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Today, having a functional CRM is not enough – you need an integrated RevOps system across your marketing, sales, and service channels. What is RevOps, why is this important, and what features matter most to business owners and leaders? In this article, I will explore why an integrated CRM platform can help accelerate growth and advance customer experience. We’ll also get specific with how HubSpot makes that happen and go over what’s new in HubSpot. 

The Tide has Turned 

CRM-centric software platforms have become the norm. Typically, you had a Sales CRM that managed leads and deals, and then a marketing platform to manage your campaigns with a separate website CMS and separate customer service software. Now you can have it all integrated and the focus is on building up your RevOps. 

 So what is RevOps and why is this the trend? Simply put, RevOps is the unification of marketing, sales, and service into one integrated system with shared records. 

 Understanding customer data, forecasting sales, and integrating systems have increased business conversion rates – up to 300% is reported by several CRM providers as the benchmark, with adoption and investment topping any software system. The case for increased visibility into customer data and leveraging it across the organization is paramount to effective sales and marketing alignment. Now, more than ever, the key is retaining those customers to increase lifetime value, ensuring customer acquisition costs (CAC) are allocated and a positive return is met. Adding customer experience (CX), service, and content management (CMS) to the mix only increases efficiencies and data transparency, accessibility, and accuracy for professionals who champion, utilize, and administer these systems.  

Market share for adoptions is spread across many offerings, including Salesforce, which owns 20-25% of the market, and the other major players (MS Dynamics 365, SAP, Oracle, Adobe, and HubSpot, each holding roughly 10-15%). Newer, lighter versions and CRM suites, including Freshsales, SugarCRM, and Pipedrive, are also available. Which one is the right fit for your organization, which offers the best support, most advanced features, and highest adoption rates? These questions must be answered before implementing or replacing one or more systems with a modern CRM.   

I created this quick reference guide with the help of Gemini, and you can read the user generated reviews and feature comparisons here: https://www.g2.com/categories/crm

Is HubSpot the Answer? 

HubSpot, as we know it, came into the market in 2008 and began gaining traction immediately. The software creation of two MIT buddies, HubSpot’s path forward gained velocity with the advent of “Inbound Marketing,” a methodology introduced by Brian Halligan in 2005. Together, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah took the company public in 2014. The company has not stopped building on the platform that became the preeminent alternative to Salesforce for mid-market companies and startups.

Built on a free CRM and a suite of “Hubs,” the solution is one of the few SAAS solutions that has grown primarily through in-house development and not acquisition. However, the recent acquisition of Clearbit did augment the system with the ability to enhance and enrich contact and company data. To my knowledge, it is the only CRM that can be expanded with Marketing and Content Management tools in one natively built system. With the additional Commerce, Service, and Operations hubs, no end-to-end solution can support RevOps optimization and organizational transformation as efficiently and cost-effectively as HubSpot. This is open to debate, of course.  

So, having been drinking the “orange Kool-Aid” since 2010 and been on both sides of migrations to and from other CRMs, what have I learned, and what am I offering? I’ll discuss the advantages and even mention a few drawbacks before reviewing the latest features. I will break down the benefits and discuss where the hubs fit into each facet of RevOps.  

Revenue Operations, as a discipline, aims to unify marketing, sales, and service to ensure they are using integrated platforms and communicating data between the departments for precise customer acquisition and retention attribution. A clean RevOps System should answer these questions.  

1. Which marketing source drove the lead or customer engagement, and which campaign deserves credit or attributed value?
2. Who contacted the lead? Was it converted to an opportunity?
3.  How did the sales process progress? Was the opportunity converted to a customer, what was the value of the customer acquisition, what was the cost, and what was the 12-month ROI?  
4. Did the conversion happen online, or was there human involvement?  
5. What is the average order value? What is the average customer lifetime value?  
6. What is the customer's satisfaction with onboarding after six months? After one year?
7. Are there support tickets associated with the customer?
8. Were they addressed in a timely fashion with a favorable outcome?  
9. Are there product improvements to share with the development teams, etc.?  
10. Are all the marketing, sales, and service benchmarks being met?  

If you don’t know the answers to these questions or have inaccurate data systems in place, it may be time to consider the advantages of a modern system. HubSpot offers six specialized Hubs that can be purchased as a suite or one at a time. All are built on a CRM with unlimited contacts.  

Each Hub has three entry points – Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. Each level offers increased features. The pricing covers a wide range of eligible markets with solutions for micro-businesses through to the largest organizations. HubSpot is built and hosted on an AWS infrastructure for performance and scalability. Europe has a separate instance for compliance and responsiveness with the EU system.  

