Customer relationship management (CRM) software is known to assist businesses on several fronts. From helping build strong relationships with customers to bringing various departments in an organization on to the same page, a CRM system allows companies to unlock the true potential of their business. But you can achieve all of this and more only if you focus on integration. Unless you integrate your CRM with the rest of the tools in your organization, you can’t attain its full benefits.
Businesses must understand that CRM software is a collaborative tool. It is not just the sales and marketing verticals that benefit from the CRM solution, but other departments such as customer service, finance, HR and accounting functions also gain significant amounts of insights, bringing everyone in the company on the same side. CRM integration can reduce organizational silos, eliminate duplication, save time and provide in-depth customer understanding across departments.
Let us, therefore, try to understand what CRM integration is, its benefits and how it can work in your organization.
What Does CRM Integration Involve?
The first important factor to understand is what CRM integration involves.
A CRM acts as the CPU of your organization. It stores all of your existing customer and prospect interactions and information in one place, allowing you to build strong relationships with them. Not only does a CRM system allow you to build strong relationships with customers and prospects, it can also help you improve the customer experience, increase sales and increase profit margins.
Regardless of the type of tools used by your departments, you can sync all of them with your CRM, connecting each vertical with the other for a smooth flow of customer interaction. For example, you can connect HRMS, document management system, ERP, etc., to eZnetCRM without any issue and bring your HR, accounting, finance, sales and marketing, and customer service departments together to improve cross-team collaboration.
It is crucial to understand that CRM solutions can benefit each person in your organization regardless of their department. The sales vertical is not the only function that can benefit from a CRM system. Therefore, when we talk of CRM implementation, we must consider all types of users. While evaluating CRM software, you must assess how everyone in different departments will benefit from it. You must consult employees from each department before finalizing the solution. With employees on board, CRM integration can help build strong relationships with your customers. Our blog post – “Today’s CRM Best Practices” – talks about what you should do to get the most out of your CRM solution.
When you integrate your CRM well with the other tools of your organization, it provides a 360-degree view of customer data to all your customer-facing and supporting employees, bringing uniformity to your company and offering quality service to your customers. It even helps your accounting and finance teams to justify investments to improve the product or service delivery.
As more and more employees know about your customers, the better they can provide support to the sales team to effectively communicate with them. The sales team can benefit from the marketing data, and the sales behavior of a customer can help the support teams come up with the right solutions.
Sales professionals agree that cross-team collaboration is the key to improving customer satisfaction. The Business2Community blog refers to a survey where most sales professionals agree that a collaborative view of customer information (across the organization) is vital in providing an optimal customer experience.
The more your employees know about your customers, the better they can serve them, as it helps them deliver a personalized solution. And personalized experiences can help you develop better relationships with your customers. According to Business Wire, 77% of B2B sales and marketing professionals believe personalized experiences can develop better customer relationships.
Benefits of CRM Integration to Your Business
CRM integration with other tools used in your organization can positively impact your business. Here are some of the benefits of CRM integration for your business:
It improves customer understanding
Data sharing among platforms keeps each employee in every department up-to-speed with current information about your customers, empowering teams to serve them better.
It reduces manual processes
Manual data transfer from apps to spreadsheets is a tedious and error-prone process. Your employees can have more time to focus on your customers when you integrate your CRM with other apps across departments.
It improves reporting
Data sharing can provide a 360-degree view of your organization, giving your team and other employees better insights to make informed decisions.
Every interaction you have with your customers shapes their perceptions and influences their decision-making about your brand. Hence, it is crucial to deliver a worthwhile customer experience every time someone interacts with them. However, this isn’t possible if only one vertical retains all the customer information. When you focus on CRM integration, you ensure that everyone in your company is on the same page (information-wise), allowing your customers to get the same rich experience from all touchpoints. Delivering an omnichannel customer experience is always beneficial, as it improves the customer experience.
But to deliver a customer-centric omnichannel experience, you need to create comprehensive customer profiles. A CRM solution can help you create detailed customer profiles without any issues. When you synchronize your data and share it across your company, you can serve your customers better and develop stronger relationships with them.
How Can CRM Integration Work in Your Organization?
To get the most out of your CRM system, ensure you speak to all your stakeholders. Knowing their pressing issues will help you determine what you need to integrate to get the best results. Here is how CRM Integration can help your organization:
Finance and accounting
Integrating tools your finance team uses can make tasks much easier for them. They can automatically trigger and route routine processes such as payments, invoicing, quoting, ordering, etc., directly to and from the platform. Everything gets recorded into the platform automatically. You can even upload compliance documents into the platform, ensuring hassle-free regulatory filing and audit checkpoints.
CRM integration also simplifies the reporting of your finance vertical. You can see each penny spent and received on the dashboard in one place, improving your decision-making abilities.
Human resources
With recruitment, onboarding, resignations and benefits, HR professionals have a great deal on their plate. However, you can make their job easier – and more efficient – by integrating CRM with an HRMS or human resource management software, which can automate referrals, schedule interviews and collect interview feedback in one place.
CRM integration can keep job descriptions up-to-date, improve resume scoring and provide better candidate choices. From onboarding to exiting, CRM integrations automate processes and make the work of HR staff simple, quick and efficient.
IT and operations
The IT department has an important role to play in every organization. Any outage or downtime can result in huge losses. CRM integration with IT tools can help detect problems and initiate the resolution process proactively. CRM integrations can automate and prioritize ticket generation, allowing you to reduce resolution times. Users can stay current with real-time communications, helping businesses streamline ticket escalation, ticket assignments and incident alerts. With everyone in the know, finding the solution becomes easier.
Sales and marketing
Sales and marketing functions work closely together. Therefore, it makes sense to integrate them with one tool. Closing deals, scheduling calls and getting notifications can all be easier when you use your CRM properly. Integrating CRM can allow your team members to send and receive quotes and invoices. Marketing teams, on the other hand, can generate reports on campaign effectiveness on the same tool.
With everyone in your organization connected through the CRM, you can reduce the number of interdepartmental meetings because everyone has access to real-time data. When you have the data, it becomes easier to achieve your KPIs.
Also, collaborative customer relationship management can allow companies to take proactive customer service and customer retention measures, which helps improve customer experience significantly.
Addressing customer issues before they occur can keep your customers satisfied. With the right tools in place – and knowledge about how to use them – your support team members can receive alerts before situations get out of hand.
You can also use CRM for social listening. People are active on social media, and you need to take note of what they say online about your company. Using your CRM for social listening can help improve your quality and services, improving the overall customer experience. It means CRM has a role beyond sales and marketing verticals.
Developing meaningful relationships with customers ensures customer retention and loyalty. Customers don’t jump ship to a competitor for no reason. If you can satisfy their needs and meet their expectations, they won’t leave you. People also tend to stick with a brand that meets or exceeds expectations. That is why improving customer experience is so important.
It’s no secret that acquiring new customers is more challenging and expensive than maintaining existing ones. That is why using CRM software is vital for businesses of all sizes.
If you are looking for a robust CRM solution to serve your customers better, eZnetCRM is an intuitive and user-friendly system that is easy to integrate and use. It’s a collaborative CRM that connects your team members so they can build strong relationships with customers. It also provides the comprehensive support, training and technical capability critical to seamless functionality and end-user acceptance. Contact us to learn more about our solution, and start your free 30-day trial today.
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