Client – Specialty manufacturer

Problem

Our client receives a large number of quote requests and orders each day from their large global customer base.  These requests are submitted via various methods such as email, phone and web forms.  Due to the unique nature of their products, they employ a quoting solution which is part of their custom LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) application system to accurately price their products.  To help manage their workflow they recently implemented the CRM HubSpot to help manage the workflow and fulfillment of the quotes and orders.

Despite the improvement offered by HubSpot in streamlining their processes and reporting on their performance, the staff was still required to manually enter data (many times duplicate date) into multiple systems (CRM, LIMS, ERP) in order to process the quote requests, quotes, and customer orders.

Solution

Leveraging HubSpot’s open API, our team developed a custom CRM integration that transferred data (such as new prospects, contacts, deals, etc.) back and forth between HubSpot and the clients LIMS system to ensure that:

1. both systems had accurate up-to-date information related to the Quote Request process
2. so that the team could perform their tasks without manually transposing data between the systems.

Capabilities Demonstrated

• C#.Net Development
• API Development
• Webhooks
• HubSpot Integration
• Custom 3rd-party software integration
• Web App Development
• Business Process Automation (BPA)
• Business Process Improvement Assessment
• Business Process Improvement

Overview

The application provides:

A single starting point for the quoting process
A single source of truth for the status the quoting
Seamless integration between two mission-critical business software applications

Software Needs Assessment

We met with the teams responsible for the quote request and quote processes to understand their workflow. 

We gathered information regarding the relationship in HubSpot between their companies, contacts, and deals and how they process their quotes. 

We learned which key information they were manually transferring between the systems and laid out a plan for the integration

Development

Our team designed and developed a service-oriented integration “Hub” that would leverage the HubSpot open API and webhooks to quickly transfer data between the clients custom LIMS application and their HubSpot CRM instance.  We worked with their IT team to obtain access to a HubSpot sandbox for development and testing and provided demonstrations as development progressed.

To improve the user experience and efficiency of accessing deal / quote data between the CRM and LIMs system, we planned to update HubSpot Deal records with URLs to the quotes in the LIMS system and vice versa.
 
Originally the plan was to use HubSpot Workflows to add the URL link to the HubSpot Deal when it was created. 
That approach turned out to be problematic, as the workflows weren’t populating the data fast enough…. sometimes taking upwards of ten minutes!
 
We brainstormed and tested HubSpot’s webhooks to “notify” the Integration Hub, which then used HubSpot’s API to update the field values in HubSpot.  This approach worked well, eliminating the time the teams would have to wait for the desired results.

Testing

Keypress provided the client with a UAT script of all of the quote request scenarios identified during the needs assessment for their User Acceptance Testing.  The client’s UAT team provided feedback from their tests and the Keypress team developed and deployed the necessary fixes to the test environment until the client was satisfied that the integration was performing as desired.

Launch

We scheduled an on-site “Go-Live”.  The Keypress team shadowed various members of the client team to ensure that all processes were functioning as expected.  When issues arose, the Keypress team addressed them as soon as possible and deployed patches when necessary.

Technologies

C#.Net
Webhooks
API