Risk Ledger - Salesforce/HubSpot Integration

Business Use Case

Risk Ledger provides tools for companies to run comprehensive, security-led, third-party risk management programs against their supply chains. The Risk Ledger platform offers real-time, actionable data from suppliers. It allows companies to identify, measure and manage their third-party risks.

Risk Ledger wanted to integrate all their contacts and information in Salesforce into HubSpot. The main aim was to migrate the data without losing valuable business time. The project took four weeks, with a couple of short follow-ups for specific areas.

The Four Clarification Points Before Implementation

The development team from PYB initially met with the team from Risk Ledger in the middle of June 2022. It allowed the developers to prepare Risk Ledger for the implementation process. There were four blockers/clarification points to discuss before implementation.

1. Installation of a HubSpot Application

2. Confirmation of the Salesforce objects to be synced

Before the implementation took place, Risk Ledger confirmed they wanted to sync the following Salesforce objects:

• Leads 
• Contacts
• Accounts
• Opportunities

3. The connection between Lead/Contact and marketing emails

The development team at PYB also needed to know the connection between Leads and Contacts and their eligibility for marketing emails. For example, what action would happen from a Lead or Contact:

• would an action make it fill out specific forms
• interact in a certain way
• or would this situation only apply to Contacts and not Leads

4. Custom Methods within Salesforce to track “Do not contact them”

The Solution With PYB

After confirming the above information, the migration of the Salesforce objects became the following objects in HubSpot:

• Salesforce Leads and Salesforce Contacts → HubSpot Contacts
• Salesforce Accounts → Hubspot Company
• Salesforce Deals → Opportunities

Risk Ledger received links so the company could review all the properties. It allowed them to advise if any custom properties were missing or if the mapping was inaccurate. The sync was in the "off position" until the Risk Ledger, and PYB team met to activate it at the appropriate time.

Checking Settings

The developer initially limited the contacts syncing back to Salesforce. In case a few had managed to “sneak in” during the setup. This cautionary move allowed Risk Ledger to check for the creation of any Salesforce Leads.

The developer created a HubSpot list that looked for a “nonsense” email address so no contact would sync back from HubSpot until the team verified the plan.

Leads And Contacts

Risk Ledger had advised that the actions from Leads and Contacts would entail the following:

• Filling in pop-ups on the site
• Filling out forms
• Digital ads (in the future)
• The sales team places them “on nurture” (a plan for the future)

PYB explained that HubSpot only had “Contacts” and uses a Lifecycle stage dropdown to determine whether the Contact is a lead.

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/use-lifecycle-stages

Also, HubSpot would de-duplicate any Salesforce Leads and Contacts based on the email address. After an initial sync in random order, they overwrite the record with the Lead or Contact record most recently updated in Salesforce.

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/salesforce/duplicate-salesforce-leads-or-contacts-syncing-to-hubspot

When Risk Ledger swapped the webforms to HubSpot forms, most contact creations would start in HubSpot instead of Salesforce. PYB set the system to take this into account. Newly created HubSpot contacts that returned to Salesforce would be Salesforce Leads.

Do Not Contact

Regarding “Do Not Contact” properties, Risk Ledger had not been tracking opt-outs on Salesforce. The reason for this was that they had been monitoring opt-outs on Outreach. However, it was something the company wanted to do.

The teams agreed that actions in this area would happen with the set up of Marketing contact settings. During the HubSpot web form migration, they would create a “Do Not Contact” property in Salesforce to sync.

Other Areas Raised To Risk Ledger By PYB

PYB highlighted to Risk Ledger they did not have any picklists set up in Salesforce for state/country matching. It was essential to know if the company planned on leaving the State/Country picklists disabled in SalesForce.

The decision by Risk Ledger was to enable the state/country picklist. Although the company had been UK-focused, moving forward, they wanted to expand internationally. It would ensure they had clean data. Risk Ledger checked with their internal tech team if this would impact their platform before they approved the action.

PYB highlighted Tasks/Activities to the company. It was possible to sync Salesforce tasks to HubSpot. Risk Ledger would not actively use them in HubSpot to affect marketing email content. PYB synced no HubSpot activity to Salesforce tasks until the company confirmed either way.

