Sage CRM integrated with Sage 100
Sage CRM is powerful software on its own. But when you combine that wealth of sales and customer data with the accounting and operational data from Sage 100, you get a whole that’s far more powerful than the sum of its parts.
ERP vs CRM: What’s the Difference? Read on to learn why.
Overall Boost in Efficiency
Salespeople often need data about customers that’s only stored in the accounting system (i.e. credit limit, recent purchases, etc.). As such, the finance team is bombarded with requests from sales team members which can result in a lag between when the information request is made and when it’s eventually fulfilled (after all, finance is busy too!). Not only is this process inefficient internally, the delay can impact the sale if the customer decides to purchase from your competitor who was quicker to respond.
When Sage CRM integrates with Sage 100, your sales team has all the customer and transaction data they need without fumbling around in the accounting system or asking finance to follow up. This not only keeps sales and finance focused on their respective tasks, it helps sales reps shorten the sales cycle AND focus on the deals most likely to close.
Visibility and Revenue Growth
When CRM and ERP operate in independent silos, you don’t get the full benefit of seamless communication between teams and departments, nor the reporting visibility of a single system that combines sales and operational data for a complete and consolidated view of your business.
Armed with a 360-degree view of your customers’ history and buying preferences, your sales team can more easily find upsell and cross-sell opportunities on existing deals to drive additional revenue. Plus, integrated CRM and ERP can help increase profits by revealing untapped opportunities in existing customer relationships.
A Better Customer Experience
“I’ll have to call you back and follow up,” isn’t something a customer loves to hear. Surveys have shown that the average response time to customer requests is more than 12 hours. Furthermore, some companies fail to follow up at all.
With integrated Sage CRM and Sage 100, everything you know about your customers is in one single system. So whether it’s sales, support, or accounting, anyone who has contact with a customer has up-to-date data right there in the system they use every day. That means salespeople have access to inventory availability, recent shipments, or customer credit status right in Sage CRM. It also means that service staff is better able to resolve customer inquiries on the spot, rather than passing them to another department or promising to call back hours/days later.
Let’s take a closer look that the benefits of integrating ERP and CRM.
Just Let the Processes Flow
Integrating ERP and CRM systems improves the workflow throughout your entire organization. By designing and modifying automated workflows that span both CRM and ERP applications, you can expand on the individual capabilities of ERP and CRM systems and enable “straight-through” end-to-end business processes. Workflows automatically trigger the appropriate downstream business processes, passing data seamlessly between the front and back office.
Less Data Entry, Less Problems
Because integrated ERP-CRM systems create a single database of information, it drastically reduces repetitive data entry tasks. Once information is captured it is automatically populated to all relevant fields throughout the ERP and CRM environments. This not only improves productivity, it also eliminates errors, conflicting data, and reduces administration costs. What’s more? Because data is only entered once your employees will always have the most accurate and up-to-date customer information – regardless if they work in the front office or the back office.
A True View of Your Customers
An integrated solution provides all your employees with a complete 360° view of your customers. Standalone systems made it hard for customer service reps to answer every customer question using one system – customer information was stored in one, while order history, credit information, and order statuses were stored in another. With an integrated ERP-CRM solution your employees will have access to the account information, customer-specific pricing, and stock levels they need to answer questions promptly and accurately.
Marketing That’s Right On Target
With customer information stored in a single database, marketers will have the tools and information they need to create highly targeted marketing campaigns. With information such as purchase history and spending activity marketers in your organization will be able to cross-sell and up-sell in efficient and effective ways.
Promote Upselling & Cross-Selling With Business Process Software
When Sage enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management software share data in an easily accessible location, both your sales staff and your marketing team can better encourage upselling and cross-selling. Your sales team can check out customer data (both aggregated and individual), pinpoint additional or complementary products and check availability before suggesting them. Your marketing staff can also access crucial customer information, such as transaction history, to better target their audience and produce the most effective campaigns possible.
Easy Upgrades
Before ERP-CRM integrations were “out-of-the-box” upgrading one system or the other was complex and risky – which is why most businesses chose to run each system separately. But nowadays, with an ERP-CRM solution and upgrades are simplified. And with automatic upgrades from Sage you’ll always have the most up-to-date software and features that your product has to offer.
Reduce IT Costs By Combining Two Systems into One Software Package
Another way CRM and ERP system integration can cut costs is by eliminating the need to purchase separate licenses for the two systems. Also, providing a single cross-platform operating system for your IT staff to maintain reduces support costs.
Finally, integrating two of Sage’s business systems into your company’s work procedures also helps cut down on training time and costs, as employees only need to learn one software system rather than two. A well-executed integration can mean fewer training sessions and increased productivity for your staff.
Be sure to contact us to learn more about integrating Sage ERP with Sage CRM to improve your organization’s productivity.