Integration Fundamentals of CRM Software

Integrating, blending, and sharing customer information and data across departments and employees can be of fundamental importance and significance to companies wanting to make sure the business process flows with ease. The goal of front-to-back office integration is to bring disconnected business processes, applications, and data sets together. There are great benefits to achieving this objective, but there are also many challenges to achieving success in this. These challenges are based on different departments using different applications, ERP and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions that don’t integrate, and disruptions to the business cycle. To discover these challenges in more detailed information, visit here.

If integration is achieved by connecting the disconnected processes, applications, and data sets within a business, this translates into effective management of customer relationships, lower costs, higher profits, and a sustainable, long term competitive advantage. Simply put, integration of CRM and other business facets is essential across offices. True integration is made up of three fundamentals. Let’s take a closer look at these elements of front-to-back office integration that are essential to saving costs and reducing potential errors for companies throughout Canada, including Toronto, and beyond.

Three Fundamentals of True Integration

1. Front-to-Back Office Data Consistency

Being able to share consistent data between CRM and ERP applications is essential to integration. This requires businesses to create dynamic links from entities within CRM systems to ERP systems so changes in either show up on the other system, too. Working with the same information across the board reduces or removes the need to reenter information and error potential.

2. Unified and Complete Customer View Regardless of Data Origination

Enabling employees who are the users of the CRM and other systems to view combined financial and nonfinancial customer information within a single application, regardless of where the information is being generated or stored, is so essential to true integration. This unification and complete view of customer data is useful for managers, in particular, who require access to a customer’s purchase history or for customer service representatives who need to update customers on information as it is requested. Blind spots in data are removed when employees have access to a complete view of the information.

3. Straight-through Processing

Straight-through processing enables users of data to initiate complex and multistage transactions which, in turn, automatically trigger the appropriate downstream business processes and pass seamlessly from one application to the next without the need for extensive manual intervention. This is done using workflow management and application integration. The benefit to this is the reduction or removal of the need to rekey information from one system to the next.

Sage CRM upholds these three integration fundamentals. For further information about Sage CRM, visit here. To learn more about CRM integration fundamentals, download our whitepaper “Sage ERP Front-to-Back Office Integration”. Then, stay tuned next week as we look at Sage CRM’s integration capabilities.

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With the unique combination of industry knowledge and diverse technology expertise, IWI provides cost-effective solutions to help clients gain a competitive edge.  As a Sage business partner, servicing the Greater Toronto Area, we support evaluation and implementation of operations and finance systems to optimize technology, ensuring high return on investment with a quick and painless transition to new software.