HubSpot also is built on a combination of open-source and proprietary code. The main components are: 

• Frontend: Primarily HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, using frameworks like React. 

• Backend: Java is the primary language used for backend services. 
• HubL: This is HubSpot's templating language, an extension of Jinjava, used for creating custom modules, templates, and dynamic content within the HubSpot CMS. 
  

HubSpot is a system built to last and has consistently performed and improved for the last 15 years. HubSpot’s data architecture divides containers into objects, fields into properties, and actions into activities. Depending on your subscription, these are all configurable and customizable out of the box in a low code environment that can be expanded with 1000s of integrations, partner apps, and partner service providers. It’s essential software for 10,000s of organizations. From personal experience, websites built with HubSpot are some of the most secure and fastest-loading pages my browser has ever seen.

The responsiveness of the data with the CRM and Hubs is equally impressive, with updates and configurations taking hold within the system within seconds.  

The Latest and Greatest 

On the surface, HubSpot has redesigned the UX/UI from a top nav to a side, drawer-style navigation, keeping in line with current design trends for web applications. They have also reorganized the feature tabs into new buckets. I’d say it’s much better. On May 28th, the top nav will be retired, so get ready to say hello to the future of HubSpot’s UX.

I transitioned to the new navigation paradigm, and finding what I needed didn’t take long. The information architecture and navigation are different but intuitive, and it only took a few days to feel comfortable with the system sans the drop-downs.  

Under the hood, there are too many features to outline in a single article, but HubSpot, as you probably know, is a content firehose. Their major releases are in the spring with Spotlight and in the fall with Inbound. They’re not just releasing small bug fixes, these resources are plentiful. The links below are the entry point to the treasure of videos, data sheets, info pages, and articles that will give you the full download on product releases.  

• What's New In HubSpot 
• HubSpot Spotlight 
• Inbound 2024  (HubSpot's User Conference)
• Main HubSpot Website 
  

The most significant changes have come to the CMS with the advent of Content Hub. This integrated publishing suite includes pages, blogs, podcasts, and a host of smart AI that layers seamlessly to assist in content production. The hosting for all this shiny new content is built into the pricing for the platform, so you’re in good hands with Content Hub, a truly integrated web publishing system. “Remix” will take your landing page copy and splice it automatically into social posts or ads. Did I mention all your 3rd party social and ads accounts can be integrated and surfaced in Marketing Hub? Yes, you can publish web pages social posts, manage ads, and send email campaigns from one system. It’s truly the Swiss army knife of marketing tools.

But how does it compare to a segmented specialized system? That depends on your requirements, but anywhere a Site Core, WordPress, or even a Drupal site is considered. HubSpot Content Hub and Marketing Pro should be as well. Here is an example of a MarTech stack that could all be replaced with HubSpot: 

• Drupal or WordPress 
• MailChimp 
• Hootsuite 
• Pipedrive 
• Jasper AI 
• Buzzsprout 
  

In addition to the core promotional tools, Marketing Hub is built with workflow automation, so just about any process can be automated. Task creation, email cadences, SMS, posts, reminders, and property statuses can all be set and sent out automatically.  

But what about Sales? What’s new with Sales Hub? The popular lead and deal management tools have all been enhanced with the new Prospecting Workspace. An out-of-the-box and extensible home for everything essential to an active sales pro. Combining reporting, lead tracking, task management, scheduling, and outreach all in one place. In addition, the new Leads Object divides contacts from leads, making it easier to distinguish who to reach out to, when to reach out to them, and what’s working with active prospects. Adding the Orders Object (still in beta) allows for tighter integration with transactional systems like ecommerce. And a super nice addition is the target sync property. There are no more workflows to transport data from the company record into the deal. So sweet. It’s no wonder that HubSpot is the world's #1 ranked sales product.  

When combined, the sales and marketing tools can be used to link attribution and create powerful dashboards and reports that are intuitive out of the box and infinitely expandable with permissions that will satisfy the most stringent organizations—essentially providing views into the business at every level, from the day-to-day scheduling for individual reps and managers, time-based reporting, forecasting through to holistic views and key results to leadership.  

