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CRM implementation at Profel: how technology and people together make a project succeed

Deliv­er­ing a project on time, with­in bud­get, and ful­ly accord­ing to scope. In IT, that’s rarely a given.

At Pro­fel, it worked out.

Pro­fel is a fam­i­ly busi­ness from Pelt, in Lim­burg, spe­cial­iz­ing in win­dows and doors. An orga­ni­za­tion with char­ac­ter, with peo­ple who know their trade. But also an orga­ni­za­tion that real­ized it need­ed to take a step for­ward. Work­ing more dig­i­tal­ly. Rely­ing less on insti­tu­tion­al knowl­edge, less on Excel.

That was the start­ing point for a part­ner­ship with Hype­r­i­on that grew into a full dig­i­tal transformation.

16 April 2026

From Excel to a full CRM system

At the heart of the project was the imple­men­ta­tion of a CRM sys­tem with three major com­po­nents: sales, ser­vice, and mar­ket­ing. A Sales­force imple­men­ta­tion that Hype­r­i­on guid­ed from A to Z.

That sounds tech­ni­cal. And it is. But the inter­est­ing part isn’t the tech­nol­o­gy. It’s what hap­pened around it.

Pro­fel was an orga­ni­za­tion where a lot of knowl­edge lived in the heads of peo­ple who had worked there for years. No knock against that knowl­edge, quite the oppo­site. But it did mean that the move to a struc­tured sys­tem required a real cul­ture shift.

Employees counted down to go-live

What stood out most to Katrien Ver­meiren, who guid­ed the col­lab­o­ra­tion on Hype­r­i­on’s side?

“I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by how smooth­ly Pro­fel’s employ­ees got to work with it. They were lit­er­al­ly count­ing down to the sys­tem going live. They gave us so much feed­back on what they expect­ed, what it should look like, which fea­tures mat­tered most.”

That’s not typ­i­cal. In many imple­men­ta­tion projects, go-live is the moment resis­tance real­ly starts. At Pro­fel, it was the opposite.

The first wave was the sales com­po­nent, where com­mer­cial oppor­tu­ni­ties, accounts, and con­tacts are man­aged cen­tral­ly. That means few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties slip through the cracks, and the sales team gets a com­plete view of every cus­tomer rela­tion­ship. Next came the ser­vice cen­ter, for com­plaint fol­low-up and after-sales. Both waves went smoothly.

You build adoption together

A good imple­men­ta­tion is tech­ni­cal­ly sol­id. But a suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion takes more than that.

“I could say it was all down to us,” says Katrien. ​“But that would­n’t be fair. The suc­cess is main­ly thanks to two peo­ple on Pro­fel’s side: their prod­uct own­er and their project man­ag­er. They brought every­one along, step by step. They lis­tened to con­cerns. They made sure end users were gen­uine­ly ready for go-live.”

Peo­ple were also on hand right after go-live to answer ques­tions. That detail makes the dif­fer­ence. Not wait­ing for prob­lems to be report­ed, but being proac­tive­ly present the moment peo­ple are first work­ing inde­pen­dent­ly with the system.

Adop­tion isn’t a project the ven­dor owns alone. It’s a shared respon­si­bil­i­ty. And at Pro­fel, that bal­ance was right.

The bridge between sales and marketing

An added effect of the imple­men­ta­tion that Katrien noticed: the silos between sales and mar­ket­ing start­ed to shrink.

At Pro­fel, these were two sep­a­rate depart­ments with their own way of work­ing. Not unusu­al for a grow­ing fam­i­ly busi­ness. But now mar­ket­ing has eas­i­er access to input from sales for events and cam­paigns, and sales finds it eas­i­er to keep data up to date.

That’s what a well-imple­ment­ed CRM sys­tem does. Not just dig­i­tal­iz­ing process­es, but bring­ing peo­ple clos­er togeth­er too.

What’s next?

The project does­n’t stop at go-live. Pro­fel is con­tin­u­ing this year with addi­tion­al mod­ules, includ­ing field ser­vices. Cus­tomer Link, one of the sub­sidiaries with­in the Hype­r­i­on ecosys­tem, con­tin­ues to play a role in that.

On the mar­ket­ing side, co-cre­ation is on the agen­da. Not just a tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion, but work­ing togeth­er to see whether mar­keters can actu­al­ly do what they want with the sys­tem. That’s a more hon­est ques­tion than it’s often giv­en cred­it for.

What this project shows

Tech­nol­o­gy only works when peo­ple gen­uine­ly want to work with it. That’s a cliché every­one repeats, but few orga­ni­za­tions con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er on.

At Pro­fel, it worked. Because the right peo­ple on both sides were gen­uine­ly involved. Because peo­ple lis­tened. Because go-live was­n’t an end­point but a beginning.

Look­ing for a part­ner who can guide a CRM imple­men­ta­tion from A to Z, with atten­tion to both the tech­nol­o­gy and the peo­ple? Get in touch with Hyperion.

Want to take the step together?

Reach out to us, and let’s explore how we can build future-proof solu­tions togeth­er. We’re just a mes­sage away!

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