Technical HubSpot Consulting

Ripping Out Salesforce For HubSpot: How A Government Agency Took Control of Their Data

Situation

Their goal is to attract both business and consumer audiences, including local businesses, individuals, and families to visit the state.

Additionally, WVDT’s tech stack primarily served two functions:

Create streamlined processes, empowering local businesses to purchase ad space, or run events through WVDT
Deliver personalized email campaigns to their B2B & B2C audiences.

It was designed to enable local businesses to purchase advertising and engage with tourism-related trade associations.

However, their tech stack was rigid, disjointed, and cumbersome. As the digital infrastructure was made up of many disparate components from Salesforce, their tech stack was complex to operate.

Managing ad buys, tracking business engagement, delivering personalized email campaigns, and providing timely insights were all hampered by the lack of integration across their systems. Consequently, getting the ball rolling in any operational task was incredibly time-consuming. This compelled WVDT to seek a more streamlined and scalable solution.

Hidden Costs and Cumbersome Customizations

The CRM was heavily customized with over 60 custom objects to manage both B2B and B2C processes. This complexity required substantial manual work to manage, placing a heavy burden on the team as they struggled to navigate unnecessary challenges.

Additionally, every customization, new feature, or additional support request seemed to have hidden costs, making it more challenging to manage their budget predictably.

Misfiring Campaigns and Data Blind Spots

The limited segmentation and automation features hindered WVDT’s ability to personalize its marketing efforts. Consequently, WVDT was forced to create broad campaigns that failed to maximize its marketing potential.

Creating marketing emails was cumbersome due to the complex interface and limited flexibility. This required external support, further complicating the workflow.

Moreover, Salesforce Marketing Cloud lacked integrated tools and features necessary for real-time analytics and detailed tracking. As a result, WVDT could not keep its finger on the pulse of user interactions. With no metrics to guide them, WVDT was flying blind in their marketing.

Poor User Experience and Increased Workload

WVDT’s B2B portal was outdated and dysfunctional. This created a barrier that prevented users from accessing vital information, managing advertising campaigns, as well as engaging with the Tourism Board.

Although the portal was built on a reliable CMS, it was dependent on receiving data from Salesforce custom objects. Consequently, this made the system rigid and awkward to use which provided limited control over the design and user experience.

Fragmented Workflows and Manual Processes

WVDT’s workflows in Salesforce were fragmented and complex. This required manual intervention for tasks that could have been automated. The association between contacts and companies was often disconnected, leading to data silos and miscommunication between systems.

What’s more, Salesforce’s rigid customization required staff to manually update each process, such as handling inventory, managing customer records, and updating marketing data. Errors were prominent. Delays were inevitable. And data went missing.

“There were a lot of issues in terms of data that was leaking, data that was lost, and data that wasn’t connected in the right way. This was because it wasn’t easy to connect and maintain data between contacts inside Salesforce. It’s a lot easier in HubSpot.” - Laura Valdes, HubSpot Implementation Specialist

File Management Roadblocks

advertising assets to the internal team for approval and processing. Salesforce’s limited capabilities made this a challenging and time-consuming task. The impediments stemmed from:

Roadblocks to file management: Files submitted through forms were hard to retrieve and approve in Salesforce, requiring manual intervention to locate, review, and process them.
Limited Portal Integration: Salesforce could not easily be integrated with the B2B portal, making it difficult to track file statuses in real time or display them efficiently.
No Built-In File Approval Workflows: Salesforce didn’t support automated workflows for file approvals, forcing WVDT to continue to travail through manual processes.

What Was The Cost of This Disjointed Tech Stack?

Severe Operational Inefficiency: Time-consuming manual processes increased the operational burden on WVDT’s teams.

Escalating Costs: The complexity of the tech stack and the need for external support led to high operational expenses.

Below Par Marketing Campaigns: WVDT’s marketing team was unable to create tailored marketing messages due to the tech stack’s inability to segment and automate workflows.

Fragmented Data Silos: Disconnected systems made it difficult to have a unified view of customer interactions, hindering data-driven decisions.

Subpar User Experience: The cumbersome B2B portal management led to a less-than-optimal user experience.

