How do you synchronize your agri-food CRM with your ERP?

Synchronize HubSpot with Infologic's Copilot ERP to facilitate data flows between tools

A major player in snacking distribution chose to put its trust in Make the Grade to integrate HubSpot CRM for the food industry and synchronize all its tools on the said platform. Transformations and change management were carried out so that our customer could pilot its growth autonomously.

Centralize data, tools, teams to optimize sales performance

Our customer, preferring to remain anonymous, has been a professional snacking food distributor for salad'bar, sandwich shop, bakery, burger shop, bagel store and coffee shop since 2003! Its offer comes in three categories:

• Ready-to-sell (pizzas, yoghurts, cookies).
• Ingredients (cured meats, meats, poultry).
• Snack packaging (dishes, bags, boxes).

After attending one of our conferences, they came to discuss their issues with us.

The main challenges

1. Sales performance slows down in the absence of an agri-food CRM

One of the main challenges facing the company's teams was the absence of a CRM software for the agri-food industry. Capable of effectively structuring all sales, marketing and customer service processes.

The teams were using Infologic's ERP (enterprise resource planning) Copilot to manage all internal processes such as supply chain (inventory, purchasing, logistics), human resources and payroll, accounting and finance.

However, while an ERP enables the management of a company's internal operations, CRM is useful for all companies wishing to manage their customer relationships and optimize their sales and marketing performance.

The teams were therefore facing a glass ceiling that prevented them from surpassing their growth objectives.

2. A fragmentation of tools and processes

The company was navigating through a disparate set of tools and this was creating data silos and business inefficiencies.

By connecting their new agri-food CRM to Infologic s Copilot ERP and other tools, data exchange would be more optimized.

3. Break down silos between sales, marketing and customer service teams 

Besides implementing a food CRM with HubSpot and synchronizing the tools, the challenge for our customer is to break down the organizational silos between sales, marketing and customer service teams. This fragmentation hampers communication between departments, leads to significant information losses and causes gaps in the coordination of sales activities. 

For example, marketing can generate qualified leads, but without effective transmission to the sales team, opportunities are compromised or even non-existent.

Then, it's necessary to find a way to reconcile the communication of the different teams of the food distribution player. Make the Grade is an expert in the implementation of change management.

This is where the challenge lies.

Solution: a technical integration on HubSpot & a synchronization of Infologic's Copilot tool

To make a success of such a project on both a technical and human level, it is necessary to structure the needs and solutions provided, starting by conducting interviews and drawing up specifications.

Interviews and building a specification

We start by interviewing each team: sales, CSM and marketing to find out the challenges and needs of each division. This step is very important to ensure the quality of the project.

Then we draw up a specification according to a well-defined process we follow, which brings together all the technical requirements of the project.

For our customer, in addition to the classic elements for a CRM integration (property customization, automations, dashboards, etc.), we detected particular needs concerning:

• Dispute management: create a ticket tunnel to track the history of disputes.
• Synchronizing the agri-food CRM with Infologic's Copilot ERP, Orange's Call center, Outlook calendar and SalesApp.

Tailor-made synchronization between Infologic's ERP Copilot and HubSpot

The most technical part of this project concerned the synchronization of the agri-food CRM with Infologic's Copilot ERP. The aim was to ensure a fluid circulation of all data between these two systems.

To meet this need, the first step was to carry out data mapping, which consists in establishing a correspondence between the data structures of two different CRM solutions. The tools involved in this project were Infologic's Copilot and HubSpot. This involved associating each object (contacts, companies, transactions, tickets, products) in the source with its equivalent in the destination. 

We also added a custom object "service" which identifies which service the contact works in and provides contact-specific information.

And to help us, we've created a detailed schema that visualizes the relationships between data, identifying correspondences and discrepancies between systems.

Then we developed tasks (cloud run, cron jobs) to process, transform and import the data, in order to have profound and unidirectional integration and ensure that the data is automatically up to date and accessible.

This tailor-made synchronization helps the team qualify/segment their data and increase productivity and task management.

Implementation of HubSpot agri-food CRM and creation of customized reports and dashboards

Once the specifications have been sent and approved by the customer, we can launch the project.

Their teams wanted to track their sales, marketing and customer service performance quickly and easily. So we created customized dashboards based on the needs of each division.

For example, for marketing, we've created filters to analyze:

• The breakdown of sessions by device used (mobile VS desktop).
• The number of sessions VS number of contacts VS number of customers.
• Contacts who have recently visited the site.

For the sales division:

• Actual sales VS target (monthly/quarterly/annual).
• New orders.
• Distribution of sales by customer type.
• Customers who have not ordered for more than X months.

Assuring change management for teams

"Knowledge is the only matter that increases when shared." - Socrates

Adopting a new tool like HubSpot is a daunting challenge, but with the support of seasoned experts, this transition is made much easier. The main objective was to ensure successful adoption of the platform across all corporate functions.

We worked closely with each of our customer's divisions to understand the platform's tools and the practices that will need to be carried out on a daily basis. 

We designed interactive training sessions, with practical scenarios linked to each person's responsibilities.

We have designed discovery sessions and subsequently CRM coaching, notably on database management and segmentation:

• Automation (workflows, scoring, nurturing, etc.)
• Scrapping, sequences and cold mailing.
• Reports, dashboards and KPIs.
• Marketing campaigns.

Results achieved

This technical integration on this agri-food CRM and this synchronization of the Infologic Copilot tool enabled our customer to centralize its data, tools and teams and optimize its sales, marketing and customer service performance. With over 300,000 items imported, 100,000 transactions synchronized and 30 people trained, the company is sure to continue on its growth path.