Custom HubSpot CRM for smart building sales: the CR System case study

CR System, a smart building specialist, managed its sales activity across Excel, Notion and other tools. if/else agency rolled out CR System's HubSpot portal (HubSpot CRM, Sales Hub Enterprise), built around its sales cycles. The portal identifies every company involved in a deal, tracks a pipeline specific to smart building projects and compares actual revenue against sales targets.

CR System, a smart building specialist

CR System supports project owners and real estate stakeholders in preparing, structuring and delivering smart building projects. Its activity rests on four areas of expertise: Audit & AMO (project owner assistance), BMS installation (building management systems), SHYRKA and Maintenance.

It works with property owners, asset managers, facility operators and property portfolio managers, all of whom face energy performance, compliance and profitability requirements. These four offers, each with its own sales cycle, call for a clean database and reliable tracking of every opportunity.

The challenge: a sales cycle a standard pipeline cannot follow

Before HubSpot, CR System managed its activity with Excel, Notion and other tools. This setup kept the business moving, but made it hard to centralize information, track opportunities consistently and rely on sales data. Three constraints shaped the project:

1. Several companies per deal. A deal does not always involve a single “client” company: several companies can take part, with different roles. The portal had to identify each party involved.
2. A won amount that is not actual revenue. The amount of a won deal does not map directly to the actual revenue of a given period. CR System needed tracking suited to its sales cycles and usable in reports.
3. Data that managers can act on. Beyond the convenience of a new CRM, the data had to be consolidated to feed dashboards, compare actual performance with sales targets and make indicators reliable.

Objectives of the HubSpot deployment

• Centralize in HubSpot the information scattered across several tools, so everyone works from one database.
• Structure the CRM database around how the business actually works: clear associations and properties that fit the sales process.
• Standardize sales processes: a robust pipeline and automations that reduce manual handling, enforce certain business rules and make opportunity tracking consistent.
• Strengthen performance management: reliable reporting on the pipeline, performance, targets and actual revenue, by salesperson and by business line.

A HubSpot portal built around CR System's business

if/else agency deployed the portal from start to finish and organized it as a sales system specific to CR System, rather than configuring a generic pipeline.

Deals that identify every company involved

Work on the associations between deals and companies was one of the most fundamental parts of the project. Rather than attaching companies to a deal generically, the portal identifies the different parties in an opportunity. The aim: clearer deals, more precise qualification and more granular data for automations and reporting.

A pipeline aligned with the smart building decision cycle

The sales pipeline was customized to reflect the key stages of the decision cycle specific to smart building projects. It makes it possible to track how mature each deal is and aligns sales tracking with the reality on the ground.

Custom properties

The portal was extended with custom properties suited to CR System's needs. HubSpot no longer just tracks deals: it reflects the company's sales and operational logic.

Reconciling sales and financial data

if/else agency set up a reconciliation of sales and financial data. It bridges the CRM and the company's financial data, and gives a reliable view of revenue. It makes realized revenue, an accounting figure that was originally absent from the CRM, usable in HubSpot. This revenue can then be compared with the sales targets defined in HubSpot.

Targeted workflows

Workflows address specific business needs: making data reliable, reducing errors and simplifying sales follow-up.

A sales dashboard at the heart of performance management

The sales dashboard was one of the central parts of the project. The challenge was not to display a few indicators, but to make the data clear enough to run the business on. It brings together several levels of information:

• a pipeline overview;
• deal tracking;
• performance by salesperson;
• the targets defined in HubSpot;
• actual revenue, from the data reconciliation.

Other dashboards complete the picture of the activity, but the sales dashboard remains the central point.

What changed for the sales team

• A single sales database: opportunities, previously tracked across Excel, Notion and other tools, are now brought together in HubSpot.
• Readable deals: every company involved in a deal is identified.
• Performance by salesperson: the dashboard compares actual revenue with each person's targets.
• Automated checks: workflows run data checks and updates automatically.

Is your sales cycle too complex for a standard pipeline? See our HubSpot sales performance services and our approach to CRM and marketing automation. For another pipeline project, read the BGYB case study or how we cleaned up a confusing HubSpot pipeline.

Photo by Arlind Photography on Unsplash