AXL Electric Vehicles (AXL) was preparing to launch its first electric vehicle in the Middle East market and needed a modern ecommerce platform that could talk to its existing CRM/ERP system without duplicating work or data. ASCENDING built a secure, two-way integration between AXL's new AWS-based ecommerce applications and its HubSpot CRM/ERP, giving the company a single, reliable view of customers, reservations, and orders as it prepared to expand into Europe and the Americas.
Background
AXL is a Canadian automotive company building affordable luxury electric vehicles, and it partnered with ASCENDING as it prepared to bring its first vehicle to market. The company needed a robust, modern ecommerce system to store, manage, and integrate customer data with its manufacturing line and CRM/ERP platform, since that system would directly drive the order and delivery process for its launch.
AXL had already built out its CRM/ERP operations on HubSpot, using it to track customer data, reservations, manufacturing status, and marketing campaigns across channels. As the company began standing up its customer-facing infrastructure on AWS, it needed those two environments to work together from day one rather than as an afterthought.
The Challenge
AXL needed an ecommerce system that could serve both external customers and internal stakeholders at once: a stylish public storefront for browsing vehicles, making reservations, and managing orders, paired with a reliable connection back into the HubSpot platform the internal team already relied on.
- Deliver a public-facing ecommerce portal on AWS in time for a first-vehicle launch in the Middle East.
- Connect that new AWS environment to an existing, actively used HubSpot CRM/ERP without disrupting current operations.
- Avoid duplicating CRM, reservation, and marketing functionality that already existed on HubSpot.
- Establish a two-way data bridge, rather than a one-directional sync, so updates on either platform stayed accurate.
- Build the integration to scale as AXL expanded into European and American markets later the same year.
Why ASCENDING
AXL selected ASCENDING for its track record integrating disparate systems and its data engineering expertise. As an Advanced AWS Partner, ASCENDING had the technical depth to connect AWS services directly to the HubSpot CRM API, and its experience designing lightweight, scalable data warehousing solutions matched AXL's need for a cost-efficient system built to grow with the business.
That combination of AWS specialization and a proven integration track record made ASCENDING the trusted consulting partner to help AXL move from a single-market launch plan to a multi-region growth strategy without re-architecting its systems along the way.
The Solution
ASCENDING designed an integration layer that let AXL's new ecommerce applications on AWS and its existing HubSpot CRM/ERP operate as one connected system, using AWS API Gateway, Lambda, and Cognito alongside the HubSpot CRM API to keep data flowing accurately in both directions.
- Customer requests from the ecommerce portal pass through API Gateway to an authorizer Lambda function, which verifies the user with Amazon Cognito before any request can create or update records.
- Upstream and downstream sync Lambda functions move data between AWS and the HubSpot CRM API, with Cognito's IAM controls ensuring only authenticated requests can write to the HubSpot data store.
- On the HubSpot side, webhook-driven event triggers detect data changes and automatically sync them back to AXL's data warehouse on AWS, keeping both systems current without manual reconciliation.
- With data flowing reliably in both directions, AXL's marketing campaigns, analytical reporting, and ERP management on HubSpot stay connected to the same order and customer data used on the ecommerce side.
The Outcome
The integration gave AXL a single connected ecosystem instead of two separate systems that needed to be manually reconciled, letting the company launch its ecommerce platform without disrupting the HubSpot workflows its team already depended on.
- A secure, authenticated two-way channel keeps customer, reservation, and marketing data synchronized between AWS and HubSpot.
- Automatic event-driven syncing replaced manual data entry, reducing the ongoing cost and risk of keeping both systems aligned.
- AXL retained full use of HubSpot's marketing, dashboarding, and ERP capabilities while gaining the scalability and flexibility of AWS.
- The architecture was built to support AXL's planned expansion into European and American markets without requiring a redesign.
