The Challenge

How do you steer a £1bn ship when you can’t see the horizon?
With operations spanning 22 countries, 12,000 employees, and seven distinct sectors, Unipart Group is one of the biggest British institutions in logistics and manufacturing. However, their revenue-generating machine was being stifled by a fractured legacy
system, operating on a heavily customised, open-source version of SugarCRM (SuiteCRM) that had stalled in development and was past its End of Service Life (EOSL). Running a £1bn business on open-source software past its end-of-life support created a higher sense of risk and urgency. The reality was a mix of siloed data and spreadsheets held in "people's Heads".

Crucially, Darren Leigh, CEO, set a mandate to accelerate margin-accretive revenue growth. Yet, he faced a critical challenge: it was impossible to see a single, accurate view of the pipeline across the seven divisions. Without this visibility, predicting revenue or forecasting resources was effectively guesswork.

As Adam Jones, Director of Business Development, put it: "Before we started using this forecasting dashboard, our sales pipeline felt a bit like navigating in the dark. We had a general sense of our progress, but we lacked the granular visibility to truly optimise our sales process."

The challenge wasn't just technical; it was cultural. Each division - from Rail to Logistics - believed their sales process was unique, creating barriers to cross-selling and standardisation. Unipart needed a solution that could unify these complex parts into one high-performance engine.

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The Solution

One Pipeline. One Process. One Source of Truth.
Unipart initially requested a 12-month implementation plan to compare HubSpot against SAP. However, BabelQuest identified that speed was the currency of success here. Recognising their changing needs, we pivoted from the phased approach to an accelerated MVP strategy, delivering a Minimum Viable Product using Sales Hub Enterprise in just six months - half the allocated time. This pivot supported the primary reason for Unipart choosing HubSpot over alternatives - "ease of adoption" - easy, fast and unified data as standard. This would prove critical for driving adoption across 80+ users in seven distinct divisions.

Strategic Alignment: The Unipart Way 
We didn't just install software; we aligned the implementation with "The Unipart Way" (their internal philosophy of continuous improvement). This ensured the technology felt familiar rather than foreign.

As part of the Unipart Way, we agreed on 10 core principles to keep the implementation on course and ensure it reached its objectives. These included 'solve for the customer' and 'Design globally, deploy locally' - principles that would guide every configuration decision and help overcome divisional resistance.

Platform Excellence 
To overcome the "my division is different" objection, we flipped the script. Instead of solving for seven internal sales processes, we solved for the one customer buying journey - as whether a client buys rail infrastructure or logistics support, they buy in the same way.

The configuration of HubSpot focused on future scalability and enabling continuous improvement. BabelQuest applied this to all decisions from custom objects to pipelines, automation workflows, reporting and user adoption of all of the tools in Sales Hub, using used HubSpot's sensitive data tools to help Unipart balance the 360° view of their customers with the need for confidentiality - critical for a company handling defence and healthcare contracts.

BabelQuest leveraged Sales Hub to build a unified architecture:

• Standardised Pipeline: Going from more than 10 pipelines, across 7 divisions into a single deal pipeline for all 80+ sales, enforcing a consistent data structure while allowing for back-office nuances via subprocesses.
• Advanced Customisation: We utilised calculation properties to handle complex weighted revenue and contribution margins across multiple currencies.
• Operations Hub Datasets: To handle Unipart's complex financial reporting, we used Datasets to build phased revenue reporting, splitting deal values across the months they are active rather than just the close date.

"We had to tailor what we were doing to match their way of working... This needs to be a continuous improvement."  Eric Murphy, Principal Lead Consultant, BabelQuest.

The Impact 

From Silos to Synchronicity
The implementation of Sales Hub fundamentally shifted Unipart’s operations from reactive account management to proactive, data-driven business development.

For the first time in the company’s 50-year history, leadership has a "real-time X-ray view" of the sales process. The ability to see all interactions in one place has shattered the silos between divisions. A sales rep in the Rail division can now see what Logistics is doing with a client, unlocking cross-selling opportunities across Unipart’s 600+ product portfolio that were previously invisible.

CEO, Darren Leigh, noted the transformative power of this visibility during the project reviews: "For the first time ever I can see that number and I can break it down by all of these levels... now we can see the levers we need to pull. Don't underestimate what you've done here."

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The Results

Scaling from Millions to Billions
By delivering the project six months ahead of schedule, we didn’t just save time; we generated immediate value.

• £250K in Savings: Shaving six months off the timeline saved an estimated £250k in internal stakeholder and project management costs.
• 50% Pipeline Upside Identified: Increased confidence in data led to the Year 2 growth target increasing from 20% to 50%, and the Year 3 target to 80%.
• 100% User Adoption: Driven by a "if it’s not in HubSpot, it doesn’t exist" mandate, adoption has been absolute. The top sales performers now logging over 4,500 sales activities after month two.
• Transformed End User Experience: Previously, reps navigated multiple systems or spreadsheets. Now, a rep in the Rail division has a single pane of glass to view Logistics interactions, reducing admin time and preventing territory conflict. This visibility unlocked cross-selling opportunities across Unipart's 600+ product portfolio that were previously invisible.
• Positive ROI: The cost savings and immediate revenue impact meant the project achieved positive ROI within months of launch.

"We've gone from poor data, spreadsheets, and people's heads to one unified solution through HubSpot... We're working on the right opportunities and we're closing more business than we've ever done."   Adam Jones, Director of Business Development, Unipart

Looking Ahead: Strategic AI Integration
With a clean data foundation now in place, Unipart is positioned to drive further business transformation. The roadmap includes deploying Conversation Intelligence to analyse sales calls and identify coaching opportunities, and the Prospecting Agent to automate top-of-funnel activity. These AI capabilities will directly support Unipart's strategic mandate to accelerate margin-accretive revenue growth, ensuring the sales team focuses on high-value opportunities while AI handles qualification and research at scale.

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AI Usage 

Laying the Foundation for Intelligence
Unipart is a company that deals with highly sensitive data including in defence and healthcare, so their approach to AI is calculated and strategic. However, the clean data structure established during the Sales Hub implementation has been the critical enabler for their AI journey.

Currently, Unipart is leveraging Breeze and the Deal Loss Agent to derive qualitative insights from their pipeline data. By analysing why deals are stalling or being lost, they are turning raw data into coaching moments for the sales team.

"A lot of the work in the initial phase was getting the foundations in place... Now that that's in place, this next year really allows them to turn on some of those AI tools. The Deal Loss Agent unlocks data that's already there." Gem Rugg-Gunn, Head of Expert Practice, BabelQuest

Moving forward, the roadmap includes deploying Conversation Intelligence to analyse sales calls and the Prospecting Agent to further automate the top-of-funnel activity, ensuring that Unipart remains at the cutting edge of enterprise sales efficiency.

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