Replacing Pipedrive With
HubSpot CRM
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CASE STUDY
SUMMARY
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WHO ARE
Barron McCann?
Barron McCann Group is a remote and onsite IT support services operating across several related but distinct business areas.
The group includes Barron McCann Limited, its core services business covering field engineering, logistics, warehousing, onsite installations and remote support. It also includes software and retail systems businesses from acquired companies, as well as their home-grown BMC Azurri charity software and Precept professional services businesses.
The group has been growing through acquisition and is moving from a set of brand-level operating models towards a more centralised group structure. Sales teams remain aligned to individual brands or business areas, but marketing and leadership need better group-level visibility, stronger governance and a clearer way to identify opportunities across the customer base.
THEIR
CHALLENGES
Barron McCann’s sales and marketing systems had not kept pace with the way the group was growing.
Pipedrive supported core CRM activity. Salesforce had been used in parts of the group. ActiveCampaign handled email marketing, Lead Forensics supported buyer intent activity, and spreadsheets were still doing much of the heavy lifting for account planning, white-space tracking, pricing and quoting.
The result?
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Commercial information was spread across multiple places, making the basics harder than they needed to be.
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There was no joined-up view of marketing engagement, sales activity, intent signals and account information.
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Teams could see potential cross-sell opportunities, but had no consistent way to record, segment or act on them.
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Pipedrive lacked the depth and connectivity required for the group’s longer-term plans, while Salesforce felt too heavy for its current level of CRM maturity.
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Leadership also relied on retrospective reporting and spreadsheets for visibility of pipeline, sales activity, account plans, renewals and marketing performance.
Then there was the question of governance.
Different brands required different levels of data access, permissions and separation. A single, unrestricted CRM database was not the answer. But continuing with disconnected tools would only make future growth harder to manage.
Barron McCann also had a fixed deadline to leave Pipedrive. The business needed to protect sales continuity without rushing into workarounds that would create more problems later.
OUR
APPROACH
Barron McCann needed to replace Pipedrive within a fixed timeframe, but simply recreating the same setup in HubSpot would have carried its existing limitations into a new platform. We therefore ran the implementation alongside a wider strategy and roadmap project, allowing the business to meet the immediate deadline while making informed decisions about how HubSpot should work across the group.
We began with stakeholder sessions across sales, marketing and IT, reviewing how teams managed enquiries, opportunities, account activity, campaigns, reporting and cross-sell opportunities. Using these findings, we prioritised the requirements for go-live and created a phased plan for the functionality, integrations and additional brands that could follow later.
The first phase focused on giving sales and marketing teams a platform they could use day to day. We configured sales pipelines, deal stages, progression logic, saved views and essential contact, company and deal properties, alongside activity tracking, tasks, meetings and reporting. We also set up the foundations for email, segmentation, subscriptions, consent, campaign reporting, lead capture and website tracking. Relevant contacts, companies, deals and available activity history were then migrated from Pipedrive into HubSpot in a controlled way.
Because Barron McCann operates across several brands and business units, the implementation also had to balance shared visibility with appropriate separation. We defined an approach to permissions, data access, brand governance, lifecycle stages and future onboarding, before delivering role-specific training and go-live support.
The
Results
Barron McCann has now moved its core sales activity out of Pipedrive and into HubSpot. Sales teams can manage contacts, companies, deals, activities, tasks and meetings in one place, with clearer pipelines and saved views supporting day-to-day management and sales reviews.
Marketing also has the foundations to manage email, segmentation, subscriptions, consent and campaign reporting within HubSpot. This reduces reliance on separate tools and gives the team a more consistent way to deliver and measure activity across the group.
The implementation has also given Barron McCann a stronger structure for account management, cross-sell opportunities and future brand onboarding. Alongside the live platform, the business now has a phased roadmap covering further automation, reporting and future integrations.
“HubSpot was a significant investment for us, so finding the right implementation partner was just as important as choosing the platform itself. Working with Axon Garside made that decision an easy one.
“Thanks to their support, we’ve launched with a solid foundation that we’re confident will continue to grow with us. I’d happily recommend Axon Garside to anyone looking for a knowledgeable, supportive and genuinely invested HubSpot implementation partner.”
