Case study 04
When the Data Has to Be Right: BT's Salesforce Integration Built for Scale
British Telecom (BT) is one of the UK’s largest telecommunications providers, managing thousands of B2B client proposals, quotes, and complex solution configurations every year. Their sales teams operate through the BT Business Hub - a purpose-built platform developed with Censony that handles quoting, proposals, contracts, and billing initiation across BT’s B2B product portfolio.
Overview
As BT's ambitions for standardising sales operations across product teams grew, a clear opportunity emerged: connect the Business Hub and BT's Salesforce CRM to eliminate the duplication of maintaining customer data manually in two places.
Together, Censony and BT set out to solve this - designing and building a CRM integration that keeps both systems in sync automatically, at every stage of the sales process, without adding to the workload of the people using them.
The Challenge
BT’s B2B sales teams were working across two systems that operated independently of each other. Their CRM held the authoritative record for all customer information, while the Business Hub managed the day-to-day sales workflow. Without a connection between them, the business faced a growing risk of stale data, duplicated admin, and delayed CRM updates:
Customer details had to be re-entered manually into the Business Hub, even when they already existed in the CRM - creating duplication and the risk of data being out of date.
Without an automated connection, the Business Hub and CRM could fall out of step, with no reliable way to ensure both systems reflected the same customer record at any given time.
Completed deals required manual CRM updates, a step that was easy to miss or delay, leaving sales leadership with an incomplete picture of pipeline and deal status.
Signed documents had no automatic route back to Salesforce, creating gaps in the records and adding compliance overhead.
BT also had a broader programme underway to standardise sales workflows across different product teams. Achieving that consistency was harder while the two platforms remained unconnected.
The Solution
Together with BT's internal Salesforce specialists, Censony designed and built a bi-directional integration between the BT Business Hub and BT's Salesforce CRM, operating within BT's Apigee-governed API infrastructure.
The result is a continuous, automated data connection across the full sales lifecycle, built around a clear principle: Salesforce is the authoritative source for customer data, and the Business Hub is where the sales work happens - and the two stay in step without anyone having to manage that manually.
Automated Customer Data Synchronisation
When a sales agent initiates a new quote, relevant customer information is pulled through automatically from the CRM. There is no need to re-enter data that already exists. If a customer record does not yet exist in the Business Hub, one is created automatically. At the point of converting a proposal to a formal contract, the system performs a further data check to ensure all legal and billing information is fully up to date before the contract is generated.
Users can also trigger a manual data refresh at any time, with clear on-screen status indicators showing the current synchronisation state.
Real-Time Deal and Document Updates
As a deal progresses through the sales cycle, the CRM is updated automatically. When a quote is finalised, when a discount is approved, when a contract is signed - the relevant information flows back to the CRM without anyone needing to log in and do it manually. Once both parties have signed the contract and supporting documentation, the signed files are transmitted to the CRM including deal value and product list.
Built for How Sales Actually Works
One of the key challenges during development was designing a solution that could support BT's diverse sales processes, which vary depending on product complexity, customer requirements, and supplier involvement. The integration is designed to handle this reality - tracking the state of each deal accurately and triggering the right updates at the right moment, regardless of how the process evolves.
If a synchronisation step fails for any reason, the system surfaces a clear message and allows the team to retry with a single action, ensuring nothing is lost and the records remain consistent across both systems.
Controlled Product Management
Censony introduced a dedicated, access-controlled area within the Business Hub where authorised team members can manage the product information used in CRM synchronisation. Changes take effect immediately across all subsequent updates.
Our Approach
Censony worked closely with BT's product and sales teams from the outset to define exactly how data should flow between the two systems - which customer information needed to be retrieved, at which point in the sales process, and what deal and document data needed to be returned to Salesforce on completion. Working within the API infrastructure established by Salesforce and governed securely through BT's Apigee layer, Censony designed and implemented the full data mapping, then validated it thoroughly across beta and production environments before go-live.
It also became clear mid-project that the original brief didn't capture the full picture of BT's sales process. As new requirements emerged, we incorporated them without disrupting delivery - a flexibility that made the final integration a more complete and reliable solution.
Post-launch, Censony continues to provide ongoing support and iterative development as BT's product portfolio and sales processes evolve.
Results
The integration removed a significant layer of manual work from BT’s sales process, with benefits felt across the sales team, product management, and compliance:
• Less Manual Administration
Sales specialists spend less time on administration and more time with customers. Data entry that previously happened at multiple points in the sales cycle is now handled automatically.
• More Accurate Proposals and Contracts
Proposals and contracts are built on accurate, up-to-date information, reducing the risk of errors reaching formal documentation and the commercial and compliance issues that follow.
• Improved Pipeline Visibility
Deal outcomes are recorded in the CRM automatically, giving sales leadership an up-to-date view of pipeline without depending on manual updates.
• Consistent Records Across Systems
A consistent record is maintained across both systems without additional effort, supporting BT’s compliance and reporting requirements.
• More Standardised Sales Operations
BT’s programme to standardise sales operations across product teams became more achievable - with both systems aligned, the same process and the same data applies regardless of which team or product is involved.
Conclusion
This project demonstrates how the right integration work can remove friction from complex, high-volume operations without disrupting the people who rely on them. Censony did not simply connect two systems - we built a data pipeline that reflects BT’s business logic, adapts to how their sales process runs, and gives their teams the reliability they need to operate at scale.
For businesses managing large volumes of proposals and contracts across multiple platforms, keeping systems in sync is not a technical detail. It is the foundation of a consistent, auditable, and scalable sales operation.
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