Refocus is a managed IT service provider (MSP) with offices in London and Cape Town. They offer an A-Z IT Systems Management and integration Solution for startups and growing businesses. On a mission to provide a cutting-edge IT environment for their clients, the teams at Refocus specialize in deploying SaaS cloud solutions and ensuring their upkeep through preventative maintenance.
The Problem
Hungry for growth, Refocus realized early on that they had to reduce the number of people and manual intervention involved in the sales cycle to improve operational efficiency. The team first decided to adopt HubSpot as their CRM solution. It turned out to be more intuitive, customizable, and momentum-carrying than all other CRM solutions. With bigger wins came bigger ambitions. And Refocus decided to start expanding its offerings to more countries.
Soon the team realized that HubSpot's native CPQC model (Configure, Price, Quote, Cash) doesn't have the inherent ability to compute the correct sales tax as per the relevant geography. This means the salesperson who creates the quote should manually enter the correct tax rate (VAT, Sales tax, etc.), or else the customer will pay the incorrect invoice amount. This was not scalable for them as a business operating in multiple jurisdictions — the UK and South Africa. It became tough to manage subscriptions in two countries using a single HubSpot instance.
Additionally, they needed multiple payment gateways to progress on their ambition to serve their customers globally. They needed something to bridge this gap by computing the proper tax rates and expanding their pool of online payment integrations. The answer lay in Chargebee's Quote-to-Cash integration.
"The majority of our subscription offerings are the IT services we provide. But we also manage subscriptions for Microsoft licensing, data storage, etc. The invoicing run was a 3-4 day ordeal for our finance department every month. We tried to automate certain processes, but ultimately, it was very manual," said James Coveyduck, Team Leader at Refocus.
The Solution: HubSpot + Chargebee
James began evaluating different subscription billing solutions in the HubSpot marketplace. Chargebee came out as his top choice as it supported their growth aspirations. It offered multiple payment gateway options, spanning 150+ countries, and the ability to calculate the right local VAT or sales tax rates.
On top of it, James loved that their salespeople could create subscriptions directly from the HubSpot Sales Hub, saving them tons of manual work.
It was very apparent during our evaluation that Chargebee essentially offers the best subscription billing platform for HubSpot customers — based on the level of documentation, the excellent onboarding support, and, of course, the rigorous nature of the integration. I'm a solutions architect, and I didn't find anything else that was as well integrated with the HubSpot Sales Hub as Chargebee.
James Coveyduck, Team Leader, Refocus
By adopting Chargbee's HubSpot Quote-to-Cash integration, Refocus could iron out the entire sales workflow. Today, the sales flow begins right from the Refocus website and ends with a completed payment for a subscription. Here's how it works:
Leads start coming in via the website, and once a customer fills in a signup form, the lead instantly gets processed into a deal.
The salesperson then builds an itemized quote for the customer. The HubSpot product database or library is a powerful tool, and thanks to Chargebee's Quote-to-Cash integration, all subscription plans are automatically synced and listed in the HubSpot product database.
Quotations, along with payment links, get sent to the customer using 'HubSpot Quotes.'
Once a customer eSigns and completes the payment, the subscription gets created automatically in Chargebee, generating the first invoice. The payment information is stored securely for the next billing cycle.
This way, a single salesperson can now interact with the customer and sell a subscription with an eSigned contract and a link for payment.
Moreover, there are no monthly billing hassles — just automatic digital payments each month for the customer. There is also an easy provision to append future subscriptions or add-ons to the customer directly from HubSpot.
The Impact
A few months into Chargebee's HubSpot Quote-to-Cash integration, Refocus's deal closures are 2X faster! The sales process today is fully streamlined. Thanks to the integration, a single sales user can quickly and accurately sell a subscription and get paid digitally without any other intervention from the finance staff and without leaving the HubSpot Sales Hub.
"If I look at the sales efforts now, we're not dealing with the paperwork all day. Once you set up the Chargebee & HubSpot integration, selling contracts and getting paid becomes much easier — it just works!" said James.
The benefits are multi-fold:
The Sales team is now much more empowered and has more room to focus on closing deals.
Refocus is now able to connect a customer with a consultant 2X faster.
Refocus has dramatically cut its operating costs by using Quote-to-Cash integration. They saved their team's efforts on billing activities by 65%.
Chargebee's integration with Xero helps their invoices seamlessly flow from HubSpot to Chargebee to Xero.
While HubSpot was the first step in streamlining the sales process for Refocus, integrating it with a robust finance system like Chargebee propelled the sales cycle further. Chargebee is the core of the tech stack of Refocus today — it integrates well with close to 20 of their tools! With the sales process now set and deal cycles accelerated, the team at Refocus is poised for its hyper-growth ambitions.
Tech Stack
Finance
Stripe, Chargebee, Xero
Sales & Marketing
HubSpot
Operations
Zapier
Analytics
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