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We'd like to merge two companies within HubSpot but have been told this functionality is not available as it is disabled for users who have a Salesforce integration with Hubspot. It would be great if this feature could be made available.
I'm amazed this only had two votes when I found it! This is a huge pain point for my clients that use both HubSpot and Salesforce.
As a HubSpot partner, I consult with a variety of clients that use both systems. Companies that do use Salesforce, are likely to see Salesforce as the system of record for Account/Company records (particularly for Companies/Accounts that have been qualified beyond earlier stages of the marketing and sales cycle). They will want to be able to "clean up" and consolidate the Company records auto-generated by HubSpot while still allowing the Contact-to-Company matching functionality.
The main reason that this is a pain point, is that companies that use multiple email domains end up generating duplicate Company records which cannot be merged. Yes - the contacts can be moved manually to the "master" Company record, and then the duplicate Company deleted, but there is nothing to prevent the duplicate from being generated in the future if a new Contact comes in again with the alternate email domain. (Note: another way to resolve this issue would be to allow manually adding secondary/"Merged Domains" to a Company record, without relying on the merging functionality - see my comment on this separate Idea)
Why is this such an issue?
One of the main advantages of integrating Salesforce Account with HubSpot is the ability to qualify/segment/route new leads based on Account-level data -- the issue here is that the account-level data won't exist on a net-new created Company record for an alternate domain. Examples:
Salesforce Accounts are already enriched with certain company-level data provided by past leads (possibly in queued form questions not yet answered by a new Contact), and marketing wants to use this data to segment/qualify new leads at the Company
Company has already been assigned an Owner on the Salesforce account, who should receive any future leads from the Company, rather than running the new leads through a lead rotator (this may be hard to catch before a new lead with an alternate email domain is already passed off)
Sales team has identified and flagged "target" Accounts or Account "priorities" in Salesforce and wants to use this data in lead scoring or MQL criteria (this actually applies even if this info was entered on the HubSpot side, since a net-new duplicate Company record won't have this)
Notify of any new leads at Companies with an open Deal (Deal record won't be associated to the new/duplicate company)
Setting new Contacts from Customer companies to Customer Lifecycle Stage - this is a built-in HubSpot feature, but it won't work if a new Company (without a Company Lifecycle Stage of Customer) is created instead of the Contact being associated with the "master" record already flagged as a Customer
Again, most of the above can be mitigated by moving new Contacts to the "master" company, but it's not scalable to have to do this with each new Contact that comes in with an alternate email address.
So why is this a limitation?
HubSpot Support has advised: "The reason why the merging is disabled with the Salesforce integration is because we do not have the functionality to correctly map accounts to companies after a merge."
I understand how this could be an issue when merging Companies that are syncing with Salesforce Accounts, but I don't see how it should impact our ability to merge accounts not tied to a Salesforce account. HubSpot knows which Companies are syncing with Salesforce - it would be great if the ability to merge was conditionally disabled based on this.
Furthermore, so long as no Company record tied to a Salesforce account is removed as part of a merge, I don't see why a Salesforce Account-syncing Company couldn't be involved in a merge so long as it is the "master" record that other non-Salesforce-syncing Companies are being merged into.
Some Scenarios and My Recommendations
I've attached a diagrams that shows various merging scenarios between Company records that are/aren't syncing with a Salesforce account and acknowledges which likely would cause issues, and another that summarizes my recommendations to the HubSpot team.
I can't claim to know the back-end workings of the HubSpot-Salesforce integration, but it seems as long as any Company record IDs that are sycning with Salesforce "survive" a merge, that no issues should arise.
(Note my scenarios diagram doesn't cover the scenario of merging two HubSpot Companies where neither is syncing with a Salesforce Account - this is fairly straightforward, and I don't see how this could cause any issues with the integration!)
As a final reminder, the simpler solution may be the angle of allowing manually adding of secondary/"merged" domains, per discussions on this idea, since this would require no changes to merge behavior.
Everyday I am amazed by the very basic functionality not present in HubSpot. It has become apparent that the HubSpot average customer requires 101 functionality - I can't discern why else some of these basic ideas aren't even being presented and if they are, voted on.
This is really disappointing and a HUGE hinderance to be able to structure account-based selling style programs in addition to all the other comments mentioned by others in this idea thread.
I can't understand this "limitation". Our hubspot database is soooo messed up by now - we are very close to dump the service. This is basic when doing salesforce integration. There is an assumption that a company will be created only in one platform (either salesforce or Hubspot), well this assumption is wrong.
Forcing me to do this, will result in finding another solution which works better with salesforce.
Agree with all the comments related to this request - this is essential functionality, not a nice-to-have. Yet another example of HubSpot delivering half-baked garbage. We had to discontinue use of the HubSpot CRM for the same reason. All of this is just extremely frustrating - how can we maintain data integrity across these systems if core functionality is absent?
Come on HubSpot, this is such a basic feature request! Not sure why you can merge contacts with the live sync but not companies. Has anyone found an alternative solution to HubSpot's "solution" of uninstalling the SFDC integration?
I was hoping just pausing the SF sync would let me do the merges but HS says I need to uninstall the Salesforce integration altogether. That is simply not an acceptable solution, and we have 1,000 known compnay duplicates (plus more they aren't detecting themselves). This needs a solution.
Same problem here, really agree with everything @chris_p_lukes said.
I've exchanged some messages with HS Support about why nobody from the Product team answered or reacted to this post.
(Ticket number: #2797272)
Apparently, they just wait for 100 likes before considering a post...
About the diagram in @chris_p_lukes answer, here's what they answered:
"The diagram makes sense if we were able to make a distinction between companies syncing and companies not syncing when that Company merge tool is used. Very logic in theory, but to be completely upfront with you, there may be reasons on Salesforce side why we cannot use that logic yet that are out of our control, as in Salesforce would have reasons to not let us do that.
Hubspot has built the integration with Salesforce. It is one of the most built and the best of all the integrations we have but there are things the integration cannot do because we have to abide by Salesforce rules, obviously."
I don't really understand how they can't differentiate between companies syncing to SF and companies not syncing because all syncing companies have a SF account ID field not empty, so it should be pretty easy to make a difference.
Anyway, I hope we can soon merge not-syncing companies to syncing ones.
I have HubSpot support trying to get me to uninstall, do the cleanup and then re-install the integration. I am worried about unintended affects of this. Has anyone done it before?
We're doing some housekeeping of the ideas forum here and this post popped on my radar. As mentioned above, this functionality is currently supported in the HubSpot CRM. Here are the details on how to merge companies. I'm going to move this to the status of "delivered". As always, thank you for your continued input on our product.
I agree with previous comments, uninstalling SFDC is not a rational solution. I already got fooled once to do it and I spent best part of 3 solid days trying to put things back together afterwards.
Agree with all of the above. More dross from Hubspot.
I used to be a huge fan of Hubspot but the more I seem to use it, the more convinced I am that they have been successful off the back of great marketing and very little has had anything to do with the product. No wonder support is so responsive and helpful. If they weren't, customers would be leaving left right and centre.
For those of you still struggling with this issue, worth checking out http://insycle.com/ which manages to bypass some of the hurdles found in both HubSpot and SFDC when it comes to managing duplicates and other general data quality maintenance. Early testing from my side looks very promising so perhaps a temporary solution until a better option is presented by HubSpot.
