Time and again, we’ve seen how automation makes our customers’ lives easier. But in many cases, it does much more than that—our champions have earned promotions, company-wide recognition, and newfound influence over strategic decision-making all because of their role in automation strategy. Of its many benefits, automation is undoubtedly a springboard for career success.
In this post, we sat down with a Business Systems Developer at Notarize to learn how automation has transformed his career.
From accounting to system administration
As a recent college graduate, he decided to dip his toe in the startup world, and found he liked the pace of work.
Eventually, he took on a role as an Accounts Receivable Specialist at network security company VMware Carbon Black, where he would become deeply familiar with systems like Salesforce and NetSuite.
The intricacies of these systems, he learned, would make all the difference in his job. Whether a contract was categorized with the correct tax code in NetSuite, for example, or whether a field in Salesforce was properly selected could mean the difference between accurate reporting and hours and hours of review on his end.
He became fascinated with the more technical aspects of these systems, and pursued the idea of becoming an administrator, not just a user.
He started a role as a NetSuite Administrator at Toast. Soon, he would learn just how challenging and interesting system management could be, as well as how automation could play a big role.
Seeing the bigger picture with automation
He had gotten a preview of automation at VMware, but now, in his new role at Toast, he was up close and personal.
Toast implemented Workato before he joined and had already built out the bulk of its recipes. One of its most important use cases, just like at VMware, was their Salesforce and NetSuite integration.
As a NetSuite Administrator, automation became an essential tool in his toolkit; he largely used it to add or move fields, as well as adjust basic logic. And, using Workato, he was able to move fast on requests.
Eventually, as he leaned on automation more and more, he noticed a shift in his perspective. Even though he had started this role because of his interest in the technical nature of these platforms, it wasn’t his main focus anymore.
“[Automation] has helped me a lot with trying to see the bigger picture, I guess is the best word for it,” he says. In other words, instead of diving right into the technical details, he now zoomed out and thought of the business first.
He considered questions like, how does the sales ops team classify a particular contract? Or, putting aside his NetSuite preference, which platform best suits the goals of this objective? Automation had boosted his confidence to be able to execute fast on requests, which meant that he could spend a lot more time considering their business context up front.
It was a frame of thinking that would help carry him into his next role.
Building an automation strategy from the ground up
In 2019, he joined consultancy search software Catalant Technologies as a Business Systems Developer.
At the time, he was hired on to do similar system administrative work at Toast. However, unexpected turnover left him as the sole administrator for both Salesforce and NetSuite—as well as a chance to build anew.
“More so than just the builder, I had to be like, ‘What are we doing now? ‘Is this what we want to accomplish?”
He rebuilt the systems from scratch, and opted to bring in an automation tool. This time, he had full control over which vendor to choose. And while his positive experience at Toast was heavily weighted in his eventual selection of Workato, he also did his due diligence to survey the market.
Bringing on an automation platform was a success. He was able to automate away about 70% of the AR team’s time—which was largely spent on manually invoicing customers and conducting spot checks—, allowing them to focus more on revamping customer contracting so that it’d be more efficient. But perhaps most notably, he fundamentally changed the way data moved throughout the organization.
“Our whole opportunity lifecycle—from closed opportunity all the way through to cash received—we were able to pretty much use Workato to exclusively get the data where we needed it to go.”
Seizing the opportunity to fuel a rocket ship
Currently, he is a Business Systems Developer at online notary company Notarize. He joined the company at the close of 2021 because he saw huge growth potential—and knew he could help them realize it.
Though he’s only been at the company a short time, he’s already laid out his goals: streamlining invoicing and revenue recognition for both individual customers and larger enterprise customers.
First on his list is the foundational work of managing invoice creation through Workato. Then, he plans to advance that use case by having Workato flag potential errors at the start of the event instead of through weekly reporting events.
Once invoicing is taken care of, he expects that the engineering team won’t need to be involved in operational meetings, which will allow them to move quicker on higher-value projects.
With the experience he’s built combining business knowledge with automation expertise, and with the success he’s had in implementing automations at different types of companies, he’s confident that he can make it happen, and is ready to roll up his sleeves and get to work.
