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Ionbond’s global CRM transformation: from fragmented sales processes to a data-driven future 

Ionbond case study

INDUSTRYlogo-Ionbond
Wholesale manufacturing

CHALLENGE
Fragmented sales processes create a need for centralized customer insight, leaving growth opportunities unexploited and complicating strategic direction.

RESULT
With HubSpot, Ionbond now works globally with a single streamlined CRM, enabling sales and marketing to work better together, capture opportunities faster and support scalable & strategic growth.

KEY PRODUCT

Sales & Service Hub Enterprise, Marketing- , - operations & CMS Hub Professional

www.ionbond.com →

+ 100

Users
trained & active

+ 34

Factories (in 17 countries)

16

ERP systems
consolidated to 1 CRM

"With HubSpot as our central CRM, we now have global visibility into our sales performance. This enables us to make strategic decisions based on data rather than assumptions."

1676360041596
Jeff Ostman

CCO

Chapter I: About Ionbond

About Ionbond

Ionbond is a global leader in high-performance surface coatings that improve the performance and life of tools and components. With advanced PVD, PACVD and CVD coating technologies, the company provides customized solutions for industries such as automotive, aerospace, medical technology and tool manufacturing. By reducing friction, minimizing wear and increasing corrosion resistance, Ionbond helps companies worldwide operate more efficiently and sustainably.

The challenge

Ionbond has a global network of coating centers and a customer-centric approach, through which the company constantly innovates to meet the highest technical and industry standards. But as the company grew, the need for more structure and understanding of commercial processes arose.

Ionbond's international operations were divided: each region and business unit worked with its own systems and methods. Sales staff relied on personal networks and used loose Excel files to keep track of customer information. This led to fragmented practices and a lack of centralized visibility into sales performance.

Management was looking for a uniform way to collect and analyze sales data, but many salespeople did not see the value of a central CRM system. Their current methods worked fine, and entering data into a new system was seen as an administrative burden.

In addition, many plant managers' focus was more on production efficiency than commercial growth. They felt less urgency to optimize the sales process. This made the transition to an integrated CRM system even more challenging.

To support Ionbond's growth ambitions and create global uniformity in commercial processes, a scalable, data-driven solution was needed. HubSpot was chosen as the Global Smart CRM to align all countries and teams.

The solution

A global transformation requires more than just technology. The move to HubSpot had to be a strategic change that was deeply rooted in the organization. This meant that not only did the technology have to be right, but more importantly, the people within Ionbond had to embrace the new process.

The implementation began with an extensive discovery phase, where it became apparent that the biggest challenge was not technology, but adoption by sales staff and plant managers. Many teams were used to following their own workflow and did not see the added value of a central CRM. Therefore, the project was positioned from the beginning as a combination of technology, change management and stakeholder engagement.

A key technical challenge was integrating the various ERP systems. Ionbond was working with 16 separate ERP systems and the goal was to consolidate them into one integrated system, HubSpot, without data duplication or loss of the original associations with the ERP data. This required setting up an appropriate data model for the complexity of the ERP instances so that data integrity was maintained. This step was crucial to ensure that the CRM implementation was not only technically successful, but also functional and usable in the long term.

The implementation took place in phases. First, Europe was trained, with countries such as Turkey, Germany and Austria last in this phase. Then the focus shifted to Asia and USA, with the goal of having all countries fully operational by April 2025. This approach allowed Ionbond to learn in phases and optimally align the system with user needs.

Adoption was central to the change. General Managers and Country Managers were actively involved in the process and gained an understanding of the benefits of HubSpot. This helped them not only use the system, but also motivate their teams. A knowledge base with FAQs, cheat sheets and a SharePoint environment was set up so that employees could quickly find answers and work without obstacles.

HubSpot was set up to be as user-friendly as possible. Lead and opportunity management was streamlined so sales staff could enter and follow up on deals faster and more efficiently. The Sales Workspace was set up as a central hub for all leads and deals, and CRM data was cleaned up and integrated with existing systems. As a result, all large projects (minimum CHF 50,000 or approximately €50,000) were centrally captured in HubSpot, giving management real-time visibility into global sales performance and enabling data-driven decision-making.

What began as a technical implementation grew into a fundamental change in Ionbond's commercial operation. Thanks to the strategic approach, HubSpot was not only introduced, but also widely accepted - a crucial step in realizing the company's commercial ambitions.

The result

Implementing HubSpot has given Ionbond not only a new CRM system, but a fundamental shift in the way sales and marketing work together globally. Where sales teams previously relied on separate Excel files and local workflows, they now work in one central system, with real-time visibility into customer data, pending deals and market trends.

Thanks to HubSpot' s global adoption , management has a 360-degree customer view, which has significantly improved decision-making. For the first time, Ionbond has full visibility into the performance of different regions and business units, allowing growth opportunities and risks to be identified earlier. The unified way of working makes it possible to better monitor strategic goals and deploy commercial efforts more efficiently.

For sales staff, working with HubSpot has become much easier and more effective. Lead and opportunity management has been streamlined, allowing new deals to be followed up faster and more consistently. The Sales Workspace gives them one convenient place to capture and track customer interactions, resulting in faster conversion of leads to customers. This has lowered the barrier to entry for working with the CRM and the system is now actually used as the primary platform for sales activities.

Marketing and sales now operate as one integrated team. Where previously leads were lost in unclear processes, the automatic lead transfer ensures that every opportunity is followed up appropriately. This has not only improved collaboration, but makes the effectiveness of marketing efforts measurable.

With this transformation, Ionbond has established a scalable and future-proof foundation. All large projects with an annual value of at least CHF 50,000 are now captured centrally in HubSpot, meaning that strategic decisions are now made based on data instead of assumptions.

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