When it comes to choosing the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system for your business, it's important to understand all the benefits of a CRM system before beginning your selection process. When you launch a CRM implementation, your choices can impact nearly everyone in your company.
These "Back to Basics" ideas for implementing a CRM program inside a business were collected from executives, managers, employees and consultants who shared their experiences. The goal of this series of articles, appearing over 8 weeks, is to provide you with useful information as you choose a new CRM system.
Now, on to our fifth article and an important idea:
9. Integration with back-office systems can speed Return On Investment
One area many companies overlook when evaluating CRM software is the fact that accounts payable and accounts receivable data can form an integral part of CRM. If a customer calls to order a product, for example, wouldn't it be beneficial to instantly know whether that customer's accounts are up to date?
Although some CRM software offers patches to link back to an accounting system, others offer this seamless integration out of the box. The cost benefits of this approach are so great that some companies report an immediate ROI because they were able to get their application up and running without incurring the high costs of custom integration.
How does CRM-ERP Integration Improves Productivity?
- Reduce Duplication of Data Entry Tasks - quotes and orders can all be created for one integrated quote-to-cash function. Information is captured once at the source and then automatically propagated to all relevant fields throughout the CRM and ERP environments.
- Empower Employees with the Right Information at the Right Time - An integrated solution delivers a complete view of customers to all employees, allowing them to answer questions promptly and accurately. Account managers using a CRM have complete access to a customer's purchase history, the status of an order, and much more.
- Streamline Business Processes Through Automated Workflow - this allows organizations to automate business steps and processes that were previously manual, significantly improving employee productivity. Powerful workflow tools in the CRM enable organizations to automate and embed best practices for sales, service, and marketing, while workflow tools in the ERP can do the same for back-office functions.
- Improve Organizational Task Management - An organization's calendar capabilities are typically provided by a CRM system. This integrated task management functionality
- allows organizations and individuals to automate follow-up tasks, review where they are in completing tasks, and prioritize tasks in order to improve accountability and perform tasks more productively. If one group delegates a task to another, this group calendar makes it easy to make sure that person completes the task as promised.
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