When a financial services firm decides to move from Salesforce to HubSpot, the natural instinct is to replicate everything — every custom object, every workflow, every validation rule — in the new platform. This instinct is understandable but almost always wrong. Salesforce implementations accumulate technical debt over years, and a migration is the best opportunity you'll ever have to clean house.
At Vantage Point, we've guided financial services organizations through this exact transition, and the firms that get the best outcomes are the ones that treat migration as a strategic reset, not a copy-and-paste exercise.
Technical debt in Salesforce manifests as unused custom fields that nobody remembers creating, workflows that were built for processes that no longer exist, validation rules that conflict with each other, duplicate records that have never been reconciled, and Apex code that was written for a one-time project and never removed. For financial services firms, this debt often includes custom objects built around compliance workflows that have since been replaced by dedicated compliance platforms, and integrations with custodial or portfolio management systems that were configured by consultants who are long gone.
The average mid-market Salesforce org that we assess has 30-40% more custom fields than the team actually uses, at least two or three workflows that actively conflict with each other, and a data model that has been modified so many times that the original architecture is unrecognizable. Migrating this mess to HubSpot would be like moving to a new house and packing every piece of junk from your attic.
We structure our migration assessments around four categories. First is active data — the records your team uses daily, including current client contacts, open deals, active service tickets, and recent marketing engagement. This data migrates in its entirety. Second is historical data — closed deals, archived contacts, past campaign records. This data has reference value but may not need to live in the active CRM; it can often be archived in a data warehouse or referenced through reporting integrations. Third is redundant data — duplicates, incomplete records, test data, and contacts that haven't engaged in years. This data should be cleaned, not migrated. Fourth is structural elements — custom objects, workflows, validation rules, and integrations. Each one should be evaluated against current business processes, not assumed to be necessary because it exists.
For financial services firms specifically, we pay close attention to compliance-related data. Communication logs, audit trails, and consent records may need to be preserved for regulatory retention periods even if the underlying contact record is no longer active. We map these retention requirements before deciding what migrates and what gets archived.
Financial services Salesforce orgs often have integration patterns that require careful handling during migration. Connections to custodial platforms like LPL, Schwab, Fidelity, or Pershing typically involve data synchronization that needs to be re-established in the new environment. Portfolio management system integrations, compliance monitoring tools, and financial planning platform connections all need to be mapped and evaluated.
The question for each integration is straightforward: does this need to connect to HubSpot, or does it connect to a different system in your stack? Not everything that integrated with Salesforce needs to integrate with HubSpot. Some integrations may be better served through middleware, and some may no longer be needed at all. This is the assessment that saves firms from unnecessary complexity in their new deployment.
For financial services firms, we typically see migration timelines of three to six months from planning through go-live, depending on the complexity of the existing Salesforce org. Simpler deployments with clean data and straightforward processes can be faster. Firms with extensive Apex customization, complex multi-entity structures, or deep integration networks may require longer.
The timeline breaks down roughly as follows: the first four to six weeks are dedicated to assessment — auditing the existing Salesforce deployment, mapping data and processes, identifying what migrates and what doesn't, and designing the target HubSpot architecture. The next phase is configuration and test migration, where we set up the HubSpot environment, run sample data imports, validate field mappings, and test integrations. The final phase is the production migration, which typically happens in stages: contacts first, then deals and pipeline data, then historical records, with a final cutover on a low-traffic day.
The key is running both systems in parallel during the transition period. Your sales team continues working in Salesforce while the HubSpot environment is being configured and tested. Data synchronization keeps both systems current during the overlap period. When the HubSpot environment is validated and your team has been trained, you execute the cutover — after which Salesforce becomes read-only for reference and HubSpot becomes the system of record.
At Vantage Point, we've refined this parallel-system approach through multiple financial services migrations. The result is zero loss in productivity during the transition period and a clean start in HubSpot that reflects your current processes, not the accumulated complexity of years of Salesforce customization.
About Vantage Point: Vantage Point is a boutique consulting firm exclusively serving financial services organizations. With deep expertise across both Salesforce and HubSpot, we help firms execute strategic CRM migrations that reduce complexity, improve adoption, and position the organization for growth. Learn more at vantagepoint.io.