How HubSpot Lifted the Veil of Reporting Darkness for One Manufacturer

If you use HubSpot enough, you know how powerful and transformative it can be. The business effects are magical, even legendary.  

That’s exactly what happened with GO2 Partners’ Platform Migration project with Pixelle, a paper manufacturer. Pixelle struggled with an inefficient and poorly implemented CRM before it turned to HubSpot.  

This is an epic platform migration tale that highlights the miraculous results you can achieve with HubSpot. 

The Story Begins

For many years, the brave leaders of Pixelle Specialty Solutions, a paper company with mills across the United States, languished under ineffective CRMs. 

The charlatans peddling these CRMs made promises that the system couldn't match. Between the chaos of COVID lockdowns and market fluctuations, Pixelle needed the guidance of an effective CRM. Without accurate forecasting reports and timely pipeline data, aligning sales, marketing and production was challenging. How could you properly plan paper output without insight into future sales?

What were the valiant papermakers at Pixelle to do? 

A Hero Emerges

For years, the marketing team at Pixelle wielded the power of HubSpot.  

However, many at Pixelle were unaware of HubSpot's other capabilities. One day, a chance encounter between GO2 and Pixelle's sales leaders revealed the depths of HubSpot's capability. In just 10 seconds, GO2 added a field to the CRM, a task that might have taken months to complete with their bespoke CRM. Over an evening of drink and dinner, the sales leaders discovered the power of HubSpot.

Additional meetings and demonstrations of HubSpot's power were scheduled. Budgets were reviewed. Finally, it was decided that the previous CRM would be left to expire and that a new CRM, HubSpot, would emerge. 

But this was not the end of the tale… 

Delving Into the Psyche of a CRM

Why did the previous CRMs fail to deliver what was promised? It became apparent that they did not truly appreciate Pixelle's business or goals. So, GO2 made it its mission to understand the business case for HubSpot.

That meant undertaking a quest, an intense series of discovery sessions. In little more than a month, GO2 held numerous meetings, interviews and more to ascertain Pixelle's CRM requirements.

For success, GO2 had to align the magic in HubSpot with those requirements … and then the work could truly begin. 

Working Magic with HubSpot

As the GO2 HubSpot savants reviewed the quest results, the solution began to take shape. 

• The sales pipeline in HubSpot should reflect Pixelle's authentic sales process.  

• Guidance from HubSpot's forms and automation would aid intelligence gathering to empower forecasting. 

• Custom objects crafted in the HubSpot database would utilize data from Pixelle's product library to better manage business processes and increase quoting, call reports and trial order transparency. 

• Deal records incorporated detailed line items with cross-object associated data, so sales reps and product managers could more efficiently work from a single screen.

• Automation magic inherent in HubSpot's workflow and operations managed the quote process to ensure accuracy.  

• Call reports, a critical but highly inefficient business process, were refined using automation and playbooks. Rather than sharing the call records with everyone, only the person who needed the information would receive it. 

• Once a sale was lost, a new loss report allowed Pixelle leaders to adjust the business and sales plan, ensuring optimized production at the mills.  

• Robust analytics, using the CRM, would provide unparalleled visibility and insight. 

As Pixelle's HubSpot solution was tempered, the GO2 savants added newly available features to ensure the best possible solution for the papermakers.

Mentoring and the Age of HubSpot

With HubSpot ready, the team launched a strategic plan for training. Four full-day training sessions, additional online training and weekly office hours gave Pixelle users ready access to expertise.

Another tool in the HubSpot arsenal, Supered, empowers and supports the training. With Supered, new users can access training documentation and videos as they work, easing the transition from the chaotic processes of the past.

A New Day Dawns at Pixelle

GO2 and Pixelle completed the discovery, process development, implementation and training in just five months, whereas the previous CRM took five years without even completing phase 1.

As Pixelle began using HubSpot, sales data coalesced into a pipeline. With the pipeline, Pixelle's wise leaders could access the long-sought-after accurate forecast. Production was based on veracity, not conjecture.

The first report thrilled Pixelle's leaders. The ability to drill down into the data, to see how sales were shaped, and align the orders received with the mills' production was stunning. Like magic, it gave Pixelle power and control over its destiny. Increased usage only affirmed Pixelle's commitment to HubSpot.

Today, Pixelle operates efficiently, armed with accurate forecasts and multiple pipelines for business clarity. Sales, marketing and operations are aligned. New features and functionality continue to roll out in the months after the launch, further enhancing an already magical platform. Work on phase two has already begun, which includes a custom card application to reduce process errors and increase productivity.

With HubSpot, the intrepid papermaking heroes are ready to face the market's challenges.  

A new day has truly dawned at Pixelle.