HubSpot Isn’t Just for Marketing: Use Cases for HR, Finance, and Operations

When you think of HubSpot, you probably picture a robust marketing tool designed to streamline email campaigns, manage leads, and align sales efforts. While it’s true that HubSpot excels in these areas, the platform offers much more than marketing and sales solutions. In fact, HubSpot’s CRM and automation tools can be incredibly powerful for teams outside of the marketing department, including HR, finance, and operations.

In this blog, we’ll explore some surprising ways you can use HubSpot to improve efficiency and collaboration across your entire organisation—well beyond just marketing.

1. Using HubSpot for HR: Streamline Recruitment and Employee Onboarding

Managing a growing workforce requires organisation, clear processes, and efficient communication—something HubSpot can help HR teams achieve effortlessly. With its ability to manage contacts, automate workflows, and track progress, HubSpot can transform the way your HR team recruits, onboards, and nurtures employees.

How HR can use HubSpot:

• Recruitment pipeline: Use HubSpot’s CRM to track job applicants the same way you would track leads. Create a pipeline for applicants, assigning stages such as “Application Submitted,” “Interview Scheduled,” and “Offer Extended.” This allows HR teams to easily monitor the status of each applicant and ensure timely follow-ups.
• Automate interview scheduling: HubSpot can automate the scheduling process for interviews, sending personalised emails with calendar invites to candidates. Once an applicant reaches a certain stage in the recruitment pipeline, HubSpot can trigger automated tasks, ensuring no steps are missed.
• Employee onboarding workflows: Once a new hire is confirmed, use HubSpot to automate onboarding workflows. Automatically send welcome emails, set up training reminders, and create tasks for HR or IT teams to arrange resources like laptops, software access, and more.

Why it’s effective: Using HubSpot for recruitment and onboarding streamlines the entire hiring process, ensuring that HR teams can manage their talent pipeline just as efficiently as a sales team manages leads. This results in a smoother, more organised process that improves the experience for both candidates and new hires.

2. Using HubSpot for Finance: Simplify Invoicing and Payment Tracking

While HubSpot may not be a full-fledged accounting platform, it integrates seamlessly with financial tools like QuickBooks and Xero. By connecting HubSpot to your financial software, you can simplify invoicing, manage customer payments, and track financial performance—all within your CRM.

How finance teams can use HubSpot:

• Invoice automation: Integrate HubSpot with QuickBooks or Xero to automate invoicing based on deal stages in your CRM. For example, when a deal is marked as “Closed-Won,” HubSpot can trigger an invoice to be generated and sent to the customer automatically.
• Payment tracking: HubSpot’s deal pipeline can be customised to track outstanding payments. Once an invoice is sent, you can move the deal to a “Payment Pending” stage and set up reminders to follow up on overdue invoices. Payment status can also be updated automatically if connected to accounting software.
• Financial reporting: By connecting your financial tools to HubSpot, you can view key financial data such as revenue generated, invoice status, and payment history alongside customer interactions. This holistic view allows both finance and sales teams to stay informed about the financial status of each deal.

Why it’s effective: HubSpot integrations allow finance teams to streamline invoicing, automate follow-ups, and ensure that payments are tracked efficiently. This reduces the amount of manual work involved in managing payments and ensures that teams can focus on high-priority tasks.

3. Using HubSpot for Operations: Improve Task Management and Team Collaboration

Operations teams are often the glue that holds everything together, managing projects, processes, and teams across the organisation. HubSpot’s powerful task management features and integrations can help operations teams stay organised and ensure that projects are executed efficiently.

How operations teams can use HubSpot:

• Project management: Use HubSpot’s task management and pipeline features to manage internal projects. Create project pipelines for different departments and assign tasks with due dates to ensure that all projects are on track. You can set automated reminders for key milestones and track the progress of each task.
• Cross-team collaboration: HubSpot integrates with tools like Asana, Trello, and Slack, making it easier for operations teams to collaborate across departments. When tasks or projects are updated in HubSpot, they can trigger notifications in Slack or create corresponding tasks in project management tools.
• Document management: Store important documents, such as process guidelines, contracts, and policies, directly in HubSpot. Use document tracking to monitor when internal teams or external vendors view or download important files.

Why it’s effective: Operations teams benefit from using HubSpot’s task management and collaboration tools to keep projects organised and ensure that deadlines are met. Automating reminders, tracking document usage, and integrating with project management tools help streamline workflows and improve efficiency across the organisation.

4. Using HubSpot for Customer Support: Manage Tickets and Customer Issues

While HubSpot is often seen as a marketing and sales platform, it also offers powerful tools for managing customer support and service. With HubSpot’s Service Hub, customer service teams can efficiently manage support tickets, track customer issues, and ensure that customers receive timely resolutions.

How customer support teams can use HubSpot:

• Ticketing system: HubSpot’s Service Hub allows you to create and manage support tickets. Customer inquiries can be automatically converted into tickets and assigned to team members based on availability or expertise. You can also set up automation to route high-priority tickets directly to senior support staff.
• Automated follow-ups: Use workflows to send automated follow-up emails when tickets are resolved, requesting feedback from customers. You can also send reminders to team members when tickets have been open for too long to ensure timely resolution.
• Customer satisfaction tracking: Track customer satisfaction by sending surveys after a ticket is closed. HubSpot’s feedback tools allow you to collect Net Promoter Scores (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) ratings, helping you measure the quality of your support services.

Why it’s effective: HubSpot’s Service Hub ensures that customer support teams can manage inquiries efficiently and deliver top-notch service. By automating ticket routing and follow-ups, customer service teams can improve response times and keep customers happy.

5. Using HubSpot for Vendor and Partner Management

Beyond internal teams and customers, HubSpot can be used to manage relationships with external partners, vendors, and suppliers. Operations, procurement, or partnership teams can use the CRM to track communication, manage contracts, and ensure smooth collaboration with external stakeholders.

How operations and procurement teams can use HubSpot:

• Vendor tracking: Keep all vendor and supplier contact details, contracts, and payment terms organised within HubSpot. Create pipelines to track contract renewals, vendor performance reviews, and partnership milestones.
• Collaboration workflows: Automate workflows to remind your team when contracts are up for renewal or when it’s time to review a vendor’s performance. This ensures that you stay on top of key vendor relationships and meet all deadlines.
• Partner management: For businesses that work with external partners, HubSpot can track interactions, deals, and revenue generated through those partnerships. This helps you manage co-branded campaigns, track joint projects, and measure the success of partnerships.

Why it’s effective: Managing vendor and partner relationships through HubSpot ensures that all interactions, contracts, and projects are tracked in one place. This improves transparency, reduces the risk of missed deadlines, and strengthens external relationships.

HubSpot’s Value Extends Beyond Marketing

While HubSpot is often associated with marketing, its CRM, automation, and integration capabilities make it a valuable tool for HR, finance, operations, customer support, and beyond. By thinking outside the box and applying HubSpot’s features to other departments, businesses can streamline processes, improve communication, and drive greater efficiency across the organisation.

Whether it’s automating recruitment workflows, simplifying financial tracking, or improving project management, HubSpot’s flexibility ensures that every team can benefit from its capabilities. Ready to get more from HubSpot? Start exploring these use cases today and unlock the full potential of your CRM!