- Case Study -

From CRM Adoption to Commercial Alignment

 

How Mercia Asset Management transformed its use of HubSpot to create a more connected, scalable and commercially meaningful operating model

MERCIA

 

Client Overview

Mercia is a proactive, specialist asset manager focused on supporting regional businesses to achieve their growth aspirations. It operates as a multi-asset-class investment company with meaningfully different buyer profiles, sales cycles and conversion mechanics depending on the product.

 

The challenge

Mercia operates across multiple investment strategies, stakeholder groups and buyer journeys. As the organisation continued to grow, HubSpot had become an important part of its commercial infrastructure. However, like many organisations, years of evolving processes, differing levels of platform adoption and increasing operational complexity had created friction between teams and systems.

What initially appeared to be a HubSpot training requirement quickly revealed a broader challenge.

The issue was not technology capability. The issue was alignment.

Data quality varied across teams, processes had evolved inconsistently over time, reporting structures no longer reflected commercial realities and user confidence in the platform differed significantly depending on role and experience.

The result was a system that contained significant value but was not being utilised to its full potential.

 

What we did

Rather than approaching the project as a training exercise, Marmalade began with a comprehensive review of Mercia's commercial ecosystem.

This involved analysing existing HubSpot structures, reviewing user behaviours, understanding stakeholder requirements and assessing how sales, marketing and relationship management activities interacted across the organisation.

The objective was not simply to improve platform usage; it was to understand how HubSpot could better support business objectives.

By returning to first principles, fundamental questions could be addressed:

  • What information was genuinely valuable?
  • Which processes were supporting commercial outcomes?
  • Where were teams experiencing friction?
  • How could technology enable greater clarity rather than additional complexity?

This diagnostic approach laid the foundation for a redesigned operating model that more effectively aligned people, processes, and technology.
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The Results

The project delivered significantly more than improved HubSpot adoption.

By simplifying processes, improving data integrity and creating clearer commercial workflows, Mercia established a more scalable framework for future growth.

Users developed greater confidence in the platform, reporting became more meaningful and teams gained a clearer understanding of how their activities contributed to broader commercial objectives.

Most importantly, HubSpot evolved from being viewed primarily as a CRM system to becoming a strategic business tool capable of supporting decision-making, collaboration and long-term growth.
"What initially appeared to be a straightforward CRM training project quickly revealed itself to be something far more complex. Rather than simply teaching people how to use HubSpot, Marmalade took the time to understand our business, our audiences and our objectives. They conducted a thorough audit, identified fundamental issues, challenged assumptions and helped us strip things back to first principles before rebuilding processes in a way that was logical, scalable and commercially meaningful. This has been one of the most valuable training and transformation programmes we have undertaken."
Alison Dwyer
Chief Marketing Officer