MarketStarter / Systems / 07 · CRM Implementation Beyond the Quick-Start
When one pipeline isn’t the whole business.
Salesforce or HubSpot implemented around a real operation: several teams and pipelines, custom objects, your ERP and e-shop wired in, years of data migrated without loss. Scoped from one call, delivered in phases.
- PHASED — NOT BIG BANG
- MIGRATION — DRY RUN FIRST
- PARTNERS IN BOTH — NO BIAS
Watch the merge — the system at work
Your best customer exists four times. All four disagree.
Below, 11,480 rows become 9,214 customers.
That question is what growing without a system actually costs. The same company sits in the old CRM, in somebody’s sheet, in the ERP and in the website’s orders — with a different contact, a different balance and a different last conversation in each. An implementation starts there, not with the software: every source mapped field by field, the merge rehearsed in a sandbox, production loaded only once the counts and the duplicates agree with the originals. What you end up with is one record per customer, history still attached, and the systems around it feeding that record instead of competing with it.
- Field mapping
- Deduplication
- Sandbox dry run
- Integrations
- One record
- Old CRM4,180Mapped
- Sales spreadsheet2,940Mapped
- ERP & invoices3,120Mapped
- Website & e-shop1,240Mapped
field map → dedupe → validate
Account — merged
Vertek Logistics- Contacts6
- Open deals3
- Invoices41
- Cases12
4 sources, 1 record — history keptMERGED
What the system does
Six pieces of work. In this order.
A scoped implementation isn’t a longer setup — it’s a different job. The configuration is the easy half; the design, the data and the hand-over are where these projects are won or quietly abandoned.
- Design
Maps the operation first
Before anything is configured we write down how the work really flows — teams, hand-offs, what gets sold and how it gets delivered. The object model follows that document, not a template.
- Migrate
Moves the history, not just the names
Old CRM, spreadsheets, ERP exports and inbox archives: field-mapped, deduplicated, rehearsed in a sandbox, then loaded. Duplicates are merged, so the history survives the merge.
- Integrate
Wires in the systems around it
ERP and invoicing, the e-shop, the phone line, accounting exports, marketing tools. Each integration is scoped on its own, so you can see exactly what you’re buying.
- Automate
Assignment, approvals, alerts
Lead rotation between teams, approval steps on discounts and quotes, a flag when a deal goes quiet. The rules live in the system instead of in one person’s habits.
- Report
Answers what the owner asks
Forecast, pipeline by team, and where every deal actually came from — including the loop back to your ads, since the CRM is where the truth about a lead ends up.
- Enable
Hands it over properly
Role-based training on your own setup rather than a demo org, a short written playbook, agreed data-quality rules, and a check-in after the first live month.
- HubSpot
- Salesforce
- Custom objects
- Data migration
- ERP & e-shop
- Greek & English
Which one do you need
The Quick-Start fits most teams. Not every one.
Two ways to get a CRM that works. The honest difference, so you don’t buy the bigger one when the smaller one is enough — which, for a single sales team, it usually is.
- 05CRM Quick-StartFixed menu, one pipeline, a basic import, no custom integrations — live in about two weeks at a fixed price. Right for a team up to roughly fifteen seats selling one thing one way.
- 07CRM ImplementationSeveral teams and pipelines, custom objects, real integrations, years of data to migrate. Scoped from a call and delivered in phases. Right when a template would have to be fought rather than filled in.
Not sure which? Describe your setup on the call — we’ll point you at the Quick-Start if it does the job, because a build nobody needed is the one that stalls. See the CRM Quick-Start.
Who it’s for
For operations that outgrew the template.
Typically 20–250 people, more than one team touching the same customer, and at least one system that already holds part of the answer — an ERP, a store, a stack of spreadsheets nobody wants to open.
- Wholesale
Wholesale & distribution
Branches, reps and separate price lists on one customer book — with the ERP balance visible next to the open quote.
- Marine
Shipping & marine suppliers
Long quote cycles and technical enquiries, with buyers spread across owners, yards and agents — all pointing at one account.
- Industrial
Manufacturing
Dealers, projects, long lead times and after-sales history living in the same record instead of four inboxes.
- Commerce
E-commerce groups
A store, a wholesale arm and a support queue that all describe the same customer in three different ways.
- Professional
Professional services
Several offices or practices, referral sources worth measuring, and matters that genuinely need their own object.
