The Automation Rollout That Skipped the Pilot and Everyone Regretted It
Rolling out a new automation to everyone at once, without a pilot, feels efficient right up until the first edge case hits the entire company simultaneously.
CRM & Customer Operations
Business Automation
Business Automation guides, comparisons and explainers from GoCRMP.
Automation Logic Nobody Versioned Until It Broke in Production
Automation rules change quietly over time with no record of what changed or why. Here's what breaks when nobody's tracking the history, and how to fix it.
Automating Everything Except the One Decision That Needs a Person
Most workflows have exactly one step that genuinely needs human judgment. Automating past that step, instead of around it, is where good automations go wrong.
The Build-or-Buy Decision on One Automation, Not the Whole Platform
Build-versus-buy debates usually happen at the platform level. The decision that actually matters most often is smaller: one specific automation at a time.
The Automation That Solves the Wrong Problem Extremely Well
A technically flawless automation can still fail if it was built to fix a symptom instead of the actual underlying process problem. Here's how that happens.
Testing an Automation Before It Touches a Real Customer
Most automation failures that reach customers were technically preventable. Here's a realistic way to test a workflow before it goes live against real accounts.
Notification Fatigue: When Automated Alerts Stop Getting Read
Every new automation seems to justify one more alert, until the alerts that actually matter get lost in a channel everyone has already learned to ignore.
Resolving Data Conflicts Between Systems That Both Think They're Right
When two connected systems both claim to hold the correct version of the same record, the conflict rarely gets resolved by whichever system updated last.
What Happens to an Automation After Its Builder Leaves
The person who built your most critical automation eventually leaves. Here's what usually happens next, and how to avoid finding out the hard way.
Approval Chains That Turn Into a Bottleneck Nobody Designed
Approval chains usually start reasonable and grow one exception at a time until nobody can explain why five people need to sign off on a routine request.