Industries · Logistics and transport
A shipper emails at 4:40 on a Thursday asking for a rate on six loads a week from Rotterdam to Dublin. Someone in pricing builds the number in a spreadsheet and replies on Friday afternoon. A competitor replied on Thursday evening. Nobody records that the quote went out, what it was worth, or why it was lost. Multiply that by a few hundred quotes a month and you have the biggest revenue leak in most logistics businesses, and almost none of it shows up in a CRM.
Every quote, how fast it went out, and whether it won
20+
logistics and transport clients
13
on bespoke HubSpot implementations
6
with data migration projects
3
with ERP integration projects
Periti Digital is a HubSpot Elite Solutions Partner and an Anthropic partner. We work with freight forwarders, hauliers and groupage operators, shipping and container leasing businesses, cold storage and warehousing providers, parcel and delivery firms, and passenger transport operators from taxi networks to ferries and airports. Our clients in this sector include Constellation Cold Logistics and Peacock Container. Across every sector, we’ve delivered 2,000+ projects for 900+ customers from Dublin, London, Rotterdam, Munich, Lisbon, Boston and New York.
The biggest mistake
A typical logistics CRM project starts with contacts, a deal pipeline and a few email sequences. Meanwhile the work that decides revenue happens off to the side: spot quotes in Outlook, tender responses in Excel, rate cards on a shared drive, and margin in the TMS or ERP. So leadership can’t say how many quotes went out last month, the win rate on spot versus contract, or which lanes keep getting lost, and to whom.
We start from the quote and build outward. HubSpot becomes the revenue nerve center: where inquiries, quotes, tenders, customer accounts, shipment volumes and margin meet. The pipeline is one part of that picture. The quote record is the center of it.
| Area | What the CRM assumes | How logistics works |
|---|---|---|
| Where revenue is decided | Deals a salesperson moves through stages | Spot quotes, tenders and rate reviews, hundreds a month |
| Where the quote lives | In the CRM | Outlook, Excel and a shared drive |
| Where margin lives | On the deal | In the TMS or ERP, where sales leadership never looks |
| Where next year's revenue comes from | New logos | Existing customers buying more lanes and services |
Quoting
Because nobody measures it. Most logistics businesses track loads booked and revenue invoiced, and very few track the quotes that came before them. If you don’t know how many quotes you send, how fast you send them and how many you win, you can’t fix any of it.
A quote that takes a day to build often loses to one that took an hour. Fuel moves, carrier costs move, and a large RFQ gets a heroic effort from three people and is then forgotten.
Where quotes leak
How we fix quoting in HubSpot
That one change gives leadership numbers they’ve never had: quote volume, response time, win rate by lane and customer, and margin on what was won against what was quoted.
How far we take it depends on how you price. For some businesses we build quoting in HubSpot with Commerce Hub quotes, product libraries and approval rules. For Peacock Container, an ISO tank container leasing business, we configured an inquiry pipeline and Commerce Hub quoting as part of a full CRM Suite implementation, with a unified data model across its rental portal, Exact and Qlik. For others, the price has to come from the TMS or a rating engine, and HubSpot records the quote, the outcome and the follow-up. We decide which in design, based on where your rates live and who your finance team trusts.
HubSpot or TMS
It depends on how complex your pricing is. Simple, repeatable pricing belongs in HubSpot. Pricing built from carrier costs, surcharges and live capacity usually belongs in the TMS or a rating tool, with the result recorded in HubSpot.
Ask which number your finance director would defend at month end. The system that produces that number should own pricing.
Structure
Build it around accounts, the services and lanes they buy, and the volume they could give you. We usually design around accounts and the people who book (the logistics manager who sends the loads, the procurement lead who runs the tender, the finance contact who approves the invoice), services and lanes, often as a custom object linked to the company, quotes and tenders, contracts and rate reviews so renewals stop arriving as surprises, and volume and margin history pulled from the operational system.
