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Case Study

How Foundation Education built a connected student journey with HubSpot and aXcelerate

Foundation Education logo

Foundation Education needed more than a CRM swap. Transitioning off Salesforce, it needed a HubSpot environment that could run a complex, multi-brand student acquisition journey while staying tightly connected to aXcelerate. Lupo delivered a customised onboarding and a purpose-built, two-way HubSpot–aXcelerate integration.

Marketing Sales Education Custom aXcelerate integration

158 field mappings

68 contact + 50 class/course + 40 unit-enrolment, integrated

2-way sync

Across core contact and enrolment records, event-driven on Azure

Salesforce → HubSpot

Migrated without disrupting live operations

About the client

About Foundation Education

Foundation Education is a nationally recognised vocational education provider early childhood education, teacher support, allied health, dental assisting, health services and individual support with courses built around flexible study and employment-focused skills. Its student journey spans both B2C and B2B2C pathways, across ~40 course SKUs.

Industry
Vocational education / RTO
HubSpot
Marketing · Sales · CRM
Scope
Customised onboarding · Salesforce transition · custom two-way aXcelerate integration
Client since
Since 2016

The challenge

Moving off Salesforce without losing a complex, multi-brand student journey

Core problem

Foundation Education was running Salesforce while evaluating a new approach to marketing, sales and student engagement and the transformation was far more complex than swapping one CRM for another.

Transition without disruption

Salesforce had to stay live during the move, and the CRM architecture had to suit a multi-brand structure.

More than a contact sync

Reliable data flow was needed for complex contact, course and enrolment data, including AVETMISS-aligned fields.

Two-way by necessity

Leads enter HubSpot before progressing to enrolments in aXcelerate, while student and enrolment data must flow back into HubSpot.

The solution

A customised onboarding plus a purpose-built, two-way integration

Lupo designed the engagement around Foundation Education's real student acquisition and enrolment processes, onboarding first, then an event-driven integration with clear data ownership.

Foundation Education team reviewing student records synced between HubSpot and aXcelerate
  1. 01

    Customised HubSpot onboarding

    Scoped across Marketing, Sales, Service and Operations: segmentation workflows, multi-step application funnels, lifecycle stages, lead scoring, admissions pipelines, reporting and custom data structures, built around personas, courses, semesters and multiple brands.

  2. 02

    Two-way, event-driven aXcelerate integration

    Built on Foundation Education's Azure infrastructure (Logic Apps, Service Bus) for synchronisation, queuing and failure handling: 68 contact, 50 class/course-enrolment and 40 unit-enrolment mappings, plus validation rules and course-info-to-CRM functionality.

  3. 03

    Clear data ownership

    HubSpot is master for Contact records; aXcelerate remains master for class/unit enrolments, qualifications and course records, so systems don't overwrite each other.

  4. 04

    Custom HubSpot experiences

    Custom CRM cards let admissions teams create and update enrolments inside HubSpot with validation and error handling.

  5. 05

    Resilient architecture

    Separate dev/prod environments, controlled deployments, retry handling, failure queues and logging, with a full design → build → UAT → deployment → hypercare lifecycle.

Solution Stack

Platform

  • HubSpot Marketing
  • Sales
  • CRM (custom objects, validation, custom cards)

Growth infrastructure

  • aXcelerate REST API
  • Azure Logic Apps
  • Azure Service Bus
  • Two-way sync
  • Custom CRM cards

Enablement

  • Salesforce transition planning
  • UAT & documentation
  • Post-launch hypercare
Marketing Sales aXcelerate Azure Custom objects 2-way sync AVETMISS Hypercare

The results

A connected foundation across marketing, admissions and student management

The project delivered a new CRM and integration foundation, connecting the front-end marketing and admissions experience in HubSpot with the operational student and enrolment data in aXcelerate replacing disconnected systems and manual data movement.

68

Contact fields mapped between HubSpot and aXcelerate

50

Class and course enrolment properties integrated

40

Unit enrolment properties integrated

2-way

Synchronisation across core contact and enrolment records

Clear governance

HubSpot owns contacts, aXcelerate owns enrolments and qualifications, so data stays consistent.

Admissions inside HubSpot

Custom CRM cards let teams manage enrolments without moving between systems.

Before & after

What changed for Foundation Education

Before

After

Salesforce-led CRM under review
HubSpot as the CRM, integrated two-way with aXcelerate
Disconnected systems, manual data movement
Event-driven sync on Azure, with failure handling
No reliable HubSpot ↔ aXcelerate flow for course/enrolment data
68/50/40 field mappings across contacts and enrolments
Data quality and duplication issues
Clear data ownership and admissions workflows inside HubSpot

Questions buyers ask

FAQ

Delivered a customised HubSpot onboarding and a purpose-built, two-way HubSpot–aXcelerate integration to replace a Salesforce-led CRM.

Start the conversation

Could HubSpot work harder for your business?

Talk with Lupo about where your CRM, marketing, sales, service, data, integrations or AI capability could go next.

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