Vanta, the leading trust management platform, faced a familiar challenge for high-growth B2B companies: their fragmented sales tech stack was causing inefficiencies across their rapidly scaling sales team.
“We had both a data enrichment problem and a data orchestration problem,” explains Mark Lail, Director of Revenue Operations. “We sometimes had five different tools trying to enrich the same data point, each with their own field in our CRM. There was no good way of choosing the best result or putting it to work. This resulted in a lot of wasted effort.”
Vanta’s RevOps team enlisted Clay to help them overcome conflicting data across different enrichment tools, centralize data in one platform, streamline account research, and much more.
"Clay has helped us simplify complex workflows, eliminate redundant tools, and make smarter decisions faster. It’s become a cornerstone of our RevOps strategy," said Lail.
Impact TL;DR
- 80%+ enrichment coverage by combining multiple data sources
- Thousands of new contacts added monthly through automated workflows
- Automated manual research tasks across all sales reps
- Real-time outreach based on funding events, hiring signals, and compliance updates
Use Case 1: Creating one “source of truth” for CRM data points
Before Clay, Vanta used multiple tools to manage their data enrichment. "We had a complex system of trying to decide winners and losers ourselves," said Lail. "We built routing logic across different tools, trying to sequence them in priority order, creating unnecessary complexity."
Clay solved this by combining and cross-referencing data from multiple providers. The platform creates intelligent waterfalls across providers, selecting the most reliable data points from each source. "With Clay, we have one data point that goes into a field as our source of truth. This simplifies our own tooling and our end users' lives," said Lail. "We're no longer limited by the accuracy of any single provider—instead, we get the best of each provider's strengths, automatically combined into one reliable output."
A key example of this unified approach is Vanta's inbound lead enrichment process. When a lead fills out a form on their website, HubSpot performs initial live enrichments and automatically sends the data to Clay. Clay then runs a comprehensive enrichment workflow, gathering and verifying additional information like job titles, company size, revenue data, and geographic location. The platform validates email addresses, adds phone numbers, and cross-checks LinkedIn profiles to ensure accuracy.
This real-time enrichment means sales reps have complete, actionable data the moment a lead comes in. "Our inbound lead process is faster and more efficient with Clay," says Lail. "Reps can act immediately, armed with the data they need to make a great first impression."
Use case 2: Using signals to create and prioritize accounts
Vanta uses Clay to track external signals that indicate sales opportunities:
- RSS feeds monitor funding announcements and news
- Job boards track postings for key roles like CISOs
- Website updates related to compliance
- Uses Clay to identify companies similar to new customers
Here’s how it works when Clay detects a relevant signal—such as a funding announcement or new security role:
- Finding or creating an account: When an external event is detected—such as a funding announcement or a new security role opening—Clay automatically identifies the relevant accounts and creates a corresponding signal in Salesforce.
- Enriching accounts: Clay enriches each signal with additional details, such as company size, job role specifics, recent funding, or AI-powered research to provide a complete picture of the opportunity.
- Routing opportunities: Enriched signals are routed to the appropriate sales rep or account owner in Salesforce. If the account is unowned, Clay triggers the process for assigning it to the correct team member.
- Helping with event-based outreach: For high-priority signals, Clay automates workflows to identify decision-makers, summarize key insights, and trigger timely outreach tasks. For example, a new funding signal might lead to personalized messaging tailored to the company’s growth needs.
- Custom notifications: Clay alerts sales reps with concise updates about the signal and provides links to supporting data, ensuring they have the context needed to act quickly and effectively.
"Clay helps us identify and act on the signals that matter most, like funding announcements or leadership changes. It's made our prospecting process faster and more effective," said Lail.
Use case 3: AI-powered account research
Before Clay, Vanta's sales reps spent hours manually researching accounts, gathering information from company websites, LinkedIn, and other sources before engaging with prospects. The RevOps team recognized an opportunity to automate this time-consuming process.
"We started by looking at what our reps were doing before talking to a customer," explains Lail. "We wanted to automate this process to save their time for more important work."
Clay’s AI agent scans company websites for specific indicators of security and compliance readiness, like:
- SOC 2 badges
- Security and compliance pages
- Competitor tools
- Security-related job postings
- Recent funding history
When a rep claims an account in Salesforce, Clay automatically researches these points and summarizes the findings directly in the CRM. "Clay helps us give reps detailed, actionable research in minutes, not hours. It's a huge time-saver," said Lail.
