Dear Reader,
Welcome to Ask Ilaria. Each month, we answer practical HubSpot questions to help you get more from the platform.
This month, we're looking at a question we hear regularly...
Dear Ilaria,
We've been using HubSpot for a while, but it's getting harder to manage. We've got lots of properties, plenty of workflows and reports, but we're not sure whether everything is still working the way it should. How do we know when our HubSpot portal needs a clean-up?
- Unsure CRM user
Here's what our team says:
HubSpot is designed to be flexible. You can customise properties, build workflows, create pipelines, connect other systems and shape the CRM around how your business works.
That flexibility is one of the things that makes it powerful. It's also what makes portals drift over time.
A property gets created for a campaign. A workflow is built to solve a specific problem. Someone builds a report to answer a one-off question. Then the business changes, but the CRM doesn't always change with it. The result is a portal that technically works, but doesn't work particularly well for the people using it.
So, how do you know when that's happening?
The symptoms to watch for
The clearest sign is when your team stops trusting what's in HubSpot. If salespeople are keeping their own spreadsheets or notes because "HubSpot isn't accurate", you've effectively got two sources of truth, and neither is reliable.
Other signs to look for:
- Reports that people question rather than act on
- Workflows that exist to handle exceptions to other workflows
- Lifecycle stages that sales and marketing interpret differently
- Properties that nobody can explain the purpose of
- New team members who find the system confusing rather than helpful
None of these are HubSpot-specific problems. They're signals that the CRM has drifted from how the business actually operates.
What's usually behind it?
When we dig into a portal showing those signs, we tend to find a few common causes.
The first is processes that weren't fully defined before they were automated. Automation should make a clear process simpler. If you're continually adding workflows to handle exceptions to other workflows, the underlying process probably needs looking at first. What should happen? Why? Who needs to be involved? Answer those questions before you build anything.
The second is data that was never quite trusted. Reporting is only as reliable as the information being captured. If lifecycle stages aren't being used consistently, or deal stages don't reflect how sales actually works, your reports will show that. A dashboard can't fix a data problem.
The third is accumulated complexity. Portals pick up properties, workflows and reports over time. Some are essential. Others were created for a campaign, an integration or a one-off need and were never cleaned up. Over time that adds up, and it makes the system harder to use and harder to understand.
Ilaria's advice: "Define what should happen, and why, before you automate anything."
What does a "healthy" HubSpot Portal look like?
A healthy HubSpot portal doesn't need to have the most workflows, properties or dashboards. It needs to help your people do their jobs with less friction and give the business confidence in the information it's using.
Think of it this way - we often see dashboards in client portals with upwards of 15 or even 20 reports on them. But when we question what each report does, or who they are for, what question it should be answering... 9 times out of 10, none of those answers are clear.
The advice we give? Treat your dashboards like a meeting agenda. Each report should answer a specific question, and it should give clear data that can be used when working through your weekly sales or marketing meeting. If it’s not being looked at during those check-in moments, it’s probably not sitting in the right spot on your dashboard.
You don't always need to rebuild
If your portal is showing signs of drift, you don't necessarily need to start from scratch. Often the better approach is to understand what's already there, identify what's working, and remove what isn't.
Before you add another feature, workflow or report, it's worth asking three questions: Is the process clear? Is the data reliable? Will this make someone's job easier?
If the answer to any of those is no, that's where to start.
How HubSpot AI can help you spot the mess
If you're not sure where to start, HubSpot's own AI tools can help you get a quicker read on what's going on inside your portal.
Breeze Copilot is probably the most useful starting point. You can ask it direct questions about your portal, such as which workflows are currently active, which properties haven't been updated in the last six months, or how contacts are moving through your lifecycle stages. It won't do the audit for you, but it surfaces information fast that would otherwise take a manual trawl to find.
For data quality specifically, Data Hub includes a Data Quality Command Center that flags common issues like missing property values, formatting inconsistencies and duplicate records. If you haven't looked at it before, it can be a useful first pass at understanding where your data is breaking down.
Breeze Intelligence can also help if you suspect your contact and company records are incomplete or out of date. It enriches existing records with third-party data, which makes it easier to see where the gaps are and whether the information you're working with is still accurate. Note that Breeze Intelligence uses credits. Your HubSpot subscription includes credits, but the amount varies depending on your plan. If you're not sure what you have available, we're happy to chat.
Ilaria's Advice: you can now set limits on your Breeze Intelligence credit usage directly in HubSpot, so there are no unexpected surprises.
These tools can help you quickly identify where the biggest problems are sitting, and give you a clearer picture of what needs attention before you start making changes.
Any of this sounding familiar?
If some of this is hitting home, we offer HubSpot portal audits for exactly this situation. We look for the signs we've covered here, and give you a clear framework for addressing them. We can also advise on how best to use the AI tools within HubSpot, and the AI credits set up.
Contact the Concentrate by Ilaria team today. See you in the next edition of Ask Ilaria.
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