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Case Studies

A national distribution co-op: one CRM, every relationship

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A national distribution co-op: one CRM, every relationship
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Our client is Australia's largest cooperative network of independent food service distributors, connecting members, suppliers, and partner organisations that serve food service operators nationwide. Because our client’s distributors act as members in their own right, and can hold more than one role at once (a distributor is often a supplier too), relationship management sits at the centre of how the cooperative runs.

Before this project, that relationship data lived across spreadsheets and Outlook distribution lists, split across separate teams for member services, partner engagement, and marketing. As the network grew, they needed a single, structured system built around relationship management, not a traditional sales CRM, so every team could work from the same view of who they were dealing with and what needed to happen next.

The problem
Relationship data was scattered, and nothing connected it

As their network of members, suppliers, and partners grew, relationship data started living across a number of different channels, spreadsheets, inboxes, distribution lists, and leadership didn't have clear oversight of it all in one place.

Once a relationship was set up, the team needed a system that could help them stay ahead of what came next, whether that was noticing early signs a relationship was cooling, knowing when a renewal or check-in was due, or bringing a new member on board the same way every time.

Problem 1:

Our clients Member Services, Partner Engagement, and Marketing teams each managed relationship data independently, in spreadsheets and Outlook distribution lists. Adding someone to a mailing list was a separate step from updating their record anywhere else, so the same contact's details could drift out of sync across teams, with no single version anyone could trust.

Problem 2:

There was also no consistent way to flag a distributor or supplier relationship becoming inactive, and no structured way to prompt what should happen next, whether that was a renewal date coming up, a scheduled check-in, or bringing a new member on board. Beyond a general monthly check-in and whatever the account owner remembered to do, they had no formal process for surfacing at-risk accounts or prompting the next step in a relationship, so all of it could slip through unnoticed.

The solution
One CRM built around relationships, not a sales funnel

Engaging.io implemented HubSpot as our client's single system for managing companies, contacts, and deal records across every team. Because their "deals" represent ongoing relationships rather than one-off sales, EIO built three dedicated pipelines, for partner engagement, supplier relationships, and membership growth, each reflecting how that relationship actually progresses (from onboarding through to active, low engagement, at risk, or exited), rather than forcing a standard sales pipeline onto a very different kind of business. 

That structure also closed the gap in Problem 2: internal notifications now alert the team automatically when a renewal date or scheduled check-in is coming up, for any member type, and onboarding playbooks, connected to the same sequences and automations, give every team member a consistent process for bringing a new relationship on board.

The Strategic Plan
The Implementation
The process
  1. Companies, contacts, and deals were configured as their single source of truth, replacing the mix of spreadsheets and Outlook lists each team had been running independently. 
  2. Because a company can be a distributor and a supplier at the same time, the property structure had to support both roles on a single record rather than forcing duplicate entries. 
  3. Custom properties captured member type, supplier attributes, and distributor classification, and lifecycle stages were defined so every team could tell, at a glance, where a relationship sat.
Build the CRM foundation
The process
  1. Companies, contacts, and deals were configured as their single source of truth, replacing the mix of spreadsheets and Outlook lists each team had been running independently. 
  2. Because a company can be a distributor and a supplier at the same time, the property structure had to support both roles on a single record rather than forcing duplicate entries. 
  3. Custom properties captured member type, supplier attributes, and distributor classification, and lifecycle stages were defined so every team could tell, at a glance, where a relationship sat.
Design relationship-based pipelines
The process
  1. Each of the three pipelines got its own set of stages built around how that specific relationship actually plays out: a member's journey runs from new/onboarding through active and engaged, active but low-touch, at risk, and through to dormant or exited, while the supplier pipeline tracks prospective, onboarding, active partner, and paused/exited. 
  2. Because Partner Engagement, Supplier Relationships, and Membership Growth each follow different processes, deal-stage automation and ownership rules were built separately for each one, including automatic reassignment when a relationship moves from onboarding to ongoing management.
  3. Automation extended beyond deal stages to relationship touch points too. Our client runs national and regional supplier and member events, so EIO built automated event communications: internal alerts ahead of an event, scheduled messaging before and after it, and post-event follow-up, keeping event activity connected to the same relationship record instead of being tracked separately.
Migrate and clean core data
The process
  1. Contact and company records were imported from our clients existing spreadsheets and distribution lists into the new data model, deliberately scoped to those two objects, without object associations, to keep a 100,000+ record migration achievable within the phase. 
  2. Our clients team cleaned and deduplicated the source data before import, so the CRM launched with data the team could trust rather than inheriting years of scattered entries.
Connect native systems
The process
  1. Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 were connected natively, syncing email and calendar activity automatically so nothing needed to be logged twice. 
  2. EIO deliberately kept integrations to native connectors only, no custom builds, no Annex Cloud, Business Central, or loyalty platform work, so the CRM foundation could be proven and adopted before layering in more complex integrations in a later phase.
Train and embed the whole team
The process
  1. Rather than a train-the-trainer model, every team member across Member Services and Partner Engagement went through direct, role-based training: four two-hour sessions covering day-to-day use, pipeline management, and how the Outlook sync works, with recordings and documentation kept for reference. 
  2. A hypercare period followed go-live, including weekly drop-in sessions and a dedicated Slack channel, so early questions were resolved in real time instead of becoming reasons to fall back on old habits.
The Implementation

