Aug 6, 2017

HubSpot SAP Integration Case Study | Elixir Solutions

Customer Cases

SAP is a leader in enterprise solutions. But HubSpot, being a pioneer in inbound marketing, clearly has the upper hand when competing with SAP in the area of Marketing Automation. So more and more midsize to large companies running on SAP are moving away from SAP for their marketing automation needs. However, an integration with SAP is still required for that kind of companies, as to avoid data silos and fully reap the benefits of working with HubSpot.

In this blog, learn how ElixirSync handles contacts, companies, leads, opportunities/deals, campaigns, and other elements amongst these two systems. Simac is leveraging the strength of those two leading technologies, in order to boost both sales and marketing efficiency.

CONTEXT

Simac is a purely Dutch family company, active in Benelux and Central Europe. On the basis of high-quality technology, they provide medium and large organizations with products and services that are always aimed at improving business processes. Simac employs a total of 1250 people and is made up of holding companies – the Simac companies – with a wide range of solutions, products, and services in many different segments.

The sales department is using SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer as their CRM system. The marketing department uses HubSpot to attract new prospects using the Inbound methodology. ElixirSync provides the handshake between those 2 departments.

CHALLENGES

Before ElixirSync was put in place, Simac struggled with the following issues:

Leads not properly followed up: Marketing Qualified Leads were not given to the sales representatives in a timely matter. And if done, interaction data from HubSpot was missing.
Pulling data out of SAP was a challenge: Since Simac has already existed for many decades, they have a large customer base. Some of these customers are not active anymore, or not worth pursuing. Getting the right customers and contacts out of SAP into HubSpot was a challenge because the manual process was error-prone and very time-consuming.
Incomplete reports: Because of data silos of having SAP and HubSpot unlinked, analytics of performance are not relevant and do not show the full picture. Likewise, ROI calculation of Marketing campaigns in HubSpot does² not reflect opportunities followed up in SAP C4C.

As SAP is known to be a big and complex system, finding the right solution to make the integration was a challenge on its own, until they turned to Elixir Solutions, and learned we specialize in exactly these kinds of solutions.

Interested in knowing more about integrations between SAP and HubSpot? We organise an event on the 16th of March, sign up below to register:

WHAT WE DID

Synchronization of HubSpot contacts into C4C leads: Leads are sent from HubSpot to SAP. This happens when a number of criteria are met. Along with this, the campaign triggering the conversion is added to the lead in SAP. Once the sales rep handles the lead, lead lifecycle data is sent back to HubSpot as well. When converted into an opportunity, SAP will automatically create an account and contact for the lead. From this moment onward, ElixirSync will sync the HubSpot contact with the account and contact, and not anymore with the lead.
Advances in data governance rules: Since the SAP master data can be used in many different business processes, changing them from an outside system is often not acceptable. This is definitely the case for account (company) master data. Therefore, ElixirSync has business rules in place to avoid that account SAP accounts are changed unexpectedly.
Campaign integration: Campaigns are added to the lead. This ensures campaign ROI can be calculated. If the campaign does not yet exist in SAP, it is created in SAP by ElixirSync and added to the lead afterwards.
Opportunity synchronization: Information concerning open, won, or lost deals are of great importance to having well-targeted campaigns and accurate reporting on certain campaigns and touchpoints. Therefore, we have integrated SAP opportunities with HubSpot deals.

Download our integration project approach

WHAT CHANGED AT SIMAC

Better reporting

Pipeline reporting and ROI calculation for campaigns: Display of HubSpot interaction data in the CRM system: more truthful reports. Dashboards are used for example for measuring of campaign success, internal communication and individual reporting of sales rep performance.
Key metrics: more advances KPI calculation is now possible, based on integrated data allows for better decision making on management level.

Customer journey alignment

Interaction data now appears automatically in SAP based on a mashup screen, so the sales reps know exactly what web pages the contact has visited, which content has been downloaded and so on.
Possibility to nurture SAP prospects until they are sales ready. Until this moment, they stay in HubSpot for nurturing purposes. Also, existing customers are being nurtured, depending on whether or not they have outstanding deals.

More targeted sales process

By making the sales department more informed about leads and prospects, better sales discussions and negotiations are possible, leading to a positive impact on sales success.

WHAT SIMAC SAYS ABOUT ELIXIRSYNC:

"With ElixirSync we are able to integrate our customers journey across platforms. This standard solution, with custom adaptations on top, was delivered in a very short time frame. Their SAP C4C and HubSpot Integration expertise surely helped a lot."

Dick van Engelen, Manager Sales Backoffice, Simac

Since integrating HubSpot and SAP, HubSpot's leads are better followed upon. Revenue generated per lead is growing for each campaign since ElixirSync was implemented (at the beginning of 2016).