From Salesforce to HubSpot: How Workist Saves €200k Every Year
"We save approximately €200,000 every year—not only through fewer, better technologies, but also by eliminating complexity and the staffing cost of one full-time role. We can now also see in real time whether we are on course."
Markus Bimüller
Situation
Workist is an AI-based SaaS company from Berlin with around 50 employees. Its solution automates order intake for mid-sized companies and large enterprises—where orders are still entered manually every day.
The company has operated for five years, is venture-backed, is growing internationally, and serves more than 150 paying customers. With scalability and profitability in view, one thing was clear: the revenue setup needed to become more efficient.
Problem
The existing Salesforce-centered tech stack had grown over many years and was no longer fit for purpose. Workist had processes, but lacked an agile system capable of representing them quickly, efficiently, and in a way that stayed close to the team.
Challenges:
- High tool and license costs of more than €100k per year
- Complex maintenance requiring a full-time RevOps role
- Dependence on external resources
- No end-to-end view of the customer journey
- Slow decision cycles caused by fragmented data
Impact
From Salesforce to HubSpot in Two Months
In only two months, HubSpot was introduced as the new central platform for Marketing, Sales, and Service—without disruption. The result is one central system that can be adapted quickly, easily integrates modern tools such as Clay, and gives even small teams maximum autonomy through self-service.
Achieved:
- A complete end-to-end representation of the revenue journey
- Simple integration with backend systems through webhooks
- Immediate usability for every team
Saving One Full-Time Role and €100k in Tech-Stack Costs
The change delivered not only better performance, but dramatic savings.
Result:
- More than €100,000 in annual tool costs saved, including by replacing Zendesk and other tools
- No longer required a full-time RevOps role, thanks to a cleanly designed, maintainable setup
From Questions and Initiatives to Results in Minutes Instead of Weeks
Questions about pipeline, win rates, or segment performance that previously took weeks to answer through Excel, Tableau, and RevOps rework now receive immediately actionable answers directly in HubSpot.
This means:
- Growth hypotheses can be tested faster
- Marketing and Sales understand sooner and more clearly what works
- Go-to-market experiments can be evaluated using data
Decision Criteria
The following requirements were central to Workist’s new CRM:
- One system for the entire revenue journey across Marketing, Sales, and Service
- Ease of use and autonomy without a specialist administrator
- Faster time to value for new processes and integrations
- Reliable data for well-founded decisions
- Lower running costs and sustainable scalability
Two additional factors came together:
- The end of the three-year Salesforce contract
- The departure of the internal RevOps owner
Hiring a replacement would have created high costs and renewed dependence. This was the ideal time for a scalable, team-friendly, future-proof system that could be operated independently.
Why SalesPlaybook?
Workist deliberately selected SalesPlaybook as its implementation partner—not only for its technical expertise, but for its industry knowledge, structure, and methodology:
- B2B SaaS expertise: No lengthy explanations—SalesPlaybook understands the realities of ARR, CAC, CLTV, and revenue teams
- A structured project setup: Clear direction from day one, with change agents, enablement plans, and role specifications
- Training instead of lectures: Small sessions close to the team, with assignments and follow-ups, ensured knowledge stayed in the company
- One point of contact for everything: No handoffs between hubs—Erik supported the project end to end
- Best practices instead of implementation alone: Existing processes were not merely transferred, but actively challenged and improved
“We did not have to explain to SalesPlaybook how SaaS works—they showed us, implemented, and trained us in how we could do it even better.”
"The end result is a setup that does not depend on SalesPlaybook, but can be operated successfully in-house with their help. That saves money and time and creates genuine ownership."