How Sterling Abroad moved from LeadSquared to Xale CRM without pausing the team

The team

Sterling Abroad is a study abroad consultancy recruiting for the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Poland, France, Malta and the rest of Europe, Georgia, Australia, Dubai and more. The work is split between two destination teams, one for the UK and countries outside Europe and one for Europe. Customer relationship executives (CREs) take the first calls, counsellors own the student, and application processors, quality checkers, regional operations, the loan team and interview trainers each have their part.

What they needed

• Their LeadSquared history in Xale, with nothing lost and nothing re-sent to students.
• No pause in the work: the team had to keep calling, counselling and applying while the data moved.
• Applications that follow the right team's checks before submission.
• Interview preparation tracked as closely as the application itself.
• A dashboard for each role instead of one screen for everybody.

Moving from LeadSquared

We exported Sterling's data from the LeadSquared API: every lead with its fields, its activity history, its notes and its university applications, each checked against LeadSquared's own record before anything moved. The plan for every lead was reviewable before it ran, and the checks after each run had to come back clean before the next one started.

In Xale, each lead landed with its owner, its stage and status and its custom fields: destination, intake, preferred course, parent's number and lead channel. Applications became deals linked to their university and course, and a missing university or course was added to the catalogue on the way. Follow-ups kept their original times. The history became part of each lead's timeline: stage, owner and source changes, calls with their recording links and application updates, with notes under their original authors and dates.

The import ran outside the automation engine, so no rule, WhatsApp message or notification fired for a lead's old history. We ran a pilot batch first and then moved one stage at a time on Sterling's go-ahead. The team kept working in Xale the whole time; leads they had already created there simply received their LeadSquared history, with their current stage and owner untouched. The migration was complete on 15 September 2026.

How the workspace runs

The pipeline follows Sterling's own process, from the first call through eligibility and a chain of verifications to submission, offer, payment, acceptance, visa and enrolment. Every application is its own deal carrying the destination, the intake and the application portal, and statuses that only make sense for one country, such as APS for Germany, appear only on that country's deals.

When an application is ready for verification, an automation sends it down its team's route: a senior check for the UK and non-Europe team, or straight to regional verification for Europe. A student's deals move together until regional verification, then each application moves on its own. Interview preparation is a track of its own, from the first assessment through nine mock rounds and a final mock to the result, so trainers work a list of their own without touching the application stages.

A dashboard for every role

Ten shared dashboard cards give interview trainers, CREs, counsellors, the application team and admins their own view, from the calls they made to the students who entered each stage that day. Each card shows the viewer their own scope, and Sterling's admins can change the cards themselves.