Pipelines should match how you sell. For a Netherlands-based aviation services operator, we built separate pipelines for broker and project clients, because the two buy differently. For a UK taxi and private hire platform, we configured separate stages for commercial sales, onboarding and account management, because winning a corporate account and getting its people to book rides are different jobs.
Who ships with you, what they ship, and how much more they could give you.
In most logistics businesses, existing customers produce most of next year’s revenue. A shipper on one lane can give you three more. A warehousing customer can start using your transport. A customer who books groupage might move to full loads. We build that into the CRM as its own motion, with its own pipeline, targets and reporting. If your only pipeline is for new logos, your account managers will either ignore the CRM or force expansion work into stages that make no sense for it.
System boundaries
HubSpot should handle winning and growing customers. Your TMS, WMS and ERP should handle moving the freight, storing the goods and billing for both. Some logistics companies run bookings or warehouse activity in HubSpot because it’s easier to configure than their TMS. Others refuse to let HubSpot see any operational data, so sales works blind. We draw a hard line between the systems and then connect them.
HubSpot sees everything here.
| Job | System of record | What HubSpot sees |
|---|---|---|
| Quotes and tenders | HubSpot or TMS, decided in design | Quote value, lane or service, validity, owner, outcome, loss reason |
| Bookings, jobs and shipments | TMS or forwarding system (CargoWise, for example) | Shipment counts and revenue by account and lane, not individual jobs |
| Warehouse activity and inventory | WMS or operational platform | Storage positions, throughput and utilization by account |
| Fleet, assets and containers | Fleet, rental or asset system | Assets on hire, contract dates and utilization by customer |
| Invoicing, credit and collections | ERP or accounting system (Sage X3, Sage Intacct, Sage, Exact) | Revenue, margin, credit limit, credit status and aged debt by account |
| Service issues, claims and complaints | HubSpot Service Hub or operational system | Open issues by account, so sales knows before the customer call |
One rule sits behind that table: data comes into HubSpot only if it drives an action or a decision. Margin by lane tells sales where to push and where to walk away. A credit hold stops a rep from winning business finance won’t accept. Two hundred thousand individual consignments tell a salesperson nothing, so they stay in the TMS.
Integrations
Start with the ERP or accounting system, then the TMS or forwarding platform, then warehouse and data platforms. Anything HubSpot can’t see, it can’t act on, and neither can your agents. See our integration approach.
Start here
Sales shouldn’t have to ask finance what a customer is worth or whether they pay on time. For Constellation Cold Logistics, we consolidated customer data from Freshsales, Sage X3 and Excel into a new HubSpot environment. For a cross-border chilled and frozen haulier, we advised on bringing data in from Sage Intacct. We’ve also worked with Sage for a ground transportation operator and Exact for Peacock Container.
Thin margins
Margins are thin, and one bad debt can wipe out a quarter of profit on an account. When finance puts an account on hold, HubSpot should know within minutes, and the account owner should see it before they quote another load.
Then
We bring a summary of the TMS into HubSpot: shipment volumes, revenue and margin by account, lane and mode. For a UK freight forwarder, we built the data model and field mapping from CargoWise into HubSpot, with an initial data load the client validated. The hardest part is agreeing what a customer is, because a forwarder’s TMS often holds the same shipper several times. We settle the matching rules in design.
Larger operators
Larger operators already hold operational data in a data platform, often the cleanest route into HubSpot. For Constellation Cold Logistics, we integrated Azure Synapse. For a temperature-controlled haulier, we helped connect Power BI and Amazon QuickSight, and for Peacock Container we mapped data across Qlik and its rental system. We don’t rebuild your BI in HubSpot.
Everyday
We connect the portal where it holds account data, log email and calendar activity from Outlook and Gmail automatically, and pull customer history out of shared drives. For an aviation services operator, we moved fragmented customer data out of Outlook and OneDrive into HubSpot as its central sales system.
A Zapier connection between your TMS and HubSpot will pass testing. Then a peak week arrives, volumes triple, and the connection hits a task limit or an API change and quietly stops syncing. Two weeks later a rep quotes a rate based on volumes a month out of date, and finance finds the credit hold HubSpot never received.
