Indigenous Pact is a B Corporation founded almost four years ago with a mission to create health equity for American Indians and Alaska Natives in one generation.
The organization works on the federal and state level within the United States to influence policy, uphold treaty responsibilities, and provide America’s Indigenous population and their governments access to the health benefits they need and those they were guaranteed.
This crucial work requires the collaboration of policy experts and tribal relations leaders. These two groups have very different roles in the process, and use different tools to manage their work. But they absolutely need to stay in sync every step of the way.
Read on to discover how Unito empowers Indigenous Pact’s two very different teams to easily collaborate from within their own tools.
The challenge
Complex collaboration
The work of Indigenous Pact happens on two separate levels:
- First, there’s the complex knowledge-based work done by experts in law and policy. They look at each case on a technical level to see what approach should be taken and what documents are required.
- Then there’s the more human-focused, tribal relations side of the work. Each client has a single point of contact on the team who takes information from all of the experts and breaks it down so it can be easily acted upon.
These two groups of people need to work closely together to boil down all of the complex documentation into a brief that is shared with the client. However, because these teams — and their workflows — were so different, collaboration between them was challenging, especially when it came to bridging the gap between different tools.
Senior Vice-President of Health Care Development and Tribal Relations Joni Buffalohead explains:
“All of the subject matter experts live and work out of Asana. On the other hand, we’re doing a lot of communication with our clients in HubSpot, both through email marketing and the different opportunities we have working within these communities. Yet there was no way to sync these tools.”
A major tool gap
Managing the projects in HubSpot wasn’t an option, as all of the documentation required for handling a case would create clutter and confusion. But communicating with clients from Asana didn’t really make sense. So teams were forced to step outside of their work tools and use phone calls or Microsoft Teams messages whenever they needed to collaborate or get updates.
“The truth is it is difficult keeping things in sync between projects,” Buffalohead explains. “You’d have a portion of information in one place, another portion of information in another place. Information would be difficult to find, it wouldn’t be updated, it wouldn’t be in sync. Our team experienced a lot of friction.”
Indigenous Pact needed to break down the virtual silos between their tools in order to ease collaboration between their teams.
The solution
Collecting and streamlining work
Indigenous Pact implemented Unito to integrate HubSpot and Asana so everyone could work fully from their preferred tool. They synced Asana and HubSpot tasks, allowing information to flow between the two tools in real-time. This meant that the policy experts could share relevant information without ever leaving Asana. On their end, the client relations team could track the policy team’s progress in real-time from within HubSpot, and keep clients updated.
“What Unito does is it actually links at a task level all of this work that’s going on in Asana, and then rolls it all up into the single opportunity within HubSpot, moving things forward seamlessly,” Buffalohead says.
Using deep integrations
Joni was really impressed with the depth of Unito’s integrations.
“I’ve tried Zapier, IFTTT, and a lot of other tools that seem geared towards B2C not B2B, and handle very simple automations,” she explains. “It strikes me that what Unito does that is so drastically different; you focus on fewer tools but much deeper integrations.”
“The level of integration that we can get — between syncing columns, tagging, and other customizations — is second to none,” Buffalohead adds.
The results
Better collaboration
After setting up Unito, Buffalohead immediately noticed a change in how her technical and growth teams collaborated. Her teams are more aligned and they’re getting work done faster.
“I know that people are working more smoothly together,” she says. “When I first implemented it and people could see it updating in real-time, they were blown away. One of the people on my team was like, ‘This is how all these tools should work!’ They were excited about it.”
No more tool silos
Indigenous Pact was able to break down the barriers created by these tools, and simplify the collaborative process required to deliver their work to clients in need.
“It really allows for this really seamless workflow in a business to business context,” Buffalohead says. “It has fundamentally changed the way our growth team interacts with our subject matter experts.”
A huge thank you to Joni Buffalohead and Indigenous Pact for sharing their story with us. We’re proud to help them accomplish their important work.
Unito’s internal estimates of Indigenous Pact’s usage (a combination of items in sync and users working with Unito workflows) calculates approximately 7+ hours and $700 USD saved per week in time that would otherwise be spent on manual data tasks.
Wanna see how it’s done?
Follow our guide to integrate HubSpot and Asana with Unito.
Or check out Unito’s pricing plans to see which might be the best for you (there’s also a two-week free trial!)
About Indigenous Pact
Indigenous Pact is a B Corporation that works to influence policy and uphold treaty responsibilities for the United States' Indigenous populations.
