How NextDoor Decreased Development Time by 75% to Advance Its Product Roadmap
Customer Company Size
Mid-size Company
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Workato
- Placements.io
- Google Ad Manager (GAM)
- Salesforce
- Stripe
Tech Stack
- No-code Automation
- Integration Platforms
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
- Revenue Growth
Technology Category
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Software
- Professional Service
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Remote Asset Management
- Predictive Replenishment
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
Nextdoor is a hyperlocal social networking platform based in San Francisco, California, with approximately 650 employees. It serves as a hub for neighborhoods, facilitating trusted connections and the exchange of helpful information, goods, and services. Nearly one in three U.S. households are on Nextdoor, making it an attractive advertising channel for both local and national businesses. The platform's primary revenue driver is its advertising services, which are managed through applications like Placements.io, Google Ad Manager (GAM), and Salesforce. Nextdoor's engineering team is tasked with maintaining and improving these services to ensure seamless operations and support the company's growth. As a mid-size company, Nextdoor is focused on optimizing its processes to enhance productivity and revenue growth, while also preparing for a potential public offering.
The Challenge
Nextdoor faced significant challenges in its advertising management processes, which were crucial for its revenue generation. The company relied on three main applications: Placements.io, Google Ad Manager (GAM), and Salesforce, to manage advertisements. However, the lack of integration between Salesforce and GAM meant that ad metrics had to be manually uploaded into Salesforce weekly. This manual process delayed ad performance visibility for sales and accounting teams and risked inaccurate decision-making due to outdated reports. Additionally, the process of sending out invoices to clients was time-consuming, taking up to three days. Calculating client running balances was another resource-intensive task, requiring Nextdoor to potentially hire additional staff to manage it. Automating these processes was essential for Nextdoor to spur new revenue growth and free up engineering resources to focus on more complex product deliverables, thereby accelerating its product roadmap.
The Solution
Nextdoor selected Workato, a no-code automation platform, to integrate its core applications and automate data transfers between systems. This decision was based on Workato's ease of use and straightforward licensing model, which required no specialized training for the team. By integrating Workato with its order management platform Placements.io, Nextdoor built an automation connector between Google Ad Manager (GAM) and Salesforce. This integration allowed for daily uploads of ad metrics into Salesforce, replacing the previous manual weekly uploads and providing more accurate and timely reporting. To automate customer running balances, Nextdoor integrated product data with revenue data from Stripe, with plans to port this data to Workday and Workday Prism for post-processing. This integration will automatically generate customer rolled-forward balances, providing up-to-date revenue and liability information. Additionally, by syncing information between Nextdoor, Salesforce, and Workday, invoices are now automatically generated, increasing visibility and speeding up payments. These automation efforts have significantly reduced the time and resources required for these processes, allowing Nextdoor to focus on its product roadmap and future growth.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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