When HubSpot meets middleware: reinventing leasing automation
DTC is a leasing company that enables customers to apply for car financing. Applications for financing requests are submitted through multiple channels, including DTC’s own website, dealership websites, and directly by dealers. However, their existing system for handling these financing requests was outdated, offered little automation, and was difficult for staff to use.
As the number of incoming requests grew, employees spent excessive time manually processing financing requests and communicating with financial institutions.
Our challenge was to redesign this process and build a scalable, user-friendly system that can automate the financing requests and improve both employee efficiency and customer experience.
Our project goals
We defined three clear goals for the project:
- Automate financing workflows: enable end-to-end processing of fully completed financing requests that meet the financier’s requirements, without manual intervention.
- Empower employees: provide clear, user-friendly tools that simplify complex tasks and significantly reduce processing time.
- Enhance the customer experience: deliver faster, more transparent, and personalized communication throughout the leasing process.
From concept to solution
Automating financing requests required a fully custom setup. HubSpot does not offer a standard integration for these processes, and when we started, features like webhooks and custom code actions had only just become available. While this made customization possible, we quickly ran into technical limitations, such as timeouts on long-running scripts and API rate limits of 150 calls per 10 seconds.
To achieve our project goals, we combined the capabilities of HubSpot with a custom-built middleware. This hybrid approach paired HubSpot’s ease of use with the flexibility of custom code. It allowed us to take full advantage of HubSpot’s native features, such as emails, workflows, HubDB, and tasks, while extending the platform with business logic and integrations that would otherwise be impossible within HubSpot alone.
The middleware, developed in NestJS and hosted on Heroku, communicates with HubSpot through webhooks and API calls. It applies business rules, retrieves interest rates from financial institutions, and automatically submits financing proposals. To overcome HubSpot’s API rate limits and long-running requests, we implemented Redis (Upstash) caching and queuing for a smoother, more reliable performance.
We also used HubSpot UI Extensions. Within each deal record, we embedded a dynamic table displaying all financing proposals across banks, allowing users to trigger a bank request directly from HubSpot with a single click.
Finally, we embedded our NextJS front-end components, hosted on Vercel, directly within HubSpot via iframes. These interfaces handle complex calculations and display results instantly, giving DTC’s team a fast and intuitive experience directly within HubSpot.
HubSpot gives us a central, clear view of our customers, enabling faster and more consistent work. Automations and clear status flows reduce manual effort, minimize errors, and ensure you only handle cases when manual action is required. Overall, an excellent product with strong growth potential.
Arrow David Postma - Financieel adviseur at DTC-Lease