For business-critical connections we build on Microsoft Azure or AWS, with error handling, retries, monitoring and alerting your IT team can see. We don’t put ERP syncs on Zapier.
Go-to-market data
Track the signals that tell you a customer is about to ship more, ship less or ship with someone else. Most of them come from customers you already have.
01
A customer whose shipments drop 30% over a quarter is losing business or giving it to a competitor. One whose volumes jump may need more capacity than you’ve planned for. We flag both to the account owner.
02
If a customer ships from five origins and you carry from one, that gap is your pipeline.
03
A customer who asks for ten quotes and books none is telling you something about your price, your capacity or your speed.
04
Many shippers retender annually. Starting the conversation months ahead beats finding out when the RFQ lands.
05
When a logistics manager who books with you moves to a new shipper, you get a warm introduction. When your main contact leaves, that account is at risk.
06
New sites, distribution centers, acquisitions, import routes, funding rounds and leadership changes, brought in through enrichment and Claude research agents.
07
Late deliveries, damaged goods, temperature excursions and claims. An account manager should know before they walk into a renewal meeting.
Our GTM Engineering team builds outreach, enrichment and AI agents on your customer and lane data.
AI with Claude
They speed up quoting, prepare account managers and catch signals people miss, provided the context underneath them is sound. In logistics that context sits across the TMS, the ERP, inboxes, rate cards and tender folders.
Through our Anthropic partnership, we build Claude automations that reach context HubSpot can’t see and bring it into the CRM in a structured form your people can trust.
Put any of these agents on a CRM that doesn’t know what each customer ships, or where half the quotes never got logged, and they’ll give your team confident, wrong answers. We build the context layer first for that reason.
Groups and PE-backed roll-ups
Logistics is consolidating fast, much of it backed by private equity. Every acquisition brings another TMS, another accounting system, another CRM or none at all, and a sales team convinced their way of quoting is the right one.
We help groups build one CRM, with a repeatable playbook for bringing each new business, brand or depot into it. Shared definitions of a customer, a quote and a lane, a shared data model and consolidated reporting let leadership see revenue, customer overlap and cross-sell opportunity across the group. When one business moves freight for a customer and another could store it, someone should know. We work with UK logistics groups that run many operating companies, including one with more than 28 businesses spanning distribution, forwarding, customs and warehousing.
1,200 users
The largest HubSpot implementation in EMEA.
Some logistics businesses ask us for a CRM when what they need is a quoting process. Nobody owns pricing, quotes go out from five different inboxes, and nobody agrees what a lost quote is. A CRM can record that mess. It can’t fix it.
Others want HubSpot to replace their TMS or WMS because their operational system is old and painful. We won’t build a transport management system inside a CRM. Bookings, job costing, proof of delivery and warehouse operations need software built for them.
And some want a full CargoWise or ERP integration on day one, before the sales team has agreed on stages, quote rules or account ownership. Integrating an undefined process makes the undefined process faster. We’d rather start with a clean data model and a working quote process, as we did with the UK forwarder above, and integrate once the foundations hold. We’d rather sell you the smaller project that works than the bigger one that doesn’t.
Who works on your project
Every Periti project is run by a lead consultant who has delivered at least 50 projects. They own the design, run the workshops with your commercial, pricing and operations teams, and make the hard calls. Consultants handle configuration, migration and testing.
When a project needs integration with your TMS, ERP, WMS or data platform, we assign dedicated engineers rather than stretching consultants into developer roles. Our directors review the work and hold every project to the same standard.
How a project runs
01
Map how revenue comes in: inquiries, spot quotes, tenders, renewals and account growth. Design the quote model, account and lane structure, boundaries, integrations and AI.
02
Configure in sprints and demo regularly, so sales, pricing and operations see progress early and can correct course while changes are cheap.
03
Bring in the data that serves a purpose, connect your TMS, ERP and data platforms, and test against real quotes, accounts and peak-week volumes.
04
Train sales, account management, pricing and customer service by role, using your own customers and lanes.
