Strategic data migration of more than 2,500 contacts boosts data quality and visibility

SmartBug Leads Not-for-Profit Organization Through Precision HubSpot Migration to Maximize Data Management and Visibility

SmartBug spearheaded the manual migration of company data into HubSpot to create a structured, unified database capable of supporting the not-for-profit organization’s operations.

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100 %

Data Cleanliness & Integrity Coming from 0% Visibility

7300 +

Contacts Successfully Migrated

15 +

Custom Association Labels Created in HubSpot

Background

As a Canada-based not-for-profit organization, the client represents the collective interests of its industry, working to maintain health and safety standards across its province.

The not-for-profit's community-focused mission necessitates collaboration and communication with all types of local organizations, including regulatory boards, schools, educators, farmers, and healthcare professionals. Maintaining these diverse relationships demands an intuitive database complete with dynamic properties for managing and updating records with ease.

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The Need

Managing Disparate Data and Complex Client Connections

The organization's existing proprietary system was not meeting its needs, primarily lacking the ability to allow internal staff to manage backend functionalities, requiring external help for even small changes and extensive support for ongoing management.

Up to this point, the client had no central system of record, relying on disparate spreadsheets and team knowledge, which severely inhibited reporting capabilities, marketing campaigns, and relationship management. The team sought a partnership with SmartBug to initiate and facilitate a structured migration, receive unassisted support, and alleviate the workload on a lean internal team with competing priorities.

The project's main challenge was mapping complex, granular associations and handling shared emails for family farms. For example, a farm could have many suppliers, each requiring a specific relationship. The client’s team needed a streamlined way to manage these types of intricate connections and rearchitect them freely.

Our Solution

Centralizing Contacts Through Custom Capabilities

Data Mapping
Full CRM Migration to HubSpot
Custom Properties
Ongoing Account Management

To manage the complex farm-supplier relationships, SmartBug leveraged HubSpot's Custom Objects and Association Labels. We coordinated a manual migration from a custom-built spreadsheet into HubSpot, bypassing a complex system-to-system integration. Before starting the migration itself, there was an initial lead-in phase consisting of team meetings to discuss goals and the layout of all company data, ensuring the setup would be effective. This detailed data mapping would act as the foundation for the organization’s future database.

As HubSpot specialists, the SmartBug team guided the not-for-profit’s internal team through the entire migration process, bouncing ideas off them and providing proven recommendations in regular check-in meetings. To help the client team collect and format all the data, SmartBug created a custom template to organize it, allowing users to edit as necessary and streamlining the upload process.

The point of contact (POC) on the project confirmed that although the organization’s data set was initially a "mess," the template was "really helpful" for organizing data and making it accessible. Because the existing proprietary system lacked a standard API, SmartBug built a custom CSV framework that allowed the client to curate its data before a single, clean import.

Onboarding and Discovery

(Weeks 1 to 2)

Preliminary Kickoff: SmartBug and the client aligned on goals, priorities, and data structures to get an idea of how data was organized in the existing system.

Discovery and Analysis: After defining the process and walking the client team through the migration plan, SmartBug performed data cleaning, file mapping, and import setup.

Development and Data Preparation

(Weeks 3 to 5)

Data Collection: The teams worked together to map contact relationships in a custom-built spreadsheet, illustrating the various connections between data points.

Initial Import: SmartBug performed the initial import of the data based on the information in the spreadsheet and received client validation.

Testing and Launch

(Weeks 6 to 10)

Final Imports: The team imported the remainder of the company data to complete the migration and executed internal quality assurance.

User Testing: Client user acceptance testing (UAT) was performed and closing adjustments were made, followed by the official launch.

Because membership is mandatory for many users, the not-for-profit organization doesn’t track metrics such as system usage due to the limited number of seats available.

However, the leadership team has received general feedback that the new system is easier to use and teach to others.

The most noteworthy business outcomes included:

A more user-friendly system, allowing for easier individual editing of contact records and better visibility into communication, particularly for mass emails, whereas previous interactions might have occurred on separate, individual systems.
Reliable access to a centralized database, in which the not-for-profit organization can communicate with regulatory boards and healthcare professionals with timely, targeted accuracy, directly supporting the health of their industry.
Relevant associations for easy tracking, which were noted by the POC as a hugely beneficial feature of the new system, as all company connections could be clearly mapped and tracked.