Stop the Cycle of Losing Customers

Without data transparency, you won’t be able to hold onto your customers. Slow quoting and inconsistent engagement will keep prospective customers away, while existing buyers will become fed up with inaccurate orders, broken promises on deadlines, and opaque communication.

It’s hard to admit when things are going wrong, and it’s easy to blame external circumstances. Supply chain issues, volatile market conditions, and high raw materials costs are hurting a lot of businesses, but the companies suffering the most are the ones who can’t see their data. Without total data visibility, it is impossible to respond to external issues and resolve the internal inefficiencies crippling your business.

Do you want to stop the cycle of losing customers? Here’s how to do it.

The Cycle

The cycle of losing customers often happens from all sides. When data is inaccessible, it is impossible to market to the right people, or put prospective customers into a proper sales funnel so you engage with them regularly. Sales struggles to come up with the right pricing numbers to use to quote customers because teams don’t communicate well across departments. It’s also hard for production to quote while factoring in current pricing data like raw materials and labor costs.

Existing customers grow discouraged because it feels like their needs are continuously not being met. Without transparent data, orders are inaccurate, there are inventory shortages, workers aren’t assigned priority work at the right times, equipment doesn’t work at optimal levels, and a hundred other factors contribute to your company being unable to deliver on orders on time. If you do deliver orders on time, it’s only because you paid a premium for expedited shipping and had workers doing overtime.

With this cycle in place, your business won’t be able to sustain itself. It is discouraging for customers to feel overlooked and for teams to feel like they are breaking promises to the people who depend upon them.

Trying to Find a Solution on Your Own

Naturally, most organizations do respond when they see the warning signs at their business, but they often try to do it alone. Particularly when firms are losing out on potential deals, they turn to a sales or marketing tool like Salesforce, Dynamics, or HubSpot. Even though these applications offer tools for engaging with customers, data is siloed to that software and remains disconnected from your ERP. Even when you manually transfer data from one system to another, data usually ends up being “stale” and out of date when your teams really need it. This outdated data causes confusion and more unnecessary errors.

How an ERP Integration Stops the Cycle

A CRM ERP integration can stop the cycle of losing customers because of inaccessible data. A software integration can create a single source of truth for companies by allowing you to operate out of one system. Your teams will still utilize the platform they are comfortable with, but they can now see the data entered into all of your software at the same time. For instance, Sales can still work out of a CRM while being able to see ERP data like your on-time shipment rate, which they can use to impress prospective customers.  

However, not all software integration solutions are created equal. Many systems do not follow best practices for enterprise integration, which causes lag and scalability issues down the line. Integration software is only successful when it is fast and easy to use. To stop the cycle of losing customers, you need a reliable application like Unity: Integration by Datix.

Examples of How an Integration Transforms Organizations

With Unity, you can set up your operations so that all of your teams are running at optimal efficiency. When Sales gets an order, your production line will be alerted immediately so they can incorporate it into their schedule. You also receive alerts or can set up automatic reorders for when inventory items are running low, so you don’t need to deal with forced delays.

Feedback from customer service is visible by quality and engineering teams so that you can quickly assess potential product issues and adjust for them moving forward. Based on customer order history from your ERP, Sales can also adjust how they upsell and cross sell to existing customers to offer them the products and services they need. Equally importantly, this level of attention to detail demonstrates that you care for and understand your customers, which is critical to maintaining long term partnerships with them. Learn how to operate out of one system with Unity.

How to Make an Integration Easy

An ERP integration like Unity allows you to connect your ERP with other software so your teams can continue to work from their preferred platform. In addition, our teams can add customizations to your software interfaces to make it even simpler to see critical data within moments. For instance, you can add a chart or table of things like KPI data or equipment maintenance metrics.

The best and easiest integration is one that you don’t need to worry about. We designed Unity so that it would be scalable, so you never need to stress about your application breaking down from too much data. After all, Unity has already processed over 350 million records. In addition, Unity is fully managed for you, so our Unity Support Team takes care of all the behind-the-scenes daily monitoring and updating. Instead of having to spend time taking care of your integration, you can spend time taking care of your customers. Find out what it means to have Unity at your organization.

Wrap Up

It can be scary when you realize that you are losing customers, but you don’t need to stay trapped in that cycle. With a Unity integration from Datix, you can take control of your business by gaining complete data transparency and operating out of one system.

Read More on How to Strengthen Customer Relationships