The Client
Your company cannot expand successfully if you cannot function effectively. This client is a multi-state building materials company serving residential and commercial customers in the Midwest. They partnered with ClearPivot a couple of years ago for an onboarding project to expand their use of HubSpot. At the time, we established a great working relationship. Now, the company is expanding regionally, primarily through the acquisition of existing retail operations. As they do, they’re finding that new locations bring opportunity. But systems and staff that work differently can be problematic.
Meanwhile, the client’s decades-old ERP system (Epicor BisTrack) has become woefully outdated and congested with now-meaningless data accrued over so many years. Even less helpful, their system does not integrate with HubSpot.
As ardent proponents of modern technology, their leaders called on ClearPivot for help.
The Challenge
The client wanted to implement HubSpot CRM consistently across their operations and roll it out to both existing sales members and future team members. Because the business is expanding rapidly, it chose an incremental implementation approach, focusing on one region at a time. As part of the project, they also wanted to adopt and integrate Construction Monitor, a software tool that tracks new construction permits.
The goal was not to replace their existing ERP system, which is their source of truth and where they create sales quotes. Their whole product library lives there. Nonetheless, communication between this system and HubSpot is critical.
As an interim measure, the client hired a developer who created a roll-up view in HubSpot that gave sales reps a snapshot of real-time data, such as order history and customer number. But since this data didn’t live in HubSpot, no one could filter by it, run reports on it, or otherwise manipulate it. There was also a custom card in their company records in HubSpot that allowed real-time lookup of all billing data and invoice records in the system, but again, it was just a snapshot.
They needed a way to actually integrate properties for data management and reporting.
The Solution
Our ClearPivot team worked on multiple fronts to achieve the client’s goals:
- Sales operations build-out — lead routing and qualification, territory management, pipeline management, automation, analytics
- Marketing to sales handoff — marketing workflows and forms, rental pages and related actions
- Solution design (technical and system/process planning) — API partner interface, documentation of updates and newly created processes, review sales process map for needed updates
- CRM implementation
- HubSpot rollout to the sales team
We incorporated Construction Monitor for the sales team and reconfigured systems to provide better data flow.
The Construction Monitor integration went very well. This software shows permit applications by county. We set up filters aligned with the client’s criteria, then synced the records into HubSpot, creating custom objects for permits and custom properties for notifications.
However, rolling out the new CRM to the sales team uncovered some change management issues. Although the sales leader wants his team to be tech-forward, many of his sales members are not tech-savvy. Some still use sticky notes to track their sales. Given this disparity in technical skill and user capabilities, we determined that small-group training sessions tailored to each person’s level of understanding would work best for this client.
Results
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Phase one has been successfully implemented, with broad-scale improvements:
- Workflows set up to route companies to the correct owners and send notifications to them
- Rental pages set up, with workflows and automated tools in place to send notifications to the sales team
- Leads routed to the correct rep based on location
- Deal pipeline now all deals by stage. The sales leader has clear visibility when his team logs into the CRM. They can follow up with sales reps and hold them accountable.
- Construction Monitor permits are flowing into HubSpot, and salespeople are receiving the correct notifications. The client is using this tool for lead generation. Additionally, they can see if a current customer applies for a permit to build a new development, an apartment building, or another project, and reach out to that customer.
The sales team is getting more prospects than they were before. Both sales and marketing have better access to accurate information. And they can work more efficiently without losing leads because everything is tied together.
While much work has been done and initial goals have been achieved, this project continues. Since the company is actively expanding, new locations and personnel are coming online and will eventually be incorporated into the integration implementation as the incremental plan for this unfolds.
Even as the client plans for the next phase of operations, we continue to work on refinement, clear the backlog of cleanup work, and address new needs such as sales process workflows, cleanup of dirty and redundant data, and marketing handoff process workflows.
This project demonstrates the benefits of an incremental approach to implementation when you’re looking at a complex CRM integration project. Dividing the work into stages makes it much more manageable, yet you can start to reap actionable results right away. This builds team confidence and momentum to roll out the plan until additional phases are completed.
This client loves working with our team, and the feeling is mutual. There’s excitement about the continued partnership as their expansion takes shape and more locations are integrated into the new CRM implementation. This ongoing project shows that while many clients look to ClearPivot for help accomplishing a specific goal, others see the relationship as a working partnership that enables the company to continuously improve their marketing and sales efforts.
This client started with a single project and later returned for help with a far more complex project. They have big plans and are including ClearPivot in them.
