Discovery
Client Overview
Pemba Capital, a leading Australian Private Equity firm, specialises in investing in businesses across five key sectors.
Key Business Areas
- Business Services
- Non-bank Financial Services
- Technology
- Healthcare
- Education
Strategy
Strategic Imperative
Strategic Approach
Pemba maintains an extensive origination master list of potential investment companies spanning over 25 years, which serves as the backbone of their tailored outreach efforts. These efforts include email sequences, in person event invitations, and newsletters designed to engage founders, CEOs and shareholders.
Legacy Systems
Pemba relied on Affinity as their core CRM, Mailchimp for email marketing, and AddEvent for event management. However, as their operations expanded, these disconnected tools struggled to support their growing needs.
The Problem
Core Challenges
Pemba faced a number of challenges that impeded their outbound investment process, creating operational bottlenecks as they aimed to scale.
Fragmented Systems
Affinity CRM was poorly structured, often functioning as a list of companies and contacts. Separate platforms for email, marketing, and sales operated independently.
Limited Reporting
Disconnected systems restricted reporting capabilities, offering reduced visibility into marketing and sales performance and hindering strategic decision-making.
Email Targeting
Unorganised data, when imported into Mailchimp, led to emails being sent to unsubscribed or bounced contacts, harming domain authority.
Manual Processes
Most tasks lacked automation, allowing deadlines to slip and opportunities to be missed due to delayed responses and inefficient workflows.
Website Tracking
The absence of a visitor tracking on their website prevented proper monitoring of analytics for ads and email targeting, limiting marketing effectiveness.
Access Controls
Consequence
Impact
The operational inefficiencies had an impact on Pemba's ability to execute their sourcing and origination processes effectively.
Resource Drain
Manual outreach and event management consumed time better spent on relationship-building and deal analysis, reducing the team's capacity for high-value activities.
Missed Opportunities
A disjointed pipeline and lack of automation risked overlooking viable investment targets or failing to nurture leads effectively, potentially costing the firm valuable deals.
Marketing Inefficiency
Separate tools obscured campaign performance, hampering optimisation efforts and reducing the effectiveness of outreach initiatives.
Decision Making Gaps
Limited visibility into sales and deal progress left leadership without key data for strategic decisions, creating blind spots in their investment approach.
Operations
Centralising Operations with HubSpot
Pemba partnered with HubSpot and ScaleStation to consolidate their CRM, sales, and marketing operations into a unified customer platform.
Unified Deal Pipeline
A custom pipeline was designed in HubSpot with stages tailored to Pemba's investment-focused, low-volume, high-value model.
- Custom stages like 'Initial Discovery' to 'Due Diligence'
- Automation created deals upon outreach responses
- Minimized manual work for the investment team
Outbound Automation
HubSpot's sales sequences automated tailored email outreach, with templates customised by sector and region.
- Sector-specific email templates
- Region-targeted outreach sequences
- Automated follow ups and LinkedIn introductions
Centralised Marketing
Email marketing migrated from Mailchimp to HubSpot, consolidating contacts and campaigns with social media integration.
- Consolidated under 5,000 contacts
- LinkedIn and Facebook integration
- Event management with automated reminders
Improved Segmentation
HubSpot's reporting tracked outreach activity per team member and campaign performance with improved filtering options.
- Filters by sector, subsector, and deal owner
- Automated lists based on region and industry
- Real-time company views with simple yes/no toggles
%201.svg)
Data Migration & Hygiene
All company and contact data migrated from Affinity to HubSpot via a coded API, preserving object relationships and activity logs.
- Migrated 8,000 contacts
- Preserved email, call, and activity logs
- Maintained bounce and unsubscribe data
.svg)
Custom Team Permissions
A hierarchy driven permission structure was implemented, offering enterprise-level control while maintaining accessibility.
- Key data restricted to key personnel
- Essential data accessible to broader team
- Enterprise level control
%201.svg){kind=tracking}
Website Tracking
A tracking code was added to Pemba's website, enabling analytics for ads, email targeting, and visitor behavior.
- Enhanced ad targeting capabilities
- Email campaign performance tracking
- Visitor behavior analysis
Custom Views
Views were tailored for stakeholders based on list enrollment, region, and other criteria, simplifying access to relevant companies and deals.
- Stakeholder-specific dashboards
- Region and sector-based filters
- Simplified navigation to relevant data
Insights
Outcomes
Pemba Capital aligned its teams by consolidating fragmented processes into HubSpot, creating a single, visible pipeline for deal activity. With manual reporting removed and true visibility into performance, the origination team improved efficiency, reduced admin effort, and focused more time on high value investment opportunities.
Before
-
Fragmented sales pipelines
-
Limited visibility of performance
-
Manual processes and inefficiencies
-
No unified reporting source
-
Low confidence in data
After
-
Consolidated sales pipeline
-
Reporting on key commercial KPIs
-
Better decision making with reliable data
-
Organised and effective revenue operation
-
Streamlined campaign and nurturing flows
Insights
Lessons and Insights
The transformation highlighted the importance of aligning people, process, and technology around a single operating model. By standardising how origination activity was captured and reported, Pemba Capital removed ambiguity and improved trust in the data. Clear visibility and consistent workflows enabled faster collaboration, reduced manual effort, and created a shared understanding of performance across the origination function.
Enablement
Future Outlook
With a unified platform in place, Pemba Capital is well positioned to continue scaling its operations without adding complexity. The foundations established in HubSpot enable ongoing optimisation and greater efficiency as deal volume grows.
Looking ahead, the focus will be on extending these capabilities to support deeper insights, automation, and continuous improvement across the broader investment lifecycle.
“Worked with them on our company migration into Hubspot, assisted with data migration, workflows, best practices and training sessions on the platform. Easy to work with, accessible to communicate with, and transparent. Recommended for these type of projects.”
Related Case Studies
.png?width=150&height=46&name=gym-and-fitness%20(1).png){kind=small}
.png?width=150&height=42&name=Mindflight-Logo-White%20(1).png){kind=logo}
"It has been a pleasure working with ScaleStation. They stepped in and worked seamlessly to provide solutions for anything unexpected that came up"
Ready to scale?
Let's talk about your business, your goals, and growth challenges. Our team at ScaleStation is will to help you achieve success. Fill out the form below to get started.