What Supermarkets Can Teach Us About Business Software And CRM Accounting Integration - Business

I'm often baffled by the roaring success of supermarkets. They sell inferior meat, awful fresh produce and the bread could never compare to something fresh baked from your local bakery. And yet we can't help shopping there. Why? Because it is all in the one place. We can get our weekly shop done in half an hour instead of spending hours running here and there to find all the components to make one single meal.

Business software should be more like supermarkets, built on convenience. But the vast majority of systems are the complete opposite. I'm talking about the divide between CRM software and accounting systems

In your average company the client database and accounting requirements are handled in separate independent systems. And when you have a separate accounting and CRM system your staff spend half their day mucking around with duplicate data trying to find the information they need to service clients, instead of actually servicing your clients.

They could also miss key data completely. For example some of your most profitable clients might not appear prominently in your CRM system. Often there is a group of clients in your business who place quiet orders on a regular basis without any sales intervention. So they are essentially invisible to your sales team.

Now you might say 'if they are placing regular orders without being chased why do we need to know about them?'. The fact is that these low maintenance clients could be stolen by your competition without you knowing why or even recognizing the loss. In addition low maintenance clients who order on a regular basis are a great asset to any business, an easy source of revenue. Ideally you should do more than identify these clients, you should try to find out more about them. Track their demographic info so you can find more easy customers to boost your profits.

Protecting and finding more of these clients all hinges on identifying them and this can only be achieved with CRM accounting integration

The core issue goes back to the history of accounting software and CRM development. CRM software was designed to capture client data (usually demographic related) and support your sales team in managing client relationships. Where as accounting systems were aimed solely at handling the numbers.

Very few providers were interested in offering an all in one systemIn the fear of being seen as a jack of all trades and a master of none. In fact up until the recently the best you could do was CRM accounting integration. With CRM accounting integration your still running (and paying for) 2 independent systems but at least they talk to each other and make relevant client data more accessible.

Now you can have a CRM system that includes accounting capabilities without compromising on Customer Relationship Management Functionaility.

It's better than a supermarket, you still get the convenience without losing the best of both software types. With a total business solution you gain a more holistic approach. You can easily find those elusive low maintenance clients and protect them. In addition you gain the ability to thoroughly asses the success of marketing activities as you can link responses to actually profits received. And finally when you move to a total solution you rescue time and increase productivity. Time that would have been wasted searching for information or switching between applications can be diverted to income producing work.

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