Automating for B2B Accounts with Company Workflows

Introduction to Company Workflows

Company workflows allow you to build automations that are triggered by and act upon entire Company records in your CRM. This is essential for B2B scenarios where you manage accounts with multiple contacts. Instead of automating for each individual person, you can automate processes at the account level, such as onboarding a new client company, synchronizing data across all associated contacts, or maintaining clean company records.

Benefits of Using Company Workflows

Automating at the company level offers several key advantages for your business operations.

• Streamlined Account Onboarding: Automatically kick off welcome sequences, assign account owners, and set up data the moment a new company is added to your CRM.
• Improved Data Consistency: Ensure information like industry, account status, or plan tier is synchronized from the company record down to all linked contacts, eliminating manual updates and discrepancies.
• Enhanced CRM Hygiene: Use automations to clear outdated or temporary field values on company records, keeping your reporting accurate and reliable.
• Unified Process Management: Combine company workflows with contact-based workflows to create comprehensive, end-to-end automation for complex B2B customer journeys.

Available Triggers and Actions

Company workflows are built using specific triggers that start the automation and actions that define what the automation does.

Triggers

• Company Created: The workflow starts when a new company record is added to the CRM. You can add filters to target companies based on owner, tags, or specific field values.
• Company Changed: The workflow starts when an existing company record is updated. You can set conditions to run the automation only when specific fields change to certain values.

Actions

• Update Company or Associated Contact: Modify field values on a company record. This action can optionally apply the same updates to all contacts associated with that company, keeping data in sync.
• Create Company or Associated Contact: Use this to either create a brand new company record or to add a new contact to an existing company. You can map data from the workflow into the new record's fields.
• Clear Fields of Company or Associated Contact: Reset the values of specified fields on a company record (and optionally on its associated contacts) to blank. This is useful for cleaning up temporary data.

Common Use Cases

Here are practical examples of how company workflows can be applied.

• New Client Onboarding: When a "Company Created" trigger fires for a new client, automatically assign an account owner, set the company's lifecycle stage to "Onboarding," and trigger a welcome email sequence for all contacts under that company.
• Lifecycle Synchronization: When a company's status field changes to "Churned," use a "Company Changed" trigger to update a corresponding field on all associated contacts, allowing other retention-focused workflows to act.
• Automated Company Creation: Use a contact-based workflow to create a company record from a B2B form submission and immediately link the submitting contact to the new company.
• Data Propagation: Sync key company attributes like "Industry" or "Account Tier" down to every contact linked to the company, enabling precise segmentation for marketing campaigns.

How to Set Up a Company Workflow

1. Create the Workflow

Navigate to Automation > Workflows and click + Create Workflow. When prompted to select a workflow type, choose Company-based Workflow.

2. Add a Trigger

Select either Company Created or Company Changed. Configure any necessary filters or conditions to ensure the workflow only runs for the specific companies you intend to target.

3. Build Your Actions

Drag and drop your desired actions, such as Update Company or Associated Contact, into the workflow canvas. Configure each action by mapping values to the target fields. You can use static text or dynamic variables from the triggering company. For update actions, decide if the changes should also apply to associated contacts.

4. Add Logic and Controls (Optional)

Incorporate steps like Conditions, If/Else branches, or Wait delays to add logic and control the timing of your automation. A best practice is to avoid creating infinite loops—for example, if a company workflow updates a contact, and a contact workflow updates the company in return. Use conditional checks or flags to prevent this.

5. Test and Publish

Save your workflow. Before publishing it widely, test it by manually enrolling a few company records and verifying the actions execute correctly by checking the workflow execution logs. Once validated, publish the workflow to make it active.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Can a single workflow update both a company and its contacts?
A: Yes. The Update Company or Associated Contact action provides an option to apply field changes to all contacts associated with the company.

Q: How do I create a company from a contact's record?
A> You would use a contact-based workflow, not a company-based one. Within a contact workflow, use the Create Associated Company action to generate a new company record and link the current contact to it.

Q: How can I prevent update loops between company and contact workflows?
A> Implement guardrails. A common method is to use a custom checkbox field (e.g., "Locked by Automation") or a tag. Set this flag in one workflow, and add a condition at the start of the other workflow to check for the flag and stop execution if it is present, thereby breaking the loop.