Critical Scalability Challenges: The overly customized and complex tech stack made scaling and adapting to new business needs difficult.

Enable and Enhance

Leverage HubSpot’s modern segmentation tools to allow WVDT to create hyper-personalized marketing campaigns. The vision was to create opportunities where users could tailor their marketing efforts based on specific user behaviors and criteria.

Increase Operational Efficiency

Reduce the number of custom objects and create leaner processes within HubSpot to liberate users from crucial but time-consuming manual tasks. This would allow team members to channel their focus into more complex tasks that require their unique talents.

Redesign the B2B Portal

Use Content Hub as the strong foundation to build the B2B portal, with a focus on the user experience. The overarching goal was to create a frictionless interface that would integrate CRM data with ease. This would simplify how local businesses managed their interactions with WVDT.

Solution

Migrating WVDT’s Multi-System Setup to a Unified HubSpot Platform

The Mole Street team conducted a comprehensive discovery phase to understand WVDT’s existing infrastructure, specific needs, and pain points caused by its complex tech stack.

This process provided the x-ray vision needed to fully grasp every challenge from A to Z. As a result, the Mole Street team swiftly identified the most effective path to unifying WVDT’s fragmented systems.

Simplifying Fragmented Workflows and Automating Processes

Mole Street transitioned WVDT’s operations to HubSpot to eliminate the redundancies of fragmented workflows and manual processes in Salesforce. Operations Hub played a key role here.

Its integration enabled automating previous tasks such as inventory management, customer record updates, and marketing data synchronization. The Mole Street team built 124 workflows to automatically manage data between contacts and companies, ensuring consistent and accurate information flow across the CRM.

Automated Inventory Management: Workflows were implemented to automate inventory tracking and updates.
Customer Record Updates: We set up workflows to automate customer record management
Data Synchronization: We automated the synchronization of marketing and CRM data to improve improving the consistency of information across platforms and reduce errors caused by data silos.

“You can pretty much do anything with Ops Hub through automation, both programmable automation in the workflows tool and also through webhooks. With Operations Hub, you can use webhook functionality within workflows to automate actions across different tools. For example, when a product usage event occurs in a tool like Amplitude, it can automatically trigger a push notification in another third-party tool. This kind of cross-platform automation is a key feature of Operations Hub.”

Paul Weston, GM and VP of Product at HubSpot

Lasered-Focused Marketing Capabilities

Operations Hub was once again the solution removing barriers to operational efficiency. Through its powerful automation capabilities, custom workflows were created to streamline the submission, review, and approval of files.

Manual intervention was no longer necessary. This enabled WVDT’s internal team to automatically process partner submissions. Furthermore, Operations Hub acted as a bridge between HubSpot and the B2B portal, facilitating the integration of file submissions. Real-time file tracking was now possible and all files would automatically be displayed in a user-friendly format on the B2B portal.

Automated File Submissions: Created workflows that streamlined the file submission and approval process to reduce delays and manual processing times.
Real-Time File Tracking: We enabled real-time file tracking so WVDT could monitor file submissions and approvals instantly.
Portal Integration: The Mole Street Team integrated the file management system with the B2B portal. Approved files could now automatically be displayed in a user-friendly format for easy access by partners.

“We created a really cool custom-coded action with a workflow that takes the file they submit, which HubSpot automatically creates in the file manager, and converts it into an attachment that can be used in the CRM and displayed on the portal.” - Laura Valdes, HubSpot Implementation Specialist

Seamless Data Migration and CRM Simplification

The first priority was to simplify WVDT’s heavily customized Salesforce CRM, which included over 60 custom objects. This involved a full review of the existing data architecture to identify which custom objects were essential and how they could be consolidated within HubSpot’s more streamlined CRM.

Data Mapping and Migration: We mapped and migrated each Salesforce custom object to its appropriate HubSpot counterpart, reducing the number of custom objects from 60+ to under 10. This was essential to maintaining data integrity while simplifying WVDT’s CRM infrastructure.
Data Cleaning and Validation: All of the data underwent a comprehensive cleaning and validation process before migration to ensure accuracy and consistency within HubSpot’s system. This maintained the data’s integrity, removing any potential errors during the migration.

