Is RPM the CRM You've Been Looking For? Here's How We Use It and HubSpot

Is RPM a CRM? The answer is… solid maybe. It depends on what your business needs. Here's how we use RPM as a CRM and how it interacts with our other systems to keep everything running smoothly.

How RPM Uses RPM as a CRM

RPM has used RPM as its CRM since I started at RPM, over ten years ago now. We've tracked everything from Contacts and Prospects to more advanced processes like Opportunities, Orders, and Statements of Work. One of RPM's biggest strengths is flexibility: we can configure it to track just about anything, apply custom workflows, and display the data to monitor our KPIs.

For the most part, RPM covers all the essentials of a CRM and our operations by helping us keep tabs on:

• Sales Operations: Including Contact, Prospects, Opportunities, Orders, Customers, Invoices, and Revenue Trends.
• General Operations: Managing Meetings, plus a cool process we call Evolution—our internal tool for ongoing product and service improvement.
• Customer Success Program: Post-Implementation Interviews, Business Reviews, and Subscriber Exit Interviews to ensure our clients are happy and achieving their goals with RPM.

We’ve integrated our RPM subscription with our support and accounting software to ensure the data we need in all our systems is transferred and shared where needed. 

So, does RPM make a good CRM for RPM? Absolutely.

How RPM Subscribers Use RPM as a CRM

Our clients, RPM subscribers, use RPM in a similar way, but with a slightly different focus. Their typical CRM needs center on managing Opportunities, Quotes, and Orders. With RPM, they get a versatile CRM that they can configure to fit their unique sales processes and workflows.

Why HubSpot?

As our company looks for growth, we need more support for marketing operations—like website building, visitor tracking, email campaigns, newsletters, and streamlined sales interaction tracking. This led us to HubSpot. We’re using HubSpot to handle our marketing-centric CRM needs while still relying on RPM for core operational functions.

Integrating RPM with HubSpot and Beyond

Like most companies, we rely on a suite of tools to run our business. And, as anyone knows, having these tools talk to each other is necessary. To that end, we’re building custom integrations to connect RPM and HubSpot.

For example, we’ll sync our Subscriber data between RPM and HubSpot, ensuring that we have accurate customer data across both platforms. Plus, we’ll bring in support ticket and time data from our support system and integrate revenue data from accounting into HubSpot to help track subscriber support activity and revenue more accurately.

Collaborating with Subscribers on RPM and HubSpot Use Cases

Many of our subscribers also use HubSpot. We're working with a few of them to share best practices and integration strategies.

If you're an RPM subscriber who also uses HubSpot, or if you’re considering an RPM and HubSpot integration, we’d love to hear from you! Let’s compare notes, discuss use cases, and explore ways to improve how we work with these tools.

Got questions about using RPM as your CRM or integrating it with other tools, for example, Salesforce? Reach out to us—we’re always happy to help!