One thing to know regarding import vs. syncing is that both have their pros and cons and there is a tradeoff with either choice.
With Importing:
You have to manually keep up with adding new data from those others systems. That means ongoing, consistent work.
Importing is not always as easy as uploading a CSV and wiping your hands of it. Often you need to clean and standardize the data before you import. You have to manually map fields in your CSV to HubSpot CRM, which is time consuming.
As data changes in one system, it won't be reflected in your other systems.
Syncing
Often, syncing between two different systems have many quirks that you wouldn't be aware of until the sync is in place. Deduplicating across systems for instance, is often a complicated task. If you don't merge duplicates on both platforms down to the same synced record, you will break the sync (new updates to those records won't be reflected in both systems).
Changes made to synced data will be automatically updated in connected systems.
Managing associations and syncing them between systems can be complicated.
In short, for most companies, syncing will be the better choice and easier to manage. For smaller companies, or companies that are not at a point where data consistency across systems is a big deal yet, importing might be a fine choice.
Also just wanted to say that Insycle can be a good fit for helping you to manage importing data and generally improving your data quality on HubSpot (and therefore on your other synced systems as well). For example, Insycle allows you to:
Save import field mapping in templates so you don't have to map fields everytime you import data
Clean and standardize CSV data while importing, using advanced functions
Automatically associate contacts to companies while importing
The accuracy of the data is primarily dependent upon the quality of the data that you're importing. The method will be the same regardless. A data sync tool will be much easier than importing yourself assuming that the data is clean.
HubSpot has a native source tracking field: Original Source, Original Source drill-down 1, and Original Source drill-down 2 that will be tracked in your account autonomously as you start collecting leads from inbound and outbound sources. It is a fairly common practice to create a custom source marker field that would show historical sources from your previous CRM.
What do you mean by 'contact form'?
You can integrate your Microsoft Outlook account into HubSpot to sync your email inbox and calendar to the CRM. As far as printing documents, envelopes, etc that is not a function in the CRM.
You can generate a list view of your contacts by going to the main navigation bar: Contacts>Contacts>Edit Columns>then select which data points you would like to be visible with in the view.
By "contact form", I am referring to a view of all existing fields that are set up for a contact record. I have attached screenshots of an Act! CRM contact record form where all of the fields are shown that are set up for a contact. I have also attached 2 screenshots of the HubSpot Properties screens.
My questions are 1. How do I create and save the fields (IT veterans use the term fields instead of properties to refer to specific data types) that I always want to use for my contacts?; 2. Is a screen available that shows in one clean view all of the fields that are available to use for entering a contact's information (like the Act! CRM screen)? I always want to capture complete mailing addresses for example.
- While performing the syncing/ Importing of your contacts to HubSpot it will show you in the columns that this particular field is mapped with this particular field. - If suppose any of the fields is unavailable in HubSpot then to syn the information of that field you can create the custom field Custom field in Hubspot. - Below screenshots are showing, how contacts fields are being mapped between salesforce and HubSpot while using Data Sync and Import