Integrating CRM: What It Means & CRM Integration Software
Have you ever wondered about what the deal is with integrating CRM? So many questions surrounding this topic: What is CRM integration? How do you integrate a CRM? With what kinds of tools should you connect your CRM system? What are the possibilities for CRM integration functionality? And how will this benefit my business?
Well, you’ve landed on the perfect CRM integration explainer article. So get ready to get connected into the wide world of CRM and its integrations.
What is CRM integration?
It is always important to understand exactly what CRM stands for, which is customer relationship management. If you already have a good idea about what is a CRM, good for you. So let us turn to the CRM integration meaning.
The meaning of a CRM integration deals with connecting your CRM software to other useful business process apps in order to make your business run more efficiently as well as to provide a better customer experience. It achieves this by sharing the customer data in your CRM database with all sorts of different business SaaS functionalities, for example, marketing platforms, sales team tools, or customer support solutions.
CRM platform integrations sync up data and update itself in real-time. For example, if customer information changes in your sales team platform after a new customer interaction, that contact information will automatically get updated in your CRM solution.
Now that we have a better idea of what integrating your customer relationship management system means, let us talk about the difference between interfacing and integrating.
How does this differ from a CRM interface?
The question is, what is the difference between a CRM data integration and CRM interfaces. You could think of a basic CRM integration as the way that two different software tools share data. Meanwhile, a CRM interface sort of acts like an intermediary between two different software tools that use data differently.
The CRM interface is almost like a third utility which acts as a translator and unifier between two distinct SaaS, as opposed to an integration platform which connects them directly one to the other.
This topic of CRM interfacing is rapidly disappearing from the discourse because it is less relevant. Now we’ll move on to the reasons and benefits you accrue with a good CRM integration.
Reasons for integrating CRM & integrated CRM system benefits
There are a few good reasons to integrate a CRM system. You can connect your CRM to a website, with an ERP platform, with an SCM system, with accounting software, and more.
Website CRM integration
A CRM integration with website is usually the first thing we think of when we think of CRM integrations. You could have a web form on your website for new visitors to fill out, which will make them into contacts in your CRM database. This system can also help store contact data for returning visitors.
The benefits of website CRM integration
Get new contacts by capturing customer information from website visitors and creating customer profiles
Remember recurring website visitors to show them personalized messages or content
Keep track of online purchases if your website is an ecommerce operation
Gather visitor demographic information to have accurate analytics
Send follow-up messages to ecommerce visitors who have left items in their carts
Integrating CRM and ERP
An ERP is an enterprise resource planning solution, and some ERPs even include CRMs as part of the package. But if an ERP system does not have CRM functionalities, it’s a great idea to integrate the two systems.
The benefits of integrating CRM and ERP
Understand your enterprise demographics to help better plan future projects
Streamline the sharing of data between customer profiles and the resources planning necessary to satisfy customers
Cut down on the time-consuming work of marketing campaign research by having real-time actionable insights from your CRM-ERP integration
Integrating CRM with SCM
SCM is a crucial part of many ERP systems, but sometimes you can have your own dedicated SCM solution. This stands for supply chain management, and you normally see this in manufacturing businesses, though of course it is important to the average sales process where getting deliveries out to customers should be streamlined and efficient.
The benefits of integrating CRM with SCM
Have a better overview on your warehousing, supplies and shipping by knowing customer information like location and purchasing habits
Lets your salespeople and other team members know beforehand which goods are ready to sell and ship and which ones will require longer wait times
Can integrate supply chain workflows that automatically send notifications for re-supplying goods when CRM data shows an excess of purchases
Integrating CRM with accounting software
Accounting tools are also regularly seen as part of an enterprise resource planning toolkit, but like supply chain management, there are plenty of standalone accounting software which can take advantage of the benefits of CRM integration.
The benefits of integrating CRM with accounting software
CRM and accounting integrations can make things like budgeting, invoicing, billing and expense tracking more accurate using customer data
Accounting professionals and CPAs can leverage the efficacy of CRM customer data to provide more personalized accounting services to their customers and clients
Integrating CRM with marketing software
CRMs provide tons of useful data and insights for marketing automation software. The demographic data stored in a CRM database is full of valuable information to fine-tune marketing campaigns and reach the right audience with the most on-point messaging content.
The benefits of integrating CRM with marketing software
Be able to craft marketing campaigns with more relevant content for your marketing audiences
Provide unique opportunities for marketing referrals, cross selling and upselling which can then be of great value for your company’s sales reps
CRM data can be used to quickly fill out marketing templates to save your marketing team members time and effort for each new project or task
Surely, there are other reasons and benefits for integrating your CRM, and another section below will spell out some more possibilities for these purposes. For now, we need to first discuss how one connects or integrates their CRM in the following sections.
CRM integration methods
There are two secondary methods for integrating a CRM with another application. They are via specialized CRM integration service professionals, and via application program interface tools, otherwise known as APIs. The primary mode of integrating your CRM will be discussed afterward.
CRM integration services
These days, this option is perhaps the less common way that companies will connect their CRM to other tools. Professional CRM integration services involve individuals, small businesses or companies which can come in and create the integration for you which will be unique to your operation and native to your software stack.
With so many great software solutions around these days, the need for human professional specialists is dwindling. But if you have a large company with a complicated software stack which includes a lot of custom tools, you may still want professional CRM integration services.
CRM API integration
APIs are a bit more common than CRM integration services, but as we will see below, they are even less common than a good connector tool. APIs are programs that are specifically designed to allow one application to work with, or on top of, another application, or to build new tools for older apps.
When a company makes their API public, then developers can use it to design new functionalities or features to suit their needs, which include tools to connect the data from a CRM to any other app.
