The CRM Systems Integration Problem for Business
When it comes to selecting a CRM, it is of paramount importance to choose one that will integrate well with the rest of the tools used to manage your business.
For overall business management however, you’ll likely need more than just a standard CRM; other platforms could include an accounting system, IP telephony service, email service, a website chat system, video conferencing system, payments system, file sharing solution, mobile phones … the list goes on!
Making sure that all of these diverse systems play well together can potentially be very complex and become a major distraction from the real work of running a business. Business owners should not have to feel like they are their own system integrators – and should avoid making decisions that put themselves in that position.
The Role of an All-in-One CRM in Systems Integration
One approach to minimizing the effort required on this front is the adoption of an all-in-one CRM. In an earlier blog post on the topic, What is an all-in-one CRM?, we concluded that an all-in-one CRM is one that covers Sales, Marketing, Order Management, Project Management and Service Management. Because this type of CRM contains so much of your core business information, choosing one that comes with a wide selection of out-of-the-box integrations and a strong API for custom connections has the potential to significantly reduce the headaches of integrating all your business systems.
What does this approach look like in the real world? With a Portage CyberTech solution, the CRM contains Quotes, Sales Orders and Invoice data, so it can integrate with accounting systems like QuickBooks Online and Xero. Because data is synched in both directions, CRM users can generate invoices that automatically end up in the accounting system.
The CRM also integrates well with several eCommerce solutions such as WooCommerce and Magento, so that store transactions and new client data sync to the CRM and then to the accounting system – all automatically!
The more types of data you have in your CRM, the more opportunities there are for this kind of synergy. For example, the Portage CyberTech CRM offers its own customer portal for WordPress. When your clients are in that portal, they can see their history of service cases, add new issues, look up past invoices and pay them, approve quotes, interact with ongoing projects, access FAQs, update their own contact data, and more.
Conversely, the less data you have in your CRM, the fewer opportunities you have to offer this kind of capability to your clients, and the role your CRM can play in quarterbacking your internal systems integration is reduced.
Conclusion
When selecting a CRM, carefully check which integrations and APIs are available, as well as the capability to support 3rd party integration services such as Integromat and Zapier.
Verify that your chosen CRM contains certain types of necessary data – such as Quote & Invoice data, Project data or Service Case data. Otherwise, it will not be able to synchronize information of that nature with other systems. This can significantly compromise your organization’s ability to see a holistic view of your customer relationships, and can limit your ability to integrate data exchanges between systems in the future.
Business owners and managers need to visualize the overall movement of data required within their organization, and decide if the all-in-one CRM approach makes sense as a way to simplify the overall systems integration process.
If your organization is ready to streamline its business services delivery, reach out to our team of digital experts for advice on integrating an all-in-one CRM solution today.
