Overview

Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc. (SEH®), a multi-disciplined, single-source consulting services firm of engineers, architects, planners, and scientists, recognized a need for a new customer relationship management (CRM) platform to align more than 800 employee-owners working in multiple offices across the United States.

Given the magnitude of the project, SEH realized they would benefit from a solutions partner with expertise in establishing and documenting business objectives, solution requirements, definitions of success, and implementation plans to mitigate risk, streamline change management and user adoption, and set the stage for sustainable growth of key opportunities and complex projects.

SEH engaged with Denamico, a Diamond Tier HubSpot Solutions Partner, to help evaluate several CRM options with a primary focus on HubSpot’s Growth Suite, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics.

After the assessment was finalized, Denamico proceeded with a full implementation plan of the HubSpot CRM Platform, including Sales Hub Enterprise, Marketing Hub Professional, and Service Hub Professional.

Challenges

Although SEH had technology in place to help marketing, sales, and customer success teams, the previous systems were not integrated, resulting in siloed execution strategies and incomplete customer insights.

Their legacy CRM also lacked functionality and usability and was built around outdated sales processes that weren’t suited to meet the needs of the growth-focused, highly efficient sales organization that SEH is focused on building.

Additionally, sales and customer success processes were hindered by the previous system, resulting in missed sales expansion opportunities with existing clients.

Onboarding SEH’s customer-facing teams to HubSpot provided the opportunity to achieve the following business objectives based on the aforementioned challenges.

Business Objectives Based on Challenges

1. Increase visibility in the business to accelerate growth and reduce the risk of losing institutional knowledge from one employee to another.
   
   
2. Provide visibility into valuable client intelligence and contact insights cross-functionally.
   
   
3. Empower employee engagement and collaboration across regions and team lines.
   
   
4. Create a scalable platform that drives measurable efficiencies through streamlined or automated processes, improves customer experience, and increases profitability.
   
   
5. Capture actionable data to inform business decisions and strategic initiatives.

The HubSpot & Denamico Solution

The decision to implement a new CRM solution at SEH was not taken lightly. Denamico assisted with an assessment of HubSpot to meet SEH’s business objectives and solution requirements. This started with mapping SEH’s existing systems and processes to identify gaps and map out an ideal future-state for their technology, data, and processes.

SEH made their final determination to implement HubSpot’s Growth Suite based on internal research and Denamico consulting in the following areas:

• Ease of Use –With two primary user groups, SEH required a solution that was both highly configurable for “super” users and easy to adopt for “active” users of the system.
  
  
• Costs and User Licenses –SEH determined that HubSpot’s pricing package allowed for free access to the CRM for light but active users rather than paid seats as required by other solutions. Ongoing administration and development costs were also considered.
  
  
• IT Integration & Risks –Integration with SEH’s current ERP software was a determining factor in the CRM solution as well.
  
  
• Sales Process Integration –SEH leveraged Denamico’s documentation of business and solutions requirements to confirm that HubSpot could meet the needs of the sales team and integrate with or optimize existing processes.

“The business requirements documention prepared by Denamico provided significant additional detail regarding the various systems that will be integrated, and compared Hubspot versus Salesforce in meeting SEH business needs."

– Scott Sannes,Principal

The Results

Denamico served as a trusted advisor, helping SEH to determine the best-fit CRM platform based on their unique needs. Our team continued with the development of a full implementation plan, including a pilot program for deployment with key sales and marketing leaders prior to a full rollout. By following a change management and communication plan, SEH experienced higher user adoption rates than with previous implementations.

Currently, SEH has 50 super users onboarded in HubSpot, with 300+ additional active users in the system

SEH has also seen immediate improvements in the following areas:

• Streamlined processes and operational efficiencies
• Visibility into business intelligence and customer insights
• Time and resource requirements to support admin tasks and data entry
• Access to key customer data across divisions, regions, and teams
• Consistency and accuracy in data
• Sales analytics and activity tracking
• Pipeline management and forecasting

Activity Stats Within the First 90 Days

• Almost 7,000 sales activities logged in HubSpot in the first 90 days
  
  
  
  

• Over 1,900 deals were created in HubSpot in the first 90 days
  
  
  
  

• Consistent active user rates above 80%

Ongoing Implementation & Optimization

Next steps in the implementation process include continued development and customization of HubSpot to support additional team needs and to optimize processes, including but not limited to:

• RFP proposal management
• Client program management
• Marketing automation
• Voice of the customer

The Impact

From the outset, SEH knew that a new CRM platform solution was needed to establish a sense of alignment throughout the organization, enable systemic change in processes, and leverage a set of tools to capture new clients and improve the overall experience for clients and employees of SEH alike.

Working with Denamico throughout the assessment and planning phases helped SEH to make an informed decision on their investment, as well as provide them with a plan of action to implement state-of-the-art technology while managing risk and user adoption.

Now, SEH is equipped with a solution that provides real-time reporting and insights to help guide a more effective and efficient sales process and a more predictable growth strategy.