it’s time to bring
it all together and choose the vendor that will help you to be
the most successful.

Step #8 Get started

Now you can roll-up your sleeves and dive into the exciting
world of automation. Get access to the APIs that you’ll need
for your process. Either start building workflows yourself
or ask for configuration assistance from your vendor. Once
you have your first workflow made, be sure to validate the Additional factors
results. Once it’s validated, you can set it and forget it and
move onto your next automation. Remember to evaluate vendors for more than features and functions. Much of your
success will depend on other factors such as:

Step #9 Iterate and improve Is support by a human available?

General Automation Platforms, like most software, has a Do they offer configuration consulting?
learning curve. The chances are that you’ll think of new
and better ways to accomplish and automation in six What kind of documentation and training is available?
months from now. You might want to go back and tinker
How responsive is the vendor to questions and requests?
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.

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

46
Solution: Integrate Google Forms with Asana Results: Improved efficiency, communication and With the success of the first integration under
using Tray.io collaboration his belt, DePace is looking forward to continuing
After searching for the right solution to the With its event management process automated, to use Tray to automate workflows, including the
integration problem, DePace found Tray.io, the community relations department and the event approval process. And he knows that as
the automation platform for integrating any hospitals it works with have all the event data, the healthcare company continues to grow, that
process and automating any event, and an Asana tasks and communications in one centralized it’s easy to add new hospitals to the community
global strategic partner. He was impressed by location. “With Google Forms, Asana, and Tray, relations workflow. Adds DePace: “I’m happy that
both the technology and the customer service our team stays on track, communicates more we found Tray. The solution works flawlessly, the
Tray delivered. “Tray is very innovative and the efficiently and effectively, and can access customer support is great, and the continued
solution makes processes like ours truly flow historical data to help us understand how best innovation will help us automate more in years to
automatically,” says DePace. “Tray makes the to support an event,” says DePace. “It’s definitely come.”
business behind the business work.” 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 in Google With Google Forms, Asana, and Tray, our team stays on
Forms.”
track, communicates more efficiently and effectively,
Originally, the new event management workflow
and can access historical data to help us understand
was used for the eastern region community
relations staff. More recently, the department how best to support an event. It’s definitely streamlined
became a corporate function, responsible for
and improved our process.
coordinating events for the entire Northwell
organization. “When we became responsible
Matthew DePace,
for all events, Tray helped us incorporate
Regional Director of Corporate Community Relations
enhancements to support our 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 one-
organizations as companies mature from trick-pony software.
point-to-point integration to company-wide
With the explosion of single-use case software
automation.
over the last five years. Former buyers realize that
Organizations typically start-off with GAPs they have too many applications and are looking
as a way to solve one pain point. As their for ways to replace multiple software with one
understanding grows of what GAPs can do, broader, or more generalized software that can
then we see an acceleration in the number of accomplish many use cases. For example, GAP
use cases that they are used for. Before too users have successfully replaced lead scoring
long, we’ve seen companies standardize all software, marketing automation software, lead-
automation on a GAP. 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 powerful platform Never outgrow your GAP
With Tray, you can start simple and then scale-up your
Easy. Quickly build integrations using an easy- processes. We support start-ups and vast Fortune 100
to-use drag-and-drop interface. organizations.

Flexible. Easily map and transform data to Enterprise-grade

multiple applications without writing any code. Tray offers all the scalability and security required by
some of the most demanding organizations in the world.

Powerful. Construct complex workflows

including conditional branching, looping and Customer success included
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
start-up 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.