Client & task
Grit Insurance sought a solution to seamlessly integrate client data from Hawksoft while leveraging the automation and communication tools within HubSpot’s Sales and Service Hubs. To address this need, they partnered with SalesPower to develop a synchronization platform that would streamline renewals and enhance client engagement. What began as a tailored solution for Grit Insurance soon evolved into something much bigger—SalesPower’s PowerSync.
Gathering Requirements
Before initiating the project, we first needed to understand the data accessible through Hawksoft’s API and how it would map into HubSpot. Collaborating with Kirk Chester, we conducted a thorough review of the available data and determined its appropriate placement within HubSpot. Hawksoft provides all client data in a single payload, requiring the information to be parsed and distributed across various tables, including client, contact, policy, and claims, to ensure seamless integration.
The Contact challege
Insurance Agency Management Systems (AMS) are not Customer Management Systems (CMS). They are built to handle insurance operations, not contact management. As a result, the same individual can appear across multiple records—whether as an account holder, client, or insured party. In contrast, HubSpot enforces a one-contact-per-email structure. This presented a key challenge: how to reconcile multiple instances of the same person in Hawksoft while maintaining a single, unified contact in HubSpot.
Our approach
Led by Andreas Stoll, our development team brings extensive experience in building applications that synchronize data between various platforms and HubSpot. Integrating an agency management system posed a new challenge, but by following best practices for data synchronization and leveraging HubSpot’s unique features, we successfully developed a seamless end-to-end process. Below are some key challenges and decisions we made throughout the project.
Clients to Companies
In HubSpot, the primary top-level object is the Company. To align with this structure, we chose to map Hawksoft Clients to HubSpot Companies. While this approach naturally fit commercial clients, it posed challenges for personal lines clients, who don’t typically align with HubSpot’s company model. To resolve this, we opted to create new Company records for each personal lines client from Hawksoft, ensuring consistency and proper data organization.
Multiple Contacts per Person
Managing contacts with multiple phone numbers and email addresses required a structured approach. We implemented a decision tree that prioritized each contact type, ensuring proper mapping between AMS contact fields and HubSpot’s key properties for email addresses and phone numbers. This allowed us to maintain data accuracy while optimizing communication channels within HubSpot.
Adding Policies in HubSpot
For PowerSync to work, we needed custom objects available with a HubSpot Enterprise hub. We created a new object for Policies. We did not sync the deeper policy data, instead choosing to focus on policy data such as effective date, expiration date and other top level data points.
Handling The Associations
HubSpot connects Companies, Contacts, Tickets, and Deals through associations. As part of our sync process, we needed to ensure that all relationships within a Hawksoft client record were accurately reflected in HubSpot. Not only did we establish the primary associations, but we also incorporated association labels to align with the contact relationships and main contact status stored in Hawksoft.
The Results
After extensive testing, we successfully launched Grit’s sync between Hawksoft and HubSpot. With the integration in place, it was time to leverage the data to enhance renewal sales and customer support. By choosing HubSpot, Grit gained several advantages, with four key areas of improvement directly resulting from having Hawksoft data readily accessible within HubSpot.
Improved Renewal Management
By integrating policy types, premiums, and expiration dates into HubSpot, Grit now leverages automated workflows to manage both annual and mid-cycle policy renewals. For personal lines, the highest-premium homeowners policy determines the annual review date, while any additional policies renewing at different times throughout the year are handled separately as mid-cycle renewals.
Tiering
Hawksoft allows agencies to tier clients based on premiums, activities, and policy types. Grit has successfully implemented a tiered system, organizing their clients into seven levels across both personal and commercial lines. This tiering strategy enables Grit to tailor their outreach and renewal processes, allowing them to allocate less time to lower-value clients and focus more on high-value clients.
Better customer support
Grit’s service and account management teams can now access policy data alongside recent interactions, such as calls, emails, form submissions, and website visits, all within a single platform. By customizing dashboards to fit the specific needs of the support team, they ensure that the right data is always available when needed, streamlining their workflow and improving efficiency.
Improved Reporting
While Hawksoft offers a range of valuable reports, HubSpot’s reporting tools enable Grit to create custom reports that merge policy data with client and prospect engagement. By integrating Aircall, Grit can also incorporate call data and sentiment analysis into their reporting dashboards, providing deeper insights into client interactions.
A big thanks to David LeFevre and his team for making the Hawksoft to HubSpot sync a reality and helping Grit Insurance optimize our renewal and support processes. We’re now able to save time and handle more with fewer resources. My team has fully embraced HubSpot as the ideal tool for sales, account management and client support.