Supercharging sales and operations

How a strategic partnership with Concentrate helped Evnex consolidate their technology stack and empower its sales team.

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“From our point of view we had a really good experience – particularly with this sort of project ."
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Amelia Brereton

Senior Business Analyst, Evnex

The Client

Evnex

Evnex is a leading New Zealand company that designs, manufactures, and installs smart electric vehicle (EV) chargers. Their chargers cater to both the residential market, for home charging, and the commercial sector, for workplaces and fleet vehicles. As a rapidly growing business, Evnex needed to streamline its sales and marketing systems to keep pace with demand and continue its expansion across New Zealand and Australia.

The Challenge

Power drain: disconnected systems slowing progress

Prior to engaging with Concentrate, the Evnex sales and marketing teams operated with a mix of disconnected technologies, including Microsoft Dynamics 365, Business Central, Shopify, and Excel spreadsheets. This decentralised approach created a number of inefficiencies, including data silos, manual processes, and double-handling of information.

A key challenge was the company's reliance on third-party developers to make even minor changes to their systems. As Amelia Brereton, Evnex's Senior Business Analyst, explains:

“We were using Dynamics 365 and Business Central and I think we were maybe not a big enough company to be using those tools. We don't have in-house devs so we had to rely on third party developers to get anything done and we couldn't move fast enough.”

This reliance on external parties meant that when issues arose, the Evnex team had to wait for a fix, a process that slowed them down significantly. The lack of internal control over their systems was a major roadblock to their growth strategy. They realised they needed a more flexible and integrated platform that would allow them to take greater control of their processes internally.

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Photo Credit: Evnex
Why HubSpot and Concentrate?

Faced with the need for a new CRM, Evnex investigated several options. They ultimately chose HubSpot because of its flexibility, ease of use and comprehensive features. The platform "seemed to be able to do the most" and was a mature solution they were confident in supporting their long-term growth.

When it came to finding an implementation partner, the choice was clear. Evnex looked at other providers but were drawn to Concentrate's local presence. Working with a Christchurch-based team meant they could knuckle down and resolve issues efficiently. This focus on a fast time to value and the ability to work with a flexible, local partner was a critical factor in their decision.

The Solution

Plugged in: a centralised HubSpot CRM powering growth 

Concentrate was engaged to implement a comprehensive solution centred on the HubSpot platform. The project's aim was to replace Microsoft Dynamics and consolidate the company's sales and marketing systems into a single, centralised source of truth. This was grounded in a meticulous solution design, which provided a comprehensive blueprint of the proposed HubSpot architecture and data model, ensuring all requirements were accounted for before the build began.

The project started with a series of in-depth workshops to confirm user and system requirements, building on a prior scoping document. This meticulous planning was critical to the project's success. Jason Orchard, Head of Engineering and Operations said “We spent lots of time on whiteboards, lots of time with Excel sheets, lots of time with paperwork to try and figure out how it would all come together.”

The technical complexity of the project was significant, particularly with the integrations. The two separate instances of Business Central and Shopify for the NZ and AU markets made the native connectors unworkable, requiring a sophisticated, custom-built solution on AWS. As Concentrate Senior Data Engineer Bac Tran noted, “This required complex business logic to re-route orders to the correct country and solve tricky rounding and tax issues between systems”.

The solution was executed in key stages:

  • CRM Configuration: The Sales Hub was configured to align with Evnex's sales process, including setting up a data structure, automations, and four distinct sales pipelines for different customer types.
  • Data Migration: Over 6,000 leads, 5,000 opportunities, and 7,000 contacts from Microsoft Dynamics in the New Zealand business unit were successfully migrated to HubSpot.
  • System Integrations: Custom integrations with Shopify and Business Central were built, triggered by webhooks on a "Deal Closed Won" event in HubSpot. This automated the creation of sales orders in the correct country-specific Business Central instance and returned key information like the invoice number to HubSpot.
  • User Training & Go-Live: Multiple training sessions were conducted to ensure a smooth transition, followed by a well-planned go-live, which included turning on integrations and user adoption on the same day.
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Photo Credit: Evnex
Mevuni Mendis, Senior HubSpot Projects Manager at Concentrate says “The Evnex team along with myself provided go-live run sheets and briefed both teams on responsibilities and schedules, which was a key part of the project's success.”

The feeling was mutual, Jason says “We had a really good experience with particularly project management. Mevuni did a fantastic job of being able to plan out the project and give us good visibility of key milestones and make sure that we stuck to a very tight timeline.”

The ability of both teams to "knuckle down" and resolve issues quickly was key to meeting the project's tight deadlines. The two teams used chat platform Slack to communicate, ensuring issues were resolved quickly. Evnex also appreciated Concentrate’s flexibility as Amelia added:

“Concentrate were really flexible with us … would pivot with us and help us figure out how to achieve what we needed to achieve.”
Lets chat

Amelia Brereton

Senior Business Analyst, Evnex

Impact

Fully charged: efficiency and adoption unlocked

"I can't believe we used anything else." Feedback both Amelia and Jason have received on the new HubSpot CRM. The HubSpot implementation has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on Evnex's sales team and overall business operations consolidating disparate technologies into a single, intuitive platform, providing the sales team with a centralised workspace for their daily activities.

Most importantly, Evnex is no longer reliant on external developers for every change.

“Now we've got enough tools to be able to go and solve some of our own problems and solve them in a way that's a little bit more affordable because we can spend internal time and resource on customising the tool ourselves,” Jason said.

The rapid user adoption has been a key measurement of success. As Amelia notes, the buy-in from the sales team was strong from the start, as they were ready for a new system.

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“Now we've got enough tools to be able to go and solve some of our own problems and solve them in a way that's a little bit more affordable because we can spend internal time and resource on customising the tool ourselves.”

Jason Orchard, Head of Engineering and Operations.

Photo credit: Evnex

Looking to the future

With a solid foundation in place, Evnex is now looking to further optimise their use of HubSpot. They have plans to expand their activities in the marketing space, focusing on lead nurturing and communications. There is also an opportunity to build out more robust processes to manage installations more effectively.

Evnex has also begun to use some of HubSpot's AI features, including a chatbot they’ve nicknamed 'Breezy Boy' on their website, demonstrating their commitment to continuing to leverage the platform's capabilities for future growth.

Jason’s advice for other businesses facing similar challenges is to find a balance between meticulous upfront planning and remaining flexible once the project begins.

If you'd like to find out more about how Concentrate can do for your organisation what we’ve done for our other clients , don't hesitate to get in touch.