Horizon Platforms - Product Excellence Category

Horizon Platforms are a lead rental solutions provider in the powered access sector. The company offers a fleet of cherry pickers, scissor lifts, boom platforms and personnel lifts, an experienced team of driver demonstrators, and nationwide coverage to customers throughout the UK.

The Challenge for Horizon Platforms

Horizon Platforms, before the implementation, was an “old school” business. The company did not have a CRM and was utilising its own ERP system with basic CRM functionality. The company had an ambitious growth strategy and wanted to double the size of its business. It also wanted to gain a more systematic approach to sales.

It was clear to Horizon Platforms they needed to introduce a mature, proactive CRM system to help achieve their growth and sales goals. The sales team could use a more modern, systematic way of selling. Also, the company could gain valuable information to further “fine-tune” and improve its business processes.

The company had started looking at different solutions, such as Salesforce. However, the marketing team, already using HubSpot, indicated that it was user-friendly. The Sales department started trials on some of the free features on HubSpot and then decided to opt for the enterprise function.

The company had the challenge of taking all the data from their ERP (which was not user-friendly), cleansing it, and placing it into HubSpot. The company was so small it had no dedicated digital team. In essence, the Head of Marketing was also the Head of CRM. Outsourcing the work or an implementation partner were the options.

The Easy Solution Working With PYB

HubSpot recommended Plus Your Business (PYB) as a partner to help Horizon Platforms handle the implementation. Horizon Platforms showed PYB how they were currently working with numerous reports, spreadsheets, and information in Syrinx (the ERP). There was no way to track anything from an input or output point of view.

Martin from PYB initially ran the agenda to find out more about the company. The areas covered were things such as:

1. where the company wanted to take the implementation
2. what the company was working on right then
3. where they wanted to go with the CRM ultimately

Horizon Platforms shared a slide deck with PYB to show their proposed strategy concerning revenue goals and a new systematic approach for sales. Because of their current setup, most of the sales tracker data was in Excel. The requirement was to extract the sales data from excel and then build it to make it visible in HubSpot.

PYB led the solution by asking what information the company needed, which reports were important, and requesting the data they needed to get started. Once PYB had all the data, they detailed what the process would be. PYB was then left to carry out the implementation.

Martin and Elisa led the company and showed how the Sales Enterprise could help them. There were weekly meetings, which then became fortnightly and monthly. These regular meetings helped both companies track the progress of the implementation.

In the beginning, the company did not understand the capabilities of a CRM such as HubSpot, combined with the Sales Enterprise tools. In the past, the company had done account-based marketing and sequencing via spreadsheets. The solution with HubSpot has saved time and opened up new capabilities.

Tom Matthews, the Sales Director for Horizon Platforms, said, “The company can now see the whole sales lifecycle in one place. The company has one source of the truth, which we never had before HubSpot.”

The company can see how many new customers they bring in at the top end and how quickly they flow through to the end. The company can also take note of any key input activities happening through the sales cycle. This information shows what works well and highlights areas where they can improve and make things faster.

Horizon Platforms now has the systematic approach they wanted in their original strategy. All they have to do now is “move the dials” in different areas to further improve the processes. The company feels that it is in a far better place now with HubSpot than six months ago.

The company encourages employees to embrace everything on the HubSpot platform. Here are some of the key areas used on the platform:

• Running sequences
• Workflows/automations
• Reporting functionality
• Individual dashboards
• Email templates
• Tasks

The Positive Results On The Sales Lifecycle

The company is an ambitious, sector-focused company that is traditionally a seasonal business. Whilst the seasons will always influence the company. It now has the tools to research more contacts and gain better market penetration. The platform has given them access to “bigger opportunities”.

There is now a new tier on top of their Tier 1-6 system for customers. The new tier is Tier 1 Plus. These customers spend more than a million pounds. It is because they now have a more structured way of working that gives them the confidence to approach these bigger clients.

Horizon Platforms has introduced a lead generation role off the back of using HubSpot. It allows the company to see the activity of “suspects,” enabling them to profile and push through actual prospects. This new system has saved an enormous amount of time for the sales team.

Before HubSpot, the sales team received names cold and had to make calls that might lead to absolutely nothing. Whereas now, many of these potential clients are profiled and using products that Horizon Platforms can supply. It has helped to increase the opportunities for the business.

HubSpot has given Horizon Platforms the functionality to create detailed reports. The following image shows the profiled opportunities for the sales team as leads. The company can create reports to track lead volume, conversion and velocity.

The HubSpot sales hub also allows the company to see the progress made with new suspects entering the process.

Horizon Platforms can also track each salesperson's prospects and the value that these create in terms of opportunities. The team can use recurring tasks to help them contact customers in a structured way.

The graph above shows the total amount of opportunities across the prospects. The company had no real visibility before using HubSpot. Now the reporting functionalities help to keep the sales team accountable. Also, management knows where to prioritise the time to maximise results.

The Impact On Horizon Platforms

The company can look at how many new customers they bring in at the top end and how quickly they flow through to the end of the sales life cycle. Additionally, take notes of the key input activities happening through the sales cycle. The company can then determine if it is doing the right things or needs to do something smarter.

As part of the implementation, PYB helped train the management through the different steps on how to use HubSpot. This training was so valuable for the leadership/management team. It helped them understand the functionality of everything. This training enabled them to them roll it out quickly to the employees.

From the CEO at the top to every employee, the company has benefited from using HubSpot. The end-user experience has been fantastic, with over 50% of sales staff saying they “could not live without HubSpot”. Tom believes this is a testament to the support from PYB and the user-friendly platform.

The work with the Sales hub has been so successful the business is working on the Service hub. This integration will help to improve operational processes for enquiries, quotes and damages. Previously, these areas would have involved “scribbling notes down on paper”. Now it will be more systematic with workflows and automations.

In terms of the future, Horizon Platforms now wants to integrate call recording functionality into HubSpot. This new implementation would help improve the call quality for the sales team. Also, the company could better target employee training and mentoring. This integration would also benefit the customer experience team.