The Many Benefits of CRM Integration
With the rising popularity of best of breed software suites, a widening field of vendor options and functionality along with the advent of of the Internet of Things connecting them all, it’s not unusual for a modern company to running a veritable laundry list of enterprise software options at once. Whether companies utilize CRM, ERP, marketing and email automation, point of sale software or any other of the innumerable options out on the market, they often underestimate the huge benefits they can reap from integrating all of their systems. Too often, our consultants here at Datix encounter businesses and departments running multiple different types of software without ever having them all communicate. This kind of software model only further encourages silos within a business, data errors and time-wasting double entries.
The benefits of CRM integration are multivariate, and extend far beyond just your company’s core enterprise software system. When your software is more tightly interconnected, you will find that the entire business will follow suit; from departments right down to individual employees. Your CRM will not just operate as a tool for your customer-facing team, it will also become valuable to your entire organization. Conversely, your sales people will also benefit from data coming from your marketing department, warehouse and production teams.
In the end, CRM integration will act swiftly to bring together your current customer base along with potential future leads, you will have a transaction history and valuable data every time your sales team interacts with both groups. Keep on reading for more on the never-ending benefits of CRM integration!
Rope More Customers In
Customers may be hitting your website and leaving without you ever knowing what brought them there, or you might be getting lackluster return rates on an email nurturing campaign that would be much more successful targeted towards a different demographic. Thus, when you connect your email software up to your CRM, sales and marketing can complete the circle of the lead life cycle, tracking and managing it carefully so that you are always working towards growth; whether that is into a new market, or just a reduction in the current churn of people coming across your services.
Marketing automation like Marketo that can track a specific lead’s activity and interest throughout their journey on your website, and along with email software that will be able to corroborate email open rates or nurturing campaign success with specific customers, you’ll have a whole wealth of customer data in your CRM to help your sales team close more deals.
You’ll know when to push certain leads into a different pipeline, nurturing campaign, or when you need to start reaching out to different audiences or localities with a specific aspect of your product.
Build A Customer Profile
Once you have more of those customers firmly in your pipeline, you can immediately start taking advantage of the in-depth knowledge an interconnected enterprise software suite can provide on those capture leads. While CRM gathers data on customer demographics and buying habits, your other systems can then combine that with their online activity and responsiveness to your other marketing channels for a 360-degree view of your customers. Imagine the sales possibilities that kind of data will allow!
And, when you have a totally accurate customer profile, it doesn’t just benefit your business, it benefits the customer as well. If your sales team know when a customer might need your services again, or more product, based on their buying habits, a sales person will be able to reconnect with the customer before they even fully realize a need! If your product usually requires maintenance or upgrades after a certain amount of time, your sales team will know when to start reheating the lead up and then proposing those offers too. The returns you make in client knowledge and relationships is one of the most prominent benefits of CRM integration and connecting your whole suite of enterprise software, and a benefit you can start profiting off of as soon as your systems are sharing data!
Sales Team Collaboration
Many CRM suites now feature social media-like capabilities and allow members of your sales team to collaborate and communicate on anything inside your business, whether it’s closing a specific sale or building out a new campaign. The upsides of these social features become amplified when you integrate CRM into the rest of your business software. Front offices can communicate in real-time with your warehouse and manufacturing teams, meaning any decision made will be backed up with the most accurate, and recent, data.
Sales departments simply cannot work as they are built to do if they work in a silo; they need to collaborate with the entire business to keep their fingers on the pulse of manufacturing, operations and new innovations in their business so they can fully communicate with clients and give up-to-date on product, services and expected delivery or completion times. Running an interconnected enterprise is the only way to keep your business growing sustainably, and not have a sales team making promises the rest of your company can’t deliver on.
Wrap Up
Just as your sales team operates at its best when it is fully involved with the company, so too does your CRM software. The benefits of CRM integration are many and various, and will allow every employee to get not just a better handle on your clients, but also a better grip on the moves happening outside their departments.
With collaboration comes accountability, and thus motivation for employees to put their best foot forward in all aspects of their work, and recognize the individual contributions they make to the overall success of the business. Data and operational errors abound when teams and departments work in silos—and one of the largest benefits of integrating CRM lies in eliminating those barriers. Decisions are made with 100% of company knowledge available and then disseminated to 100% of your employees through your interlinked network of software. What’s not to like?
Even if you already feel like you have a solid marketing pipeline strategy in place, you’d be surprised by the riches that come from embedding CRM software more deeply within your company. If this sounds like something you’d like for your business, get in contact in with one of expert integration consultants today, or request a demo of our pre-built CRM integration product, Datix Unity, today!