Meetings At Each Stage Before Going Live

Before the integration went live, Risk Ledger and PYB had meetings at each stage to ensure minimal problems. For example, the developer advised the Salesforce app had been installed, briefly turned it on and then disabled it.

The developer then requested Risk Ledger review all the settings before turning it on. A meeting reviewed the live data synced from Salesforce to HubSpot. Pending this success, the sync from HubSpot to Salesforce would then go on.

During And After The Implementation

After the implementation, PYB brought a few small areas to the attention of Risk Ledger.

• HubSpot Visualforce window

This window was not added to the Salesforce page layouts. It was not turned on during the implementation but was highlighted in case the client wanted to use it. Add the HubSpot Visualforce window to your Salesforce page layouts.

• HubSpot Deal Stages match Opportunity Stages

Risk Ledger had requested that these areas should match. PYB checked before turning it on that the synced contacts would not go as marketing contacts. It was important to see if the HubSpot contact record stores the source of the Contact. (If the origin was from the Salesforce sync or a HubSpot form submission/manual import etc.)

• Updating Risk Ledger Through The Implementation

PYB did a Salesforce → HubSpot sync of all Leads/Contacts (HS Contacts), Accounts (HS Companies), and Opportunities (HS Deals) was made. Risk Ledger reviewed it before PYB turned on the HubSpot sync of “All Contacts” back to Salesforce.

• State/Country Picklists

For the State/Country picklists, PYB set it up so HubSpot would match Salesforce State/Country values when syncing. NB would only be relevant once PYB turned the sync BACK to Salesforce.

• Opportunity Stages

PYB placed the Opportunity Stages into the HubSpot Deal Stages.

• Marketing Contacts

No contacts were set as Marketing Contacts when syncing. Elisa (another PYB team member) would deal with this area via a workflow.

• Checking the source of the contact record

To see if the source of the contact record was Salesforce, Risk Ledger would have to see if "Original Source Drill-Down 1 = SALESFORCE".  

Integration Problems Quickly Addressed

There was one incident during the implementation with Unassigned Leads on HubSpot.

• Problem with Unassigned Leads

- The Unassigned Leads were all showing as Object type: contact (not leads)
- If they are in the unassigned category, they are not the main person on the account
- All of their names are their email addresses

Risk Ledger wanted the names to be their names and to have an assignee, similar to what they do in Salesforce. PYB looked into why the names did not sync over correctly. It looked like the Owner was not syncing over due to a User with the same email not existing in HubSpot.

• Solving The Problem

PYB asked Risk Ledger to create a HubSpot user and have her activate the account. PYB also requested a list of ALL Salesforce user emails who would be owners of Contacts/Leads. Also, to invite and activate them in HubSpot.

The solution was to turn on a two-way sync. Before the two-way sync, PYB had to wait till all the HubSpot user accounts were active. Once done, there was a two-way test of 400 contacts, which was a success. Only 2 out of the 28,000 contacts did not have a name or owner assigned to them.
https://app.hubspot.com/contacts/7981208/objects/0-1/views/8705557/list

Once Risk Ledger had checked the data, they gave the green light to the developers at PYB. The developer then set off the two-way sync for all the Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities. The company was extremely grateful and impressed as PYB completed the integration on 4th July.

Last Steps

PYB asked Risk Ledger to double-check the data going back to Salesforce to see if there were any problems. The developer advised the company to use his Salesforce user account and change the authorised user in HubSpot from the one that came with the license.

• Marketing Contacts Queries

Another area Risk Ledger mentioned was marketing contacts. The company wanted to sync the lead status' between Salesforce and HubSpot. They also wanted to limit the number of marketing contacts they had in Hubspot. For example, with all the sales leads, it was currently 24,000, and they only had a 17,000 allowance.

The developer at PYB queried if Risk Ledger was referring to the mapping of "Status" to this property.

Because there was one status called "Disqualified". 

However, only 36 records in HubSpot had this status, which would not help the 17,000 contacts against the 24,000 contacts allowance problem. PYB  asked if there was an issue with that field's sync accuracy. Or if there was an issue with the status of the property the company could use.

There was a difference between the terminology used for HubSpot and Salesforce. PYB advised that Risk Ledger could easily add additional/custom Contact fields by clicking the "Add new field mapping" button. Elisa at PYB would also assist Risk Ledger in building the Workflow for “Marketing Contacts.”