Salesforce is a vital tool for most of today’s businesses. So is an ERP. These systems allow you to keep track of important information about your customers, suppliers and products.
But they don’t work together…unless you integrate them. Having Salesforce and your ERP run separately from each other means that you risk making mistakes and missing opportunities for business development.
Integrating the two systems allows you to keep the business running smoothly, for several reasons.
1) Integration means you don’t have to copy data manually.
There will always be times when people who usually use one system need to gather information from another. For example, your sales staff might need to know a customer’s financial details in the ERP. Your finance staff might need to look up previous customer service interactions in Salesforce.
Because of this constant need, most businesses end up manually copying information between Salesforce and their ERP at least some of the time. The problem with this is that it’s time-consuming, inconsistent and prone to errors. An integration means that all the information anyone needs about customers and products is available instantly, in real time. That helps staff work faster, keeps customers happier and enables business growth.
2) Integration helps you develop stronger relationships, inside and outside your business
Any business thrives and grows on relationships – between staff and customers, between departments and between individual staff members. A Salesforce ERP integration can go a long way to helping you develop the kind of solid, long-term relationships that will help your business thrive.
An integration helps you build relationships with customers because it means that you cut down on mistakes and provide a reliable, professional service. You can respond to questions accurately and quickly. You can avoid sending unwanted marketing materials. You can even begin to anticipate when a customer might want to buy something and make sure you have it in stock.
Within your business, having a Salesforce ERP integration means that different teