JULY/AUGUST 2011 Article

The Importance of Integrated CRM

Most of us have a collection of yearbooks gathering dust on a shelf. Yearbooks reflect a snapshot in time, recording what happened and who was there to play a part. Today, if you want to know what's new with that goofy kid from your freshman biology class or the captain of the football team, it's likely you will turn to the web–to a social media site, specifically–to get an update. A company's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system should be able to provide equally current data. Businesses look to CRM to answer the most important NOW questions including: Who's in the sales pipeline? What things interest my best prospects? What do our customers think of our products or services?

To access timely, relevant customer information, businesses should integrate CRM to other systems that impact the customer experience, including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, marketing automation tools, Business Intelligence (BI) and social media applications such as Twitter, facebook, or LinkedIn. When CRM and ERP systems are integrated, sales order and customer information can be passed seamlessly between the front and back office, leading to significant productivity and accuracy enhancements. Companies that take advantage of this synergy can enjoy:

• A clear, complete view of each customer, including account information, marketing communications, order history, payment status or holds, discount authorizations, shipping preferences, and more.
• More efficient order processing as orders entered into CRM generate orders in ERP.
• Real time access to inventory and pricing for front-office sales and customer service reps.
• Improved accuracy with a single point of data entry that reduces mistakes and costly returns.
• The knowledge about customer purchasing behavior to design better marketing campaigns.
• A better customer experience to encourage repeat business.

CRM can integrate with marketing automation tools to create–and then track results of–effective, multi-touch marketing campaigns. Organizations that rely on CRM systems that are not integrated with social media sites miss opportunities to engage with customers and prospects. Social media is not a trend anymore; it is an integral part of how we interact and communicate on a personal and a professional level. Consider these recent statistics:

• In a 10 month period ending in March 2011, membership on LinkedIn grew from 70 Million to 100 million, which includes over 1 million company pages.
• The number of tweets posted on daily on Twitter has tripled in the past year, to reach over 1 billion weekly tweets in March 2011.

When you integrate your CRM with social media tools, you can learn:

• Which topics are important to current and prospective customers?
• Who your customers are talking to?
• What your customers are sharing about experiences that matter to them?

Integrated CRMs also provide an organization with the ability to connect and communicate with customers in the place and time that the customer has chosen. This means allowing the customer access to a portal that is integrated with the CRM and hosts data of importance to customers, such as order status and history. To be of real value, the portal must support mobile devices, such as smartphones, because Gartner estimates that 85% of handsets in use in 2011 will have web access.

Moreover, integrated CRMs should include marketing automation functionality, which can allow for more timely communication about next generation products and also help marketing departments better track their use of limited resources by tracking campaign results from lead to close.

SageCRM offers powerful, pre-built integration to many popular ERP and accounting applications, including Sage ERP MAS and Sage ERP Accpac, among others. SageCRM also integrates with the popular social media tools LinkedIn and Twitter. Users can identity possible connections, attract new partnerships and potential customers, and discover a wealth of information on existing prospects and clients. SageCRM users are also able to post or reply to tweets, allowing them to effectively engage and connect with prospects and customers using the influential Twitter network.

In our personal lives and our business networks, social media has expanded our ability to connect and stay in touch with customers, business partners, friends, and family, enriching relationships at a time when it has become a challenge to stay close. Imagine the opportunities integrated CRM tools can open for your business!

Want to learn more about integrated CRM?
Download the white paper, "Four Ways Integrated CRM-ERP Solutions Improve Productivity".

 

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