- SaaS
SaaS & IT
Sales, onboarding and renewal on one system, so nobody has to reconcile three views of the same account.
Scoped, then phased
Five things shape the build. Nothing else moves the price.
- 01Seats & teamsHow many people, in how many teams, seeing how much of each other’s data.
- 02Pipelines & objectsHow many sales processes run in parallel, and whether what you sell needs custom objects to describe it.
- 03IntegrationsWhich systems have to talk to the CRM, in which direction, and how often.
- 04DataHow many sources, how dirty, and how much history has to survive the move.
- 05Enablement & careTraining and documentation at hand-over — and whether we stay on as your admin afterwards.
On the call we walk through the five, then you get a phase plan: what goes live in each phase, what that phase costs, and what we need from you. No open-ended hourly meter, and nothing starts before it’s in writing. If you’re running this as a digital-transformation project — including one you intend to put to a funding programme — the phase plan and costs come in a form you can hand straight to whoever asks for them.
What it costs, and why →Behind System 07: an official partner of both platforms — so the platform recommendation follows your operation, not our commission. CRM and marketing systems shipped for 40+ B2B and e-commerce brands, and the same stack runs MarketStarter’s own sales.
Straight answers
The questions every owner asks — answered.
How is a full CRM implementation different from the CRM Quick-Start?
The Quick-Start is a fixed menu for a team selling one thing through one pipeline: set up in about two weeks, a basic import, no custom integrations. An implementation begins where that stops — several teams and pipelines, custom objects for what you actually sell, real integrations with the systems around the CRM, and years of existing data that has to move. If your setup fits the menu, take the Quick-Start; we will tell you so on the call rather than sell you the bigger build.
Can you migrate our data without losing anything?
That is the part we rehearse instead of promise. Every source is field-mapped first, then the migration runs into a sandbox, where record counts and duplicate groups are checked against the originals. Production is loaded only after those numbers agree, and the old system stays readable until you sign off. Duplicates are merged rather than deleted, so the history survives the merge instead of being overwritten by whichever row happened to load last.
Which integrations can you actually build?
The usual ones are ERP and invoicing, the e-shop, the phone system, accounting exports and marketing tools — in practice, anything with an API or a scheduled file exchange. Each integration is scoped and priced on its own, in writing, because a one-way field sync and a two-way order feed with error handling are not the same piece of work and should not hide behind the same line item.
HubSpot or Salesforce for a build this size?
We are partners of both, so the answer comes from your operation rather than our commission: how many seats, how much custom object work, what has to be integrated, and what your own people can administer after we leave. If you already pay for one of them, the default answer is to make that one fit before considering a move — a migration you did not need is the most expensive kind.
Our last CRM project stalled. Can you pick it up?
Usually, yes — a stalled implementation is more often a scoping problem than a software one. We audit what exists, say plainly what is worth keeping, and rebuild the rest in phases so there is a working system at the end of each one instead of at the end of everything. You keep the audit findings whether or not you continue with us. The audit itself is a fixed one-off fee, credited against the first phase if you go ahead.
Will the team actually use it?
That is what the enablement phase is for: role-based training on your own configured system rather than a demo org, a short written playbook, data-quality rules everyone has agreed to, and a check-in after the first live month. A CRM gets abandoned when it adds typing and gets used when it removes it, so adoption is a design constraint here, not a training slide at the end.
How long does a CRM implementation take, and how is it priced?
It runs in phases so something works early — design and migration first, then the integrations, then reporting and enablement — and most builds land between six and twelve weeks depending on how many systems are in scope. Price follows the same five drivers you see above: seats and teams, pipelines and objects, integrations, data complexity, and how much enablement and care you want after hand-over. That is why this one is quoted from a call instead of a tier: after twenty minutes you get a phase plan with a fixed price per phase, and the range those quotes land in is published on our costs page.
How it starts
- 01
Book a 20-minute call
Bring your team size, the systems that need to talk to each other, and where your customer data lives today. If the Quick-Start covers you, we’ll say so on that call.
- 02
Get the design and the phase plan
How the work flows, the object model that follows from it, and a phased scope: what goes live when, what each phase costs, what we need from you. Nothing begins before you have it in writing.
- 03
Go live phase by phase
Design and migration first, then the integrations, then reporting and training. Every phase ends with something your team can use that week — not a milestone on a chart.
Let the hard part be ours.
20 minutes. A phase plan in writing. No obligation.