05
Agree a roadmap so the system keeps pace as you add depots, services, countries and acquisitions.
Where to start
Most companies
Where most of our logistics engagements start. You leave with a design your commercial and operations leaders agree on, whoever builds it. Constellation Cold Logistics started here.
Fast start
Our industry-specific onboarding package, a low-risk way to go live quickly on a proven configuration. A UK parcel, pallet and warehousing business started with us this way.
Ongoing
Ongoing support from a team that knows your portal and your business.
Ongoing
An experienced Periti operator runs your revenue operations as part of your team, including quote reporting, pipeline reviews and data quality, without a full-time hire.
Growth
Outreach, enrichment and AI agents built on your customer and lane data, to win more shippers on the lanes you already run.
Companies we work with
Freight forwarding, shipping, haulage and groupage is our largest segment, followed by passenger transport: ferries, aviation, airports and ground transport.
We also work with automotive, fleet management and vehicle leasing businesses, as well as 90 manufacturing and industrial companies, many of which are the shippers our logistics clients serve.
Questions
Yes, for account management, quoting visibility, tenders, marketing and customer service. Run bookings, shipments and warehouse operations in your TMS and WMS. The logistics companies that get the most from HubSpot connect the two, so sales sees volumes, margin and credit status next to every account.
Yes. We've built the data model and field mapping between CargoWise and HubSpot for a UK freight forwarder. The key decisions are how shippers, branches and billing entities match to HubSpot companies, and which quote and shipment data sales needs. We settle both before building.
If you sell from a rate card, quote from HubSpot. If your prices are built from carrier costs, fuel and accessorials, price in your TMS or rating engine and record the quote and its outcome in HubSpot. Either way, every quote should exist as a record with a value, validity date and outcome.
Make every quote a record in HubSpot with a created time, sent time, value, lane, validity date and outcome. Once quotes are captured consistently, win rate, response time and margin on won business by lane and customer come straight out of HubSpot reporting.
Summaries, yes. Individual consignments, no. Sync shipment counts, revenue and margin by account and lane, because those drive sales decisions. Two hundred thousand job records add noise and slow everything down.
In logistics and transport we've worked with Sage X3, Sage Intacct, Sage and Exact, alongside data platforms such as Azure Synapse, Qlik, Power BI and Amazon QuickSight. For business-critical integrations we build on Azure or AWS middleware.
We don't recommend it for anything business-critical. Zapier works for low-volume automations between cloud tools, but TMS and ERP syncs need error handling, retries and monitoring that hold up during peak volumes. We build those on Azure or AWS.
Yes. We sync credit limits, credit holds and aged debt from your ERP into HubSpot at account level. That stops reps quoting or winning business that finance won't accept.
Remove the data entry and give them something useful. Automatic email logging, quote intake from inboxes, and account views showing volumes, margin and service issues do more for adoption than any amount of training.
The most useful ones read rate requests from email and create quotes, draft tender responses from past bids, brief account managers before reviews and watch customers for changes in shipping patterns. They depend on good context in the CRM, so we build that first.
No. We review what each object and field will do in HubSpot and bring across what's useful, cleaned and restructured. For Constellation Cold Logistics, we replaced Freshsales and consolidated customer data from Freshsales, Sage X3 and Excel into one HubSpot environment.
Yes. It takes careful design of permissions, teams, business units and reporting, balanced against the shared definitions group leadership needs. Our largest multi-brand rollout, for Franchise Brands, brought 1,200 users across multiple brands and countries into one HubSpot environment.
With a Design and Strategy project. We map how quotes, tenders and account growth produce revenue and design the data model, integrations and reporting before anything is built. Businesses that want a faster start can use LaunchRight, our industry-specific onboarding package.
You might be replacing a legacy CRM, getting quotes out of inboxes and into one place, connecting HubSpot to CargoWise or your ERP, bringing acquired businesses onto one platform, or trying to get your sales team to use the system you already pay for. Tell us where you are. We’ll tell you how we’d get you there, including the parts you might not want to hear.