Lagan Aviation & Infrastructure delivers civil engineering, aviation infrastructure, construction, and defense projects across the UK and EMEA. Each of its four business units ran separate Excel spreadsheets, so leadership had no real-time view of a portfolio worth £91.3M. INSIDEA rebuilt the entire forecasting operation natively in HubSpot in 83 days.
The challenge
Lagan manages a high-value project portfolio across four specialist business units. Before this engagement, every unit ran its own disconnected Excel spreadsheets. Leadership had no real-time view of the portfolio, no standardized stage structures, and no structured link between clients, contacts, and projects.
The cost was measurable: 3 to 5 hours per board cycle assembling reports manually, roughly 36 to 60 director-hours a year, with no cross-unit performance view and no foundation for multi-year planning.
The challenge was not simply technical. Lagan wanted one purpose-built CRM that matched how they already worked, not a system they would need to adapt to.
The solution
INSIDEA's strategy was depth over breadth: one hub, configured precisely to Lagan's operational reality. Three principles drove the build.
1. Object renaming for operational language
Companies became Clients. Deals became Project Opportunities. The platform read like their world from the first login.
2. Excel forecasting logic rebuilt natively
Lagan's trusted multi-year quarterly model was replicated inside HubSpot using 20 custom quarterly properties spanning Q1 to Q4 across five financial years (Y-25/26 through Y-29/30). Calculated properties automatically roll quarterly values into annual totals and overall project totals in real time, without any parallel spreadsheets.
3. A custom Breeze AI assistant for executive reporting
INSIDEA configured a Lagan Executive Pipeline AI Assistant using HubSpot Breeze, structured specifically around the four business units. Leadership now generates board-level summaries from live CRM data in under 30 seconds using natural-language prompts: total pipeline value, secured versus future work, regional performance, multi-year forecast outlooks, stalled opportunities, and delivery risk.
The full build, delivered across four phases (Discovery, Design and build, Migration, Enablement), included:
- Four dedicated pipelines, each with its own stage structure and regional segmentation
- Five executive dashboards for board and per-unit reporting
- A client-to-project association architecture for portfolio-level visibility
- A pipeline upgrade coordinated with HubSpot support to enable multi-pipeline architecture on Sales Hub Professional
The results
In 83 days, 232+ project opportunities and £91.3M of pipeline value moved from four disconnected spreadsheets into a single live HubSpot environment, taking opportunity centralization from 0% to 100%. For a project-led business, the pipeline is the business.
Four dedicated pipelines mean operational reality and commercial oversight now live in the same place for the first time. Always-current dashboards replaced manual assembly: directors are no longer reviewing history, they are reviewing the present.
The Breeze Executive Pipeline AI Assistant, delivered as part of the standard rollout, cut board reporting preparation from 3 to 5 hours to a 30-second query, a 98%+ reduction that frees an estimated 48 to 80 director-hours a year.
The adoption outcome is the clearest validation. Directors who began as Excel-only users adopted HubSpot immediately, with no parallel spreadsheet use observed after launch.
Before and after, side by side
| Dimension | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Total pipeline visibility | Fragmented across 4 spreadsheets | £91.3M visible in one system |
| Project opportunities tracked | Fragmented across 4 spreadsheets | 232+ live in HubSpot |
| Operational pipelines | 0 unified | 4 dedicated business-unit pipelines |
| Executive dashboards | Manually assembled before every board meeting | 5 live dashboards, always current |
| Forecasting model | Disconnected Excel workbooks | Native HubSpot across 5 financial years with automated rollups |
| Board reporting prep time | 3 to 5 hours per cycle | Under 30 seconds via Breeze AI assistant |
| Client-to-project visibility | None structured | Association architecture across the full portfolio |
The impact
INSIDEA understood that we were not looking for a traditional sales CRM. The implementation focused on operational forecasting, project visibility, and long-term infrastructure planning while keeping the platform simple and practical for leadership teams to use.
Lagan Aviation & Infrastructure leadership
Short-term impact: the first 90 days
From day one, HubSpot replaced spreadsheets as the primary forecasting tool across all four business units. Director training and train-the-trainer sessions meant adoption needed no phased ramp. Two verified five-star reviews followed in May 2026: one on the HubSpot Solutions Directory and one on G2.
Long-term impact: a foundation built to scale
Lagan now has a CRM foundation that grows with them. The four-pipeline architecture supports new business-unit expansion without rearchitecture, and directors who once opened Excel to run a board meeting now open HubSpot.
The next wave is already scoped: AI-generated board summaries, stage-triggered task automation, predictive workload forecasting, mobile rollout with SSO integration, and scheduled executive reporting digests.
Verified client reviews from this engagement
HubSpot Solutions Directory | 5 Stars | May 8, 2026
G2 | 5 of 5 | May 2026 | Verified User in Construction (Mid-Market)
How AI contributed to the outcome
AI was embedded in delivery and outcome. HubSpot Breeze powers the Executive Pipeline Assistant, and Breeze Record Summaries gave directors instant project-level intelligence from day one.
On the delivery side, Claude and ChatGPT accelerated schema design, pipeline configuration, and dashboard build, recovering approximately 5 hours with no rework.
How INSIDEA works