Enhanced Marketing Automation and Segmentation

WVDT's existing Salesforce Marketing Cloud setup inhibited their ability to automate and segment marketing campaigns. This was an area of concern – personalization is mandatory for any successful marketing campaign in today’s competitive digital arena.

In response, the Mole Street team enabled the marketing team to create tailored campaigns by transitioning everything to HubSpot Marketing Hub.

Advanced Segmentation Setup: Modern segmentation tools were integrated within HubSpot to create more direct and personalized marketing campaigns.
Automated Workflow Creation: Automated workflows were created to save time on crucial tasks, such as email campaigns, follow-ups, and customer journey tracking.

Developing a User-Friendly B2B Portal on HubSpot CMS

The WVDT portal was once built on WordPress and heavily reliant on Salesforce. This created innumerable integration and functionality challenges.

To address this, the Mole Street team shifted everything to HubSpot CMS. This consolidation paved the way for enhanced integration, design flexibility, and an improved user experience.

CRM-Integrated Portal Development: Leveraged HubSpot’s CMS to create a B2B portal that seamlessly integrates CRM data, offering a smoother, more intuitive user interface. The new portal design is not only more visually appealing but also significantly more functional, addressing the limitations of the previous system.

Enhanced Design and Functionality: Focused on creating a responsive, user-friendly design that improved navigation and user experience, making it easier for local businesses to interact with WVDT’s services.

Simplified Attribution and Reporting for Clear Insights

To address the operational inefficiencies caused by WVDT’s previous tech stack, we implemented several key changes within HubSpot to reduce manual processes and improve overall efficiency.

Automation of Internal Processes: Introduced automation for internal workflows that were previously manual, significantly reducing the operational burden on WVDT’s teams. This included automating routine tasks such as lead management, data updates, and reporting.

Bi-Directional CRM Integration: Ensured real-time synchronization between HubSpot and WVDT’s existing systems, facilitating seamless data flow and up-to-date information across all platforms.

Ongoing Technical Support for Continuous Improvement

When transitioning to new technology, it’s only natural for users to not understand from the get-go how to fully utilize the platform’s potential. Recognizing this, the Mole Street team provided ongoing technical support and introduced continuous improvement initiatives to enhance its operations further.

Personalized Training Sessions: Conducted customized training sessions for WVDT’s teams, focusing on key HubSpot features such as CRM management, marketing automation, and content management. These sessions were tailored to ensure that the team could confidently use the new system to its full potential.

Continuous Optimization: Delivered ongoing support to address any challenges that arose post-migration, ensuring that WVDT’s tech ecosystem remains optimized and adaptable to their evolving needs.

WVDT was once shackled to the cumbersome inefficiencies of a disparate tech system. Generating reports required manual data extraction from multiple systems. Syncing data between Salesforce and WordPress required frequent troubleshooting. Building automation workflows required intricate custom coding.

Friction was involved in every single interaction.

Now, the shackles are off, and WVDT is reveling in the riches of a unified HubSpot CRM Suite Enterprise platform. With this consolidated tech stack, WVDT has the agility to execute tasks at speed with minimal resistance, giving their team more time to focus on strategy.

Streamlined Operations and Enhanced Efficiency

Reduced Custom Objects: Decreased the number of custom objects from over 60 to under 10, simplifying processes and reducing operational burden.
Unified System: Migrated from a fragmented tech stack to a consolidated HubSpot platform, eliminating the need to toggle between disparate systems.
Accelerated Internal Processes: Streamlined workflows to drastically reduce time spent on manual tasks, boosting overall productivity.

Lasered-Focused Marketing Capabilities

Advanced Automation: Enhanced segmentation and automation capabilities, enabling more targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
Increased User Engagement: The new B2B portal improved interaction with local businesses, resulting in more meaningful marketing strategies.

Significant Cost Reduction and Scalability

Lower Total Cost of Ownership: HubSpot’s predictable pricing model and reduced operational overhead led to significant cost savings.
More Scalable Solution: WVDT now has a scalable platform that can grow with their needs, without the unexpected price increases associated with Salesforce.