Service Hub and Commerce Hub have also seen some significant revisions. Now, with the Helpdesk Workspace, Service tickets can be managed as a proper customer experience management suite, in competition with Zendesk or Jira. Commerce Hub has integrated quoting, e-signature, invoicing, and payment processing to keep the money rolling. When combined, these Hubs provide an incredible amount of value in sharing and keeping data updated across the enterprise. If you haven’t heard, Operations Hub provides alignment, unification, and enhanced BI tools to supercharge the communications between Hubs and the system's data output. Combined with the other Hubs, it’s like a data reporting super suite.  

If all this sounds completely overwhelming, you’re not alone, literally! HubSpot has a giant partner network and a world-class academy for training (remote and in-person instructor-led training). If you made it this far in the article, you can be a HubSpot wizard in no time. Their Social channels are a wealth of tips, tools, and insights that never stop whenever you check in with the social networks. And while HubSpot can do SO much, there's still a bit of work that it can’t do. 

What HubSpot Doesn’t Do 

1. HubSpot will not replace your project management system. 
2.  HubSpot is still lagging on ecommerce functionality. If online shopping is your biggest channel, there are better solutions, like Klayvio. However, if direct sales, retail sales, and ecommerce are all under one roof, HubSpot offers an enticing way to link the different business units into one system.  
3. Quoting and Commerce still need further refinements, but they are getting close to providing what separate systems do for putting the dollars into the bank.  
4. HubSpot will not host your web application, ecommerce website, or mobile app. Responsive content-based website, yes. However, we must leave the heavy lifting to the coders on different frameworks and platforms in these other use cases.  

I have worked on several complex implementations this year, and my conclusion is that HubSpot’s tech, training resources, documentation, and live support are second to none. I’ve never encountered a problem that couldn’t be solved with the right people client-side championing and providing requirements and our team and partners working together to solve for viable product optimizations. When Trailblaze uses HubSpot for our client's strategy, we always start by authoring the data vision and architecture, moving through vital discovery processes and project management fundamentals, and then beginning to document the structure to be implemented in the sandbox.

HubSpot data fidelity tools and partner networks have been vital. At the same time, our internal diligence in each rollout phase has given us a high success rate for hitting deadlines and providing the resources to ensure adoption.  

Can HubSpot Gain Market Share in the Enterprise Market?  

HubSpot's potential in the enterprise market is vast. Its intuitive interface, comprehensive suite of tools, and robust inbound marketing capabilities make it an attractive option for large organizations looking to streamline operations and enhance customer experiences. The platform's scalability and extensive partner ecosystem further solidify its position as a viable contender in the enterprise CRM space while maintaining its position as the market leader for start-ups and mid-sized businesses. 

However, HubSpot must address certain limitations to fully capitalize on this opportunity. Expanding customization options and developing more sophisticated features will be crucial to meeting the complex needs of enterprise customers. Having grown so much in recent years, HubSpot must overcome the lasting perception that it is solely a solution for small to medium-sized businesses. 

By investing in these areas and showcasing successful implementations in large organizations, HubSpot can further solidify its position as a leading player in the enterprise CRM market. Experience how HubSpot’s integrated CRM platform can transform your operations and drive growth. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, HubSpot has the tools you need to succeed. Start learning about how this all-in-one solution can skyrocket your business, we can help! 

Strategy, Transformation, & Growth

The push to unify data across the enterprise is ramping up across organizations large and small, improving marketing KPI(s), delivering leads and sales, and communicating attribution and source data in one system has the tendency to bring teams together. This alignment when coupled with a robust website and options to bring service teams into the system creates a seamless customer experience, from pre-sales and online engagement with content, to direct communications, through to purchase and finally advocacy–the holy grail of the customer journey.

All those interactions should and can be tracked, gaps sealed, and processes improved. There is no time to waste. This is the mission of a RevOps philosophy. Guiding customers through and creating great connections and enabling those connections with tools that drive the business forward creating positive outcomes.  

SAAS startups and established software companies have been quick to adopt this trend, gaining velocity in both sales and services. But in our client roster, we’ve seen the greatest yield in the transformation of time-tested manufacturing companies who have been reliant on legacy systems and antiquated marketing techniques. The introduction of new intuitive tools built on solid data infrastructure have empowered these companies to test new markets, build campaigns with efficiency, and deliver leads and customer experiences they never thought possible. Bridging the gap with service management has solidified adoption across the enterprise.  

RevOps is more than a trend. It’s a movement that is improving the experience of working with customers, and the loyalty that’s built is a proven outcome for organizations that adopt this pivotal set of process improvements. HubSpot helps you make customer loyalty your superpower. Unleash the power of RevOps with HubSpot and watch your customer journey skyrocket.