HubSpot's default deal pipeline assumes a sales process that ends in closed-won or closed-lost. Our client’s relationships aren't meant to close, they're meant to continue. So EIO reconfigured deal stages across all three pipelines to represent relationship health instead of a sales cycle, giving each team a live view of where a relationship stood without needing it to "close" to count as a success.


Custom properties were built for member type, supplier attributes, and distributor classification, so a single company record could reflect their real-world structure, including companies that are both a distributor and a supplier at once.

Data migration was scoped to contact and company objects, without object associations, a boundary put in place to manage the scale of the migration (100,000+ records) within the phase. Deal-level history wasn't migrated; our client’s team builds relationship history forward from go-live inside HubSpot.

For system integration, EIO connected native Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft 365 sync. Our client is a Microsoft-first organisation, so rather than introducing a new email tool, HubSpot was built to work behind the tools the team already used every day.

Training was delivered directly to the whole team across four two-hour sessions, recorded and documented for future reference, rather than a train-the-trainer model, reflecting how broadly relationship management is spread across Countrywide's Member Services and Partner Engagement teams.

The impact and results
What this unlocks

Our client’s Member Services, Partner Engagement, and leadership teams now work from a single, shared view of every member, supplier, and partner relationship, instead of spreadsheets and separate distribution lists. Relationship health is visible at a glance, and dormant or at-risk relationships can be flagged before they've gone quiet, rather than discovered a quarter later in a review.
That matters more for our clients than for a typical B2B business, because relationships are the product. As a cooperative, our clients' entire value proposition rests on the strength of the connections between the co-op, its member distributors, and their supplier partners, personalised, local service is what distributors are known for. 

Fixing the relationship data problem now, while the network is still actively growing with new distributor businesses joining, means every new relationship starts inside a structured system instead of becoming one more entry to manually reconcile later. The cost of leaving this unfixed only grows with the network, so this was the right moment to build the foundation, not after the next round of growth.

For leadership, that means clear, consistent visibility into distributor and supplier activity across the whole network for the first time, not just anecdotal updates from whoever manages that account. Decisions about where to invest relationship management time can now be made off what's actually happening in the data, rather than gut feel or whoever raises their hand first.

Renewal dates, scheduled check-ins, and new member onboarding no longer rely on one person remembering to act. Internal notifications surface them automatically, and connected playbooks give the whole team the same starting point with a new relationship, right across the network.

Longer term, this is a foundation to build on rather than a one-off fix. With clean data and a structured CRM in place, future phases, segmented communications, deeper reporting, tighter supplier workflows, can be layered on without having to solve data hygiene and adoption at the same time as adding new capability. That's the real payoff of doing the foundational work first: everything built next moves faster because of it.

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