Use Case 4: Salesforce integration powers seller workflows
Vanta connected Clay with Salesforce to support their sales team through two main functions: automated background enrichment and on-demand research.
Clay continuously updates Salesforce data by:
- Filling key fields (employee count, revenue, contacts) for new and existing accounts
- Tracking signals like funding rounds, executive hires, and compliance updates
- Creating custom objects to help reps prioritize outreach
Sales reps can trigger Clay workflows directly in Salesforce to:
- Research account compliance posture
- Find decision-makers
- Validate contact information All results appear in relevant Salesforce records.
"Reps are able to get all the power of Clay without any complexity," says Lail. "They don't need to learn a new tool or switch between platforms – all the enriched data and insights just appear right where they're already working."
Clay’s Salesforce integration has also improved data governance. Clay automatically:
- Validates updates against existing records
- Follows Vanta's business rules for data updates
- Finds better data when reps reject automatic updates
- Eliminates manual tickets and operations involvement
"The Salesforce integration has been seamless and transformative. It’s allowed us to scale workflows we never thought possible," said Lail.
Clay's impact on Vanta's RevOps strategy
Clay has helped Vanta improve their RevOps processes through automation and data-driven sales. The results include:
- Data enrichment at scale: Vanta adds thousands of new, enriched contacts to their database monthly, giving their go-to-market teams consistent access to high-quality data.
- Faster workflows: Clay has eliminated manual data entry and research tasks. "We're saving a ton of time since people aren't pressing buttons anymore," notes Lail. "Tasks that people previously disliked, like contact research, are now completely automated."
- Streamlined processes: "You can think of Clay as an orchestration of outcomes," explains Lail. "It takes what you would normally do in an Excel spreadsheet with a bunch of formulas and automatically executes it for you."
Vanta continues to expand their use of Clay. They're hiring a dedicated team member to focus on AI-generated and workflow-generated data, working on both prospect research and customer intelligence.
"Clay has changed how we handle RevOps," says Lail. "It's made us leaner and more effective at scaling our sales motion. We're doing things we never thought possible, and our team can focus on what matters instead of data entry."
By replacing multiple tools with Clay's automated processes and real-time signals, Vanta has improved their sales operations efficiency. What started as a fix for data enrichment has become central to their RevOps strategy, helping them grow their sales operations with better data and less manual work.
Vanta, the leading trust management platform, faced a familiar challenge for high-growth B2B companies: their fragmented sales tech stack was causing inefficiencies across their rapidly scaling sales team.
“We had both a data enrichment problem and a data orchestration problem,” explains Mark Lail, Director of Revenue Operations. “We sometimes had five different tools trying to enrich the same data point, each with their own field in our CRM. There was no good way of choosing the best result or putting it to work. This resulted in a lot of wasted effort.”
Vanta’s RevOps team enlisted Clay to help them overcome conflicting data across different enrichment tools, centralize data in one platform, streamline account research, and much more.
"Clay has helped us simplify complex workflows, eliminate redundant tools, and make smarter decisions faster. It’s become a cornerstone of our RevOps strategy," said Lail.
Impact TL;DR
- 80%+ enrichment coverage by combining multiple data sources
- Thousands of new contacts added monthly through automated workflows
- Automated manual research tasks across all sales reps
- Real-time outreach based on funding events, hiring signals, and compliance updates
Use Case 1: Creating one “source of truth” for CRM data points
Before Clay, Vanta used multiple tools to manage their data enrichment. "We had a complex system of trying to decide winners and losers ourselves," said Lail. "We built routing logic across different tools, trying to sequence them in priority order, creating unnecessary complexity."
Clay solved this by combining and cross-referencing data from multiple providers. The platform creates intelligent waterfalls across providers, selecting the most reliable data points from each source. "With Clay, we have one data point that goes into a field as our source of truth. This simplifies our own tooling and our end users' lives," said Lail. "We're no longer limited by the accuracy of any single provider—instead, we get the best of each provider's strengths, automatically combined into one reliable output."
A key example of this unified approach is Vanta's inbound lead enrichment process. When a lead fills out a form on their website, HubSpot performs initial live enrichments and automatically sends the data to Clay. Clay then runs a comprehensive enrichment workflow, gathering and verifying additional information like job titles, company size, revenue data, and geographic location. The platform validates email addresses, adds phone numbers, and cross-checks LinkedIn profiles to ensure accuracy.
This real-time enrichment means sales reps have complete, actionable data the moment a lead comes in. "Our inbound lead process is faster and more efficient with Clay," says Lail. "Reps can act immediately, armed with the data they need to make a great first impression."
