HubSpot reaches every accounting system its DACH customers run.
HubSpot is one product used the same way everywhere. The accounting system next to it is not: in the DACH region it is a different product in almost every business, and often an industry-specific one. That asymmetry is the whole problem, and it does not get smaller as HubSpot grows.
HubSpot integrates the German systems it never had to build
“We integrate German accounting systems and rely on Maesn as a trusted enabler - ensuring seamless data flow, full compliance, stronger partnerships, and efficient, reliable financial processes that support our growth.”
Who HubSpot is, and where Maesn sits
- Website
- hubspot.com
- About HubSpot
- Founded in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, two MIT graduate students who had noticed two years earlier that buyers no longer wanted to be interrupted. HubSpot publishes 299.000 customers, more than 8.800 employees and 15 global offices.Source: hubspot.com
- Use case
- Integrating the CRM with the diverse accounting systems of the DACH region, without creating an individual connection for each tool. Through Maesn, HubSpot syncs client data and invoices. The workflow itself, independent of any one vendor, is on the customer and supplier data sync page.
- Previous solution
- Manual import of data points into the CRM platform.
- Accounting systems
- DATEV, sevdesk and Lexware Office
The DACH accounting landscape is fragmented, and stays that way
A global product can be localised. A fragmented market cannot be finished. The study calls the DACH accounting landscape highly fragmented and names the part that makes it expensive: not just many systems, but industry-specific ones on top.
HubSpot sells one CRM to hundreds of thousands of businesses. Every one of those businesses also books its revenue somewhere, and in the DACH region that somewhere is chosen locally, often by a tax advisor and often for a single trade. The published challenge names both layers: a multitude of accounting systems, and industry-specific solutions beyond them.
The published previous solution shows what that cost before the integration: a manual import of data points into the CRM. Somebody exported figures from an accounting system and typed or loaded them into HubSpot, which is the point at which a customer record stops being current and nobody can say when it stopped.
The study is precise about which cost decided it, and it is not the cost of the first integration:
- Time and resources to develop them
- The same again to maintain them
- And again to continually update them
One integration that runs in both directions at once
This is the only one of the four studies where the data goes both ways. The customer record moves into the accounting system so the invoice can be written correctly, and the invoice moves back into the CRM so the account is complete.
Two directions through one connection only works if a customer means the same thing on both sides, and it does not: every accounting system names and shapes that record differently, and some of them keep a contact and a customer as separate things. The common data model resolves that before either side sees it, which is why HubSpot writes one shape rather than one per product. Measured across the connected systems, the customer record is readable on 20 of the 29 and writable on 16.
The other half of a two-way flow is knowing when something changed, because a record that is only correct at import time is the previous solution with extra steps. Unified webhooks is the part that carries that, including for the systems that do not offer an event of their own.
Hundreds of DACH customers, and no local integration team
The study reports reach rather than a number: hundreds of HubSpot's own customers in the DACH region, each on the accounting system it already had, and nobody inside HubSpot who owns those systems.
“Serving hundreds of their customers in the DACH region without building or maintaining a single integration in-house.”
The second half is the part a CRM team feels. Hundreds of customers on local accounting systems would otherwise mean a team that owns those systems, and that team would grow with the market rather than with HubSpot.
The study frames the result as customer satisfaction through localisation, and that is the shape of it. For a business in Münster or Graz nothing about the CRM changed, except that its accounting system is now on the other end of a connection somebody else maintains. What HubSpot gained sits one level up: it can say yes to a local system without scheduling engineering work for it.
And hundreds of customers on local systems means hundreds of separate connections, each belonging to a different business and each needing to keep working without anybody at HubSpot being asked. Unified authentication is the part that carries that, which is what makes the reach in the sentence above an operational statement rather than a sales one. Reach that holds without anybody being asked is what customer success teams are left with once the deal is closed.
Common questions
Which accounting systems does HubSpot connect to through Maesn?
Which way does the data move?
Are payment reminders part of what moves?
Does the original invoice document come across as well?
Did HubSpot consider building the integrations itself?
Can another CRM use the same setup?
Automates the full accounts payable cycle and posts every payment back into the customer's ERP.Read the case study
Turns tracked project time into draft invoices inside the accounting system the customer already runs.Read the case study
Pulls overdue invoices out of the customer's ledger so collection can start without a manual upload.Read the case study
Hands a complete set of books to the tax advisor's system, receipt images and person accounts included.Read the case study