Your organisation has already made a smart decision. By implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you have established a powerful foundation for your finance and operations. But the next decision is just as critical: which Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform will you connect it to?
On the surface, choosing Dynamics 365 for your CRM seems like the logical next step. It lives within the same Microsoft ecosystem, promising a native fit. However, the most logical path is not always the most strategic one for growth.
An increasing number of businesses are opting for a "best-of-breed" approach, pairing Business Central with HubSpot's world-class CRM platform. The question is, why? The answer lies in prioritising user experience, marketing power, and front office excellence, all while ensuring your back office and front office are perfectly synchronised.
This post explores the two choices, helping you decide which path best aligns with your company's ambition.
The Two Philosophies: Single Vendor vs. Best-of-Breed
Your decision starts with strategy. Do you prefer to source all your core software from a single vendor, or do you want to select the best possible tool for each specific business function?
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Single Vendor Ecosystem (Dynamics 365): This approach prioritises keeping everything under one roof. The perceived benefit is streamlined procurement and support from a single provider.
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Best-of-Breed (HubSpot): This strategy focuses on equipping each department with the most powerful and user-friendly tools on the market. You choose the best software for marketing and sales (HubSpot) and the best for finance and operations (Business Central), then connect them seamlessly.
For companies focused on customer experience and growth, the best-of-breed approach often wins. The key to its success is the quality of the integration that bridges the two systems.
User Experience and Team Adoption
A CRM is only effective if your team uses it. This is where HubSpot truly shines.
HubSpot is renowned for its clean, intuitive interface. It is designed for marketers and salespeople, not just IT specialists. This simplicity leads to significantly higher user adoption rates. When your team enjoys using their CRM, they input data consistently, leading to more reliable reporting, accurate forecasting, and a single source of truth you can actually trust.
While Dynamics 365 is a capable platform, its complexity can sometimes be a barrier. It may require more extensive training and technical configuration, which can lead to lower day-to-day engagement from your go-to-market teams.
Marketing and Sales Power
If your growth strategy relies on exceptional inbound marketing, powerful sales enablement, and a seamless customer journey, HubSpot has a distinct advantage.
It was built from the ground up as an all-in-one platform for attracting, engaging, and delighting customers. Its marketing automation, content management, SEO tools, and sales pipeline management are not just features; they are a deeply integrated system designed to work in harmony.
Dynamics 365 offers robust sales functionality, but its marketing capabilities are often housed in a separate application. For organisations that want a single, unified engine for their entire front office, HubSpot provides a more cohesive and powerful solution.
A Simple Comparison: HubSpot vs Dynamics
Success Story: How Seamless Integration Drives Efficiency
Choosing a best-of-breed approach is not just a theoretical advantage. We saw this firsthand with a global leader in fire detection solutions.
The Challenge:
The company operated with a fragmented tech stack. Their front office, running on HubSpot, was disconnected from their back office in Business Central. This created data silos, causing operational inefficiencies, hindering real-time data insights, and impacting everything from decision making to customer engagement. They needed a reliable bridge between their two most critical systems.
The Solution:
The company chose strutoIX to create that bridge. Over two months, our integration specialists deployed strutoIX as the middleware to facilitate a seamless, two-way data flow. The project focused on synchronising customer, order, and product data between HubSpot and Business Central, creating a single, unified view of the customer journey.
The Results:
The transformation was immediate. With data synchronised automatically, the company eliminated countless hours of manual data entry and reconciliation. Their teams now operate with heightened efficiency and can access consistent data across departments, from sales and marketing to finance and operations. This has not only enhanced internal processes but has also positively impacted their customer interactions, enabling a faster, more informed service.
As our Product Owner, Marc Howell, noted: 
"Implementing strutoIX for the integration between Business Central and HubSpot has been a game changer. The seamless data flow we’ve achieved enables their team to operate with improved efficiency and responsiveness, directly impacting their ability to provide superior service to their clients."
This success story highlights a crucial point: the power of a best-of-breed strategy is unlocked by the quality of the integration.
strutoIX: The Bridge Between Best of Breed Systems
Choosing HubSpot does not mean sacrificing a connection to your financial core. Our strutoIX connector for Business Central and HubSpot is designed to give you the best of both worlds. It ensures that customer data, sales orders, product information, and invoices flow automatically and accurately between the two platforms. This synchronisation empowers your teams with:
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A True 360-Degree Customer View:
Sales and marketing teams in HubSpot can see financial data from Business Central, like payment status and credit limits.
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Streamlined Quote to Cash:
Convert HubSpot deals into Business Central sales orders with a single click, eliminating manual processes and errors.
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Accurate Data You Can Trust
Eliminate duplicates and discrepancies, ensuring your reporting and forecasting are based on reliable information.
The Verdict: Which CRM is Right for You?
If your priority is consolidating your technology under the Microsoft banner and your teams are already deeply embedded in that ecosystem, Dynamics 365 is a solid choice.
However, if your strategic priority is growth, driven by a world-class marketing engine and a sales team empowered by a CRM they love to use, HubSpot is the clear winner. It allows you to equip your front office with the best tools on the market.
With a robust integration solution like strutoIX, you no longer have to compromise. You can pair the operational power of Business Central with the customer facing excellence of HubSpot, creating a cohesive and powerful infrastructure that sets the stage for future success.
Ready to get the best of both worlds? Book a consultation with one of our integration specialists to learn how strutoIX can seamlessly connect your HubSpot CRM and Business Central ERP.
Business Central Webinar:
Join our upcoming webinar to discover how integrating Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with HubSpot can banish data silos and manual processes for good.
Join Sean & Ryan from Struto on 22 July 2025 at 11:00am GMT as they take a deep dive into “Streamline Data & Processes: Business Central to HubSpot Integration Webinar".
