School of Information Systems

The Benefits of ERP and CRM Integration

A good business is a business that needs critical technological tools and strategies to ensure that your business is running well and do the best for it. In this case is the benefit of ERP and CRM Integration. With these two integrations, the system can boost your productivity, streamline processes, and drive profit.  

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is a powerful software that enables organizations to manage their business activities, such as accounting, procurement, risk-management and many more. While CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is helping the organizations to defines strategies, techniques, and tools for managing, retaining, and acquiring customers. CRM also handles the sales, marketing, and customer service information. They also store data about customers that will help to track, automate, optimize, and analyze customer interactions. With this two powerful software, your business can be a fully integrated and many benefits with ERP software concerns back-end processes, while CRM will concern on the front-end processes.  

 

These are the example of the benefits integrating ERP and CRM: 

  1. 360o degree view of customers When a company/organization integrate the ERP and CRM, they can see the full and complete view of the customers about their preferences, profitability, and loyalty. It will offer total visibility and accuracy from finance, sales, and support that will give better insights into customer base that will efficiently work.  
  2. Centralization of Accounts Information  Both CRM and ERP software systems store detailed, real-time, and accurate information of customer such as contact, history, and shipping/billing details. This kind of centralization will really help if the data needed and can be easily access by the authorized person at any time, everywhere.  
  3. Reduction of Data Duplication  ERP software is focused on billing-related and shipping data while the CRM will handle the information of customer information and sales metrics. With the integrated approach, duplicate certainly will not happen again because both ERP and CRM work through the same rules and structure.  
  4. Cross-Department Collaboration  A Cross-Departmental approach ensures real-time data that will be always being utilized and will helps departments to working together. A connected and Integrated workforces enjoys the benefits of higher productivity and efficiency.  
  5. Improved Efficiency  Silo’s system might make you stuck on spending time on manual, arduous tasks. With integration, it makes easier to automate workflows and manage processes. Employees can spend more time on crucial processes rather than doing the manual and tedious task.  
  6. Boost Customer Relationship  With the real data that provided by ERM and CRM Integrated, companies can interact with the customer actively and always updated with the real-time data. It will help companies to anticipate the customer needs and reduce support service time. With the higher customer satisfaction, it also increases customer royalty. It can be said that it will be more visibility, growth, and sustainable success.  
  7. Accurate Predictions and Prevent any Unwanted Things. With fully integrated system and real-time data that can easily access any time and everywhere, companies can boost communication within inside and outside. It will help make a better forecast in the future and help CRM team deliver accurate quotes and marketing campaigns. ERP and CRM Integration will make better predictions about shipping dates that make the company will have a critical business decision and mitigate business risks. In other side, these integrated systems will prevent any unwanted things such as ineffective communication that results in lost sales and damaged company reputation.  

These are the examples of the benefit of Integrating ERP and CRM that can drive business efficiency and grow customer base. There are some a few things to note to integrate this two powerful software; company need to standardize the data and system across all the processes, and to make sure that each system can accept the data connected and enhanced. To enjoy the benefits of CRM and ERP Integration more, you need to pay attention to the detail. And you might need some customization to your company because each business is unique and different. These little things will help you to feel the full benefits of ERP and CRM Integration.  

References :  

  • https://www.leadsquared.com/erp-and-crm-integration/  
  • https://www.workwisellc.com/blog/crm-erp-integration-6-major-benefits/  
Marisa Karsen