Are You Confident in Your CRM Data? If so, Read This!

[Connorj13]

One thing that has always shocked me as a systems architect is the confidence most teams have in their CRM data.

We do so many data audits at Aptitude 8, and the teams I work with are often surprised at what we uncover after digging in. There are two main reasons for this shock: first, as you are probably aware, CRM systems are not cheap. Especially when you get into really robust systems with custom development (read: $$$$$$).

Second, entire teams and their stakeholders make large and very impactful decisions based on the data they are seeing in their CRM. They trust the data that’s available in their system of choice.

If you ask me, this sounds like the scariest blockbuster movie of 2021.

Here’s why: What people often fail to realize is that CRMs only represent just a piece of your whole prospect data set. It may be full of a LOT of information, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting ALL of the information you actually need. In fact, it’s likely the right information is spread across multiple systems and tools.

For example, more often than not, customers are using tools like ZoomInfo or Clearbit to enrich their records or connecting an ERP or accounting system to add further context to CRM records. 

However, many HubSpot customers are using external tools that do not connect to HubSpot natively. While these tools may have publicly available APIs, the cost and complexity of building a custom integration using middleware is high. Sometimes more costly than the value gained from the custom build.

Thankfully, gone are the days of feeling this pain.

With the creation of Operations Hub, you can now use coded actions to fetch data from external systems all natively inside of HubSpot to build a complete data set in your system of record - HubSpot. 

For example, on record create, a form fill for instance, a workflow could run and query your accounting or ERP system to enrich a record with data on whether their company is a customer already, the last invoice they paid, or the last job they booked with your company, all without needing a full bidirectional integration. 

Similarly, you could query databases specific to your industry or market and enrich that record with corresponding information to better inform your ABM or marketing segmentation initiatives. 

By triggering this from Hubspot you reduce the need for complex and risky 3rd party integrations and coded solutions and can control when and how these scripts run all without ever leaving Hubspot. 

If you’re interested in learning more about how this works, check out our upcoming Operations Hub workshops! I’ll be there to answer all of your burning questions and give you some tactical advice on how you can do this yourself.