Use case 2: Using signals to create and prioritize accounts
Vanta uses Clay to track external signals that indicate sales opportunities:
- RSS feeds monitor funding announcements and news
- Job boards track postings for key roles like CISOs
- Website updates related to compliance
- Uses Clay to identify companies similar to new customers
Here’s how it works when Clay detects a relevant signal—such as a funding announcement or new security role:
- Finding or creating an account: When an external event is detected—such as a funding announcement or a new security role opening—Clay automatically identifies the relevant accounts and creates a corresponding signal in Salesforce.
- Enriching accounts: Clay enriches each signal with additional details, such as company size, job role specifics, recent funding, or AI-powered research to provide a complete picture of the opportunity.
- Routing opportunities: Enriched signals are routed to the appropriate sales rep or account owner in Salesforce. If the account is unowned, Clay triggers the process for assigning it to the correct team member.
- Helping with event-based outreach: For high-priority signals, Clay automates workflows to identify decision-makers, summarize key insights, and trigger timely outreach tasks. For example, a new funding signal might lead to personalized messaging tailored to the company’s growth needs.
- Custom notifications: Clay alerts sales reps with concise updates about the signal and provides links to supporting data, ensuring they have the context needed to act quickly and effectively.
"Clay helps us identify and act on the signals that matter most, like funding announcements or leadership changes. It's made our prospecting process faster and more effective," said Lail.
Use case 3: AI-powered account research
Before Clay, Vanta's sales reps spent hours manually researching accounts, gathering information from company websites, LinkedIn, and other sources before engaging with prospects. The RevOps team recognized an opportunity to automate this time-consuming process.
"We started by looking at what our reps were doing before talking to a customer," explains Lail. "We wanted to automate this process to save their time for more important work."
Clay’s AI agent scans company websites for specific indicators of security and compliance readiness, like:
- SOC 2 badges
- Security and compliance pages
- Competitor tools
- Security-related job postings
- Recent funding history
When a rep claims an account in Salesforce, Clay automatically researches these points and summarizes the findings directly in the CRM. "Clay helps us give reps detailed, actionable research in minutes, not hours. It's a huge time-saver," said Lail.
Use Case 4: Salesforce integration powers seller workflows
Vanta connected Clay with Salesforce to support their sales team through two main functions: automated background enrichment and on-demand research.
Clay continuously updates Salesforce data by:
- Filling key fields (employee count, revenue, contacts) for new and existing accounts
- Tracking signals like funding rounds, executive hires, and compliance updates
- Creating custom objects to help reps prioritize outreach
Sales reps can trigger Clay workflows directly in Salesforce to:
- Research account compliance posture
- Find decision-makers
- Validate contact information All results appear in relevant Salesforce records.
"Reps are able to get all the power of Clay without any complexity," says Lail. "They don't need to learn a new tool or switch between platforms – all the enriched data and insights just appear right where they're already working."
Clay’s Salesforce integration has also improved data governance. Clay automatically:
- Validates updates against existing records
- Follows Vanta's business rules for data updates
- Finds better data when reps reject automatic updates
- Eliminates manual tickets and operations involvement
"The Salesforce integration has been seamless and transformative. It’s allowed us to scale workflows we never thought possible," said Lail.
Clay's impact on Vanta's RevOps strategy
Clay has helped Vanta improve their RevOps processes through automation and data-driven sales. The results include:
- Data enrichment at scale: Vanta adds thousands of new, enriched contacts to their database monthly, giving their go-to-market teams consistent access to high-quality data.
- Faster workflows: Clay has eliminated manual data entry and research tasks. "We're saving a ton of time since people aren't pressing buttons anymore," notes Lail. "Tasks that people previously disliked, like contact research, are now completely automated."
- Streamlined processes: "You can think of Clay as an orchestration of outcomes," explains Lail. "It takes what you would normally do in an Excel spreadsheet with a bunch of formulas and automatically executes it for you."
Vanta continues to expand their use of Clay. They're hiring a dedicated team member to focus on AI-generated and workflow-generated data, working on both prospect research and customer intelligence.
"Clay has changed how we handle RevOps," says Lail. "It's made us leaner and more effective at scaling our sales motion. We're doing things we never thought possible, and our team can focus on what matters instead of data entry."
By replacing multiple tools with Clay's automated processes and real-time signals, Vanta has improved their sales operations efficiency. What started as a fix for data enrichment has become central to their RevOps strategy, helping them grow their sales operations with better data and less manual work.
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