CRM_1

How AutoConcept Speeds Up Data Flow with a Custom HubSpot Integration

AutoConcept

AutoConcept is a total provider of insurance solutions to the automotive market in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. It's the first company in Sweden to offer brand independent Mechanical Breakdown Insurance (MBI). Today they're operating as a free-standing private owned company with head-quarters in Kungsbacka, Sweden. 

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“TeQflo took us on and has led our company through this work in a great way. Now we can continue to grow our company with really good tools tailored for us.”
Anna-Karin Bröms

Anna-Karin Bröms
COO, AutoConcept

Challenges

AutoConcept's proprietary ERP system works great for managing car insurance solutions. However, before we started working together, the information flow between their own car insurance system and other business systems was limited. As a result, it was just too difficult for the marketing teams, sales teams and customer service teams to find the right customer information, at the right time.

Without a central source of customer data such as past interactions, transactions and other activities, collaboration between customer-facing teams and management was simply not efficient. It was tough getting data and reports to match, which meant that different teams weren't working towards the same business goals. 

By selecting HubSpot as their new CRM, AutoConcept had already made great strides towards modernizing their tech stack. However, to enable proper inter-departmental collaboration and improve the ROI on their IT spend, HubSpot's CRM and AutoConcept's custom ERP system needed to talk to each other. Marketing, sales and customer service were just not able to work efficiently. They needed their customer information to flow to the right places, at the right times. 

However, as AutoConcept are using a custom made ERP system, including very large data sets and known data quality issues, there were no easy ways to integrate the two platforms. These technical obstacles had to be overcome, and we were asked to help.   

Goals

  • Ensure proper two-way data flow between HubSpot's CRM and AutoConcept's custom ERP system.
  • Enable the sales organization by providing them with accurate customer data and sales performance reports.
  • Enable the customer service team with better insights to drive customer retention and improve up- and cross-sell opportunities.
  • Support better marketing and sales alignment by making sure both teams are using the same correct data.
  • Reduce time spent on inefficiencies such as unnecessary manual labour, double data entry and other low-value tasks.

Solution

In the end, we decided on a simple two-step process:

  1. Speed: To get going fast, we started with a temporary integration through Skyvia. 
  2. Quality: Once we had the ball rolling, we built a robust custom integration. 

For context, Skyvia is a cloud based no-coding integration platform. With their off-the-shelf solutions, it's relatively easy build a temporary integration fast. In general, Skyvia works well for basic integration requirements. However, when customers need deeper levels of customization or when data volumes are high (which means monthly costs go up fast with the likes of Skyvia), we typically recommend building a custom integration. 

Nonetheless, by starting with a temporary integration through Skyvia, we were able to extract valuable insights about what AutoConcept really needed. When it comes to custom integrations, understanding work processes and data streams is key. Skyvia helped us map out those business needs, meaning we now had all the necessary information to design and build a robust custom integration.

AutoConcept had asked us to build a custom two-way integration. In the area of system integrations, custom two-way integrations are typically the most complex variation. We had to design the logic and rules for fetching and delivering data back and forth, continuously. Whereas HubSpot's open API is generally integration-friendly, connecting it to a custom-built ERP system requires a bit more work than usual. Fortunately, solving the more complicated IT challenges is exactly what we're good at!

 Today, valuable insights about our customers and their interactions - on company and people level - are easily accessible to anyone who needs it. They can use their computer, telephone or laptop. No more mismatching data. No more information gaps. And no more bad customer experiences!

Results

One benefit of building a custom integration, is that the outcome is binary: it either works well, or it doesn't. And the custom integration we've designed and built for AutoConcept does exactly what it's supposed to do: synchronize the right data, to the right places, at the right time. 

Ultimately, the integration between HubSpot and AutoConcept's proprietary ERP system is an event-driven two-way sync. Their two-way sync operates continuously, and only updates the data fields that have actually been changed to a different value. In other words, a given contact property in HubSpot will only update if its counterpart in the ERP has been altered. Or the other way around, for that matter. This means that our custom integration operates much faster and smoother, compared to what we could've accomplished with Skyvia or any other off-the-shelf integration solution. 

As a result, syncing data between HubSpot and AutoConcept's ERP has provided our client with several business growth opportunities:

  • Improving sales team effectiveness, resulting in more deals and revenue.
  • Improving marketing team effectiveness, resulting in more leads and opportunities.
  • Improving the customer experience by using accurate customer data and personalization.
  • Realizing significant cost savings by reducing time spent on manual labour. 

In conclusion, designing and building this custom HubSpot integration did take some effort. However, by connecting HubSpot's CRM to AutoConcept's own proprietary ERP system, they have never been in a better spot to delight their customers and improve the customer experience. Day after day! 

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