Not all companies make their API public, as this is a more common practice among open-source CRMs. For example, Salesforce only provides their API in certain special editions of their software.
Popular CRM connectors
Leaving behind professional CRM integrations services and application program interfaces, we finally come to the number one way that people integrate their CRM to other tools nowadays. This is via an application called a connector app. Here are some of the main connector tools:
Zapier
Zapier is the number one connector tool around. You can see in its name the letters API, and you can think of a ‘Zap’ as a shorthand to connect two apps, like: “I zapped my HubSpot to my Gmail.” On the Zapier site, you just plug in any app, and it shows you the possibilities for integrating, or you plug in any two apps, you’ll see the functionalities available between them.
Workato
Workato, along with Automate.io, are both the next best solutions when it comes to app integration software. Workato basically functions like Zapier but is perhaps a bit more advanced, emphasizing the use of automation and workflows as the main bridge between two different software solutions and their various tools.
Automate.io
Automate.io is there to help you connect any two cloud-based applications. It is very useful for creating workflows which can take over the manual work of highly repetitive business processes between two applications. For example, getting an email from a new contact in Gmail or a new message in Slack can automatically create a new contact profile in Salesforce.
Microsoft Power Automate
Of course, the Microsoft corporation has to get its foot in there in the CRM integrations world, and Microsoft Flow was the name of their product to do just that.
The name Flow got changed, however, and today it is called Microsoft Power Automate, which combines integration automations with other AI-based workflows. Ultimately, this one will work best when you are already using some Microsoft tools like Outlook, Teams, OneDrive or 365.
IFTTT
IFTTT stands for ‘if this, then that’ which is the basic way to understand the rules-based logic which structures a lot of automation that goes on between apps via their integrations. What's more, the app called IFTTT has a free plan for anybody to get started.
CRM integration software possibilities & ideas
The best CRM software integration possibilities are mainly for marketing, sales, ecommerce and support, but of course there are other uses for your CRM software when connected to other tools.
Social media
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and more… All of these platforms are more than mere entertainment for people but have actually become important elements in their businesses. A CRM integration with social media can sync all messaging into a unified platform and gather all your contact data and put it into one database where it can be filtered, placed in silos and analyzed.
Email integration with email marketing
If you want to speed up your email marketing campaigns, then integrating your email marketing tool with your CRM can seriously cut down on the manual labor of entering new data into every email going out with a marketing message. Templates are great here which can be auto filled with contact information. See what emails get the most engagement and use your CRM to enrich those who have engaged and prep them for the sales funnel.
Marketing automation
Like email marketing, marketing automation aims to take over as much work while having your human employees do as little as possible. Run entire marketing campaigns on workflows which have higher success rates because they are built on real-time data from actual contacts and their purchase and engagement histories.
ERP
A CRM integration with an ERP ensures a lot of your business processes will be running more smoothly and with fewer errors and setbacks. If your ERP includes supply chain tools, operations management, HR, IT and accounting, then each and every one of those areas of business benefits from having access to a thorough CRM database of contact information.
Ecommerce
Imagine every time a new visitor arrives on your ecommerce page, a CRM integration can be used to greet them, capture their information with widgets or web forms, and track them as they browse the products you are selling. A CRM can notify you when a contact is close to buying so you can send a nudge, or if there are abandoned shopping carts you hope to see move through the checkout line eventually.
Customer support
Linking up simple CRM for small business, for example, with a customer service tool like Zendesk is a great way to offer more personalized support and help your users get the help they need faster. It will store and recall all past issues each contact had, how they were resolved, and by which rep. This is useful if a new rep must take over a ticket issue from another rep, because they will have all the relevant information they need about the issue.
Team communication
Whether it is a marketing team, a sales team or a support team, not everyone in an organization can share all their data with everyone all the time when it is most needed.
However, if a CRM is connected to various team communication or team collaboration tools, it can help with things like avoiding team member collision, reducing the amount of time one team member requires to take over from another, and allowing team members to put notes and comments on CRM information to help others with relevant knowledge.
Project management
Not all projects are customer-facing, but for those that are, project management can benefit greatly from a CRM integration. Knowing about the clients or stakeholders that you are completing tasks and projects for is an important step to proper project planning. Understanding the diversity and depth of your network of contacts can help with timeframes, budgets and project scope.
Business intelligence
Business intelligence is sometimes called BI, and it is the most advanced form of basic analytics and reporting. It not only looks back and gives you stats on past performances, but it can look forward and do forecasting, trend spotting and help you plan for future projects.
Integrating a BI system with a CRM will enrich the BI platform with the most relevant and up-to-date real-time data on things like customer habits, demographics, browsing patterns, purchase histories and wider patterns.
Our conclusion on CRM integrations
So, what are the key takeaways from this article about CRM integration and all its uses and possibilities? Firstly, there are many ways to connect your CRM to other tools, for example, with an open API or a connector app like Zapier. Next, the other kinds of tools you should be connecting your CRM to include ERPs, SCMs, marketing automation software, customer support modules and project management platforms, among others.
Feel free to peruse some CRM tools or connecting applications to see how easy it would be to perform such integrations. Be sure to check out their pricing pages, as often you can try these tools out for free.
If you have any trouble figuring anything out, there are always useful forums and webinars to watch that will walk you through the basics of CRM integrations.
That wraps it all up once and for all regarding this useful explainer about all things CRM system integrations. If you do not consider yourself an expert on the meaning of integrating CRM software yet, try reading everything all over again. We’re sure you’ll get there. Happy integrating!
âP.S. if you’re just getting started with CRM, we recommend checking out best free CRM software and open source CRM software. These are an excellent starting point for teams not familiar with CRMs or those on a budget.
