1. Define the products and plans
Compare monday CRM—not the broader monday product family—with the specific HubSpot products under consideration. Record the proposed plan, user roles, required fields, automation allowances and reporting needs. Ask each vendor to confirm which capabilities are included, limited or separately licensed.
2. Map sales-to-delivery handoffs
Document what must happen after a deal closes. In a fictional agency, an accepted proposal could require a delivery record, named owner, scope, deadline and client contacts. Test whether each system can support that handoff with suitable permissions, field mapping and visible exception handling.
3. Test contacts, lifecycle and marketing
Decide whether the priority is operational coordination, detailed contact lifecycle management or both. Test consent status, communication preferences, segmentation, ownership and access controls. Do not enable automatic marketing unless the organisation has appropriate permissions and an approved process for suppressions and changes.
4. Verify integrations and exceptions
Do not assume every accounting, email or service tool is supported. Verify supported fields, permissions, sync direction, duplicate matching, failure and retry handling, and owner acceptance tests before enabling an integration. Confirm how staff will identify, correct and reprocess rejected or incomplete records.
5. Compare written total costs
Request comparable written estimates based on required seats, user types, usage, marketing contacts, add-ons, onboarding, migration and support. Also clarify billing currency, taxes and contract conditions. Historical Rand ranges are not a reliable substitute for quotes matched to the chosen configuration.
6. Pilot, export and assign ownership
Pilot representative leads, customers, permissions, handoffs and failed-sync scenarios before committing. Check data quality, reports, auditability and manual recovery steps. Export sample records in a usable format, document configuration ownership and obtain acceptance from the business owner who will manage the system after handover.