Strategic Planning Starts with an Integration

When it comes to envisioning your companies future, what do you see? It probably involves profitable business models, efficient production lines, and delighted customers. Strategic planning is meant to push companies in the direction of your vision and establish clear goals for the organization to hit. However, without transparent data about how your business is operating, it is impossible to effectively plan for the future. An ERP-CRM integration offers the data you need to make informed decisions during strategic planning. Here are a few of the ways an integration supports strategic planning.

Complete Data Visibility

Strategic planning is all about clarifying your organization’s mission and finding ways to hit specific mission-focused objectives. When reflecting on your company’s mission, one of the main questions to ask is if your current strategy is meeting that mission. This may seem easy to answer, but without data, it is hard to tell how your company is serving its customers. An integration offers total data transparency, meaning that you can easily see how you are achieving your organizational mission.

For instance, let’s say you are a custom electronics manufacturer dedicated to offering premier customer service along with your sophisticated products. To see if your customer service is up to par, you need to see CRM data for customer account information along with ERP data for their orders. How fast do you deliver your orders? How many complaints do you usually receive? Do your associates respond to inquiries in a timely fashion? With an ERP-CRM integration, you can see all this data (and more) out of one simple, easy-to-use interface. Accordingly, you can assess how well your organization is accomplishing its mission without letting bias get in the way.

Data visibility becomes even more important when you move on to developing objectives during your strategic planning. As we mentioned, your strategic planning objectives need to be specific. Saying you will “speed up turnaround time” simply doesn’t cut it: you need to establish how you are performing now using a KPI and say how that KPI will change during your set time range. An integration gives you the data to see exactly how your company is performing, identify areas for growth, and choose the right metric to assess that improvement. After seeing that your average order turnaround time, for instance, you could set a one-year goal of bringing that number down by 5%. If you want to meet your company objectives, consider an integration like Unity: Integration by Datix. Unity is a prebuilt application specifically designed to give data transparency to manufacturers. Learn more about gaining a single source of truth by operating out of one system with Unity.

Scale with Ease

One aspect of strategic planning that can quickly become complicated is scalability. If your organization is successful at achieving its goals and growing larger, then you are increasing the burden on your facilities, equipment, staff, and software. One of the often-forgotten factors of strategic planning is accounting and preparing for these “growing pains.” Fortunately, the right integration will ease this burden. With Unity, you know that your integration will scale with you because it was designed for growing organizations. We tested Unity extensively for scalability and it has already processed over 350 million records, so our team is confident it can meet whatever needs you throw at it. In addition, Unity is fully managed for you, so you can trust our experts to monitor operations and update software as your business needs expand. No matter how successful you become, you never need to worry about software holding you back. Find out what Unity can do for you.

Wrap Up

Strategic planning can be challenging, but a Unity integration offers the compete data transparency and scalability to make the process easier. Don’t wait until you fail a five-year plan to take your organization to the next level.

Read how to Save Money and Increase Profits with an ERP-CRM Integration

About Datix

With over two decades in the industry, Datix is the integration consultant of choice for manufacturers and distributors. We believe in “being the best with the best” and look for partners who match our commitment to solving real issues and doing what it takes. Our in-depth analysis of our clients and their business needs allows us to maximize their software investments to the fullest.

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