One thing I really love about HubSpot is how easy it is to build automation.
Need to assign a lead? Build a workflow. Need to send a quick notification? Another workflow. Need to update a property or create a task? Yep, another workflow.
That’s one of HubSpot’s biggest strengths.
But after working in a lot of different portals, I noticed something. Not every problem actually needs a new workflow.
I used to think automation was always the answer. If a manual step could be removed, I’d try to automate it. Sometimes that worked great. Other times, I ended up building a workflow that fixed one small problem but made the whole portal a little harder to understand.
Over time, those “small” workflows added up. One workflow updated a property. Another workflow checked that property. A third workflow depended on what happened next. Everything technically worked. But figuring out what was actually going on became a lot harder than it should’ve been.
That’s when I changed how I think about automation.
Now, before I build a new workflow, I ask myself three questions.
- Is this solving a problem that happens over and over?
If it’s something the team only does once or twice a year, I usually skip automating it. Automation works best for things that happen all the time, not one-offs.
- Can I improve a workflow that already exists instead?
A lot of the time, what I need already exists somewhere. So instead of building something brand new, I check the workflows already in place first. Keeping similar processes together usually makes the whole thing easier to manage.
- Will someone else understand this later?
This has become one of my favorite questions to ask.
A workflow shouldn’t only make sense to the person who built it. If another admin opens it up six months from now, they should be able to understand what it does, without having to trace through five other workflows just to figure it out.
I’ve found that the simplest automation is usually the easiest to keep working.
That doesn’t mean avoiding automation altogether. It just means being more thoughtful about where you use it. HubSpot lets you automate almost anything. The hard part isn’t figuring out what can be automated. It’s figuring out what should be.
For me, that shift made a big difference. I build fewer workflows than I used to. But the ones I do build are easier to understand, easier to fix when something breaks, and easier to keep up with as the business grows.