WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES YOU WERE FACING?

We were at a stage of wanting to really scale the business. But we realized our data structure and setup just wasn’t ready. We wanted to look at different CRMs to identify the best fit to scale and grow our business, and make the most of our data we already have. Bright Dials provided us with some really great recommendations based on our different requirements. Then we moved into the phase of implementing a CRM, and we chose HubSpot. 

Our first challenge was how to best to use the CRM in the business. Each department had different processes. Which meant there  wasn’t consistency with the data that we were getting and how we were using it. 

Our second challenge was our data. We had two quite disparate instances of CRMs and alongside that we had some team members using Excel documents. We had other project management tools holding information too. Ultimately our data was very disparate and disconnected. We wanted to join all of that data together in one place to get a full picture of where leads are coming from. 

Our final challenge was having visibility of our marketing efforts. We had a light touch picture of where we were kind of doing effective marketing, but the level of detail was probably missing. And as we wanted to grow into a much larger company we really needed to get a handle on which of our marketing efforts were working and where investment should be made.

HOW DID OUR WORK OVERCOME THOSE CHALLENGES? 

By running the discovery workshops with each of the relevant teams and extracting what was needed was a key starting point. We needed to understand our best process and how our data could look in the future.  Actually having someone who could translate this into our CRM requirements was really, really useful. 

Once we understood our requirements, you gave us great recommendations which was a huge part of the work we needed. Also having someone who can get stuck in with the team and on their level to help them understand the importance of a CRM was really helpful. 

When we moved into the build phase, being able to take in lots of different stakeholder feedback and stakeholder management efficiently was so helpful. The complexity of this work would have been very far ranging for one person to do in-house. Knowing how our specific business requirements could work with a CRM and advising on best practice was invaluable to us.  

With our challenge around data, the really good thing about working with And finally, pull it all into one source. Having the guidance on the work we had to do ourselves was really great. We had a week’s worth of work and the whole team had to get involved with the data cleaning. It would have been too overwhelming to tackle ourselves. We had 90 sources! 

At the same time as onboard a new CRM system, we were running two other big projects, our brand refresh and launching a new website. We also changed our domain and with all of those factors came a lot of interdependencies as well with the CRM system which definitely made it a very complicated project.  

By making sure that the project was well scoped and planned made it all work smoothly. 

WHAT WERE THE MAIN REASONS FOR ASKING FOR HELP FROM BRIGHT DIALS?

Our knowledge about CRM systems was minimal within our in-house team. We needed help to identify and unify the different goals of the teams. We also wanted the experience of working with a company which knows startup businesses so we can harness that knowledge for our business. 

DID YOU HAVE ANY WORRIES OR CONCERNS ABOUT THE PROCESS? 

The nature of our business as being a startup means our requirements would often change quite quickly. It was always a concern to know how we could manage any changing requirements in a way which didn’t disrupt the project. 

HOW DID WE PUT YOUR MIND AT REST?

Having a really clear and thorough statement of work meant we knew exactly what work would be done. We understand what might be additional requirements and how to make changes. The change management process made things transparent and the communication around that was really good and it put our minds at ease.

WHAT HAVE BEEN THE MOST SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS AS A RESULT OF OUR WORK TOGETHER SO FAR? 

The biggest improvement is having all of our data in one place which gives us a really clear picture of who our customers are. We can build on our personas and understand our customers on a greater level than ever before. Creating segments of our target customer audiences and communicating to them wasn’t something we were able to do effectively before. The biggest impact we’ve seen from our side is the communication between sales and marketing too. We have a much better picture as to how our marketing efforts are contributing to sales. Giving us a feedback loop to understand which campaigns are really effective to generate new leads and deals.  

HOW DO YOU SEE THE WORK IMPACTING OVER THE NEXT YEAR OR IN THE FUTURE?  

Plus X has really big ambitions to grow and scale within the next few years. We now have a really good foundation now with our CRM which means we can now replicate rather than starting from scratch each time. Be that workflows for each new location we open but also having previous email campaigns which worked really well before. The project was intensive, but that work will pay dividends by enabling a really quick process when we open new locations. Which is going to be important because we need to be nimble and work fast.

Also having a better picture of who is in our database means we can contact relevant people for a new location opening, rather than starting from scratch and needing to build up a new set of audience members. It will be really transformational for our growth. 

Programmes are a really integral part to Plus X, it’s what makes us an innovation hub rather than a co-working space. They feed our innovation ecosystem by attracting people into our hubs through programs. The programme participants take memberships and add to our community of businesses who provide services or give advice to other people. Ultimately boosting the economy of the area that our hubs are in which is a primary goal of our business.

We will use HubSpot to manage our new business support programs. These will be available in every new location we launch as well. Again creating replicable programme templates and lead capture systems will ensure every time we launch a new program, we are not starting from scratch. 

WHY DID YOU WANT TO USE BRIGHT DIALS AND WHAT HAVE THE BENEFITS BEEN?

We wanted to work with Bright Dials because we needed a level head to come into our business and essentially boil down what we needed for our CRM. We needed expertise to give us recommendations and the potential ways we can use our data in the future. 

We definitely needed a partner who has experience with coworking and membership organizations to give us bespoke recommendations for how we can integrate our other apps and business systems into our CRM as well.

Having experience of OfficeRND and could tell us how we can use that in combination with our CRM together to give us the best data we can possibly get.

Having had Bright Dials in our network from attending one of our innovation programs helped too, it was really important for us to work with other businesses in our innovation ecosystem.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO RECOMMEND BRIGHT DIALS TO OTHERS?

I would definitely recommend other businesses working with Bright Dials. The change in our CRM systems from 2022 to now is completely different and hugely improved; something we could not have achieved ourselves. It’s been great working with Bright Dials because you are very personable, you get on well with the team and you have really great stakeholder management and project management skills. Making the project easy and transparent to understand.

www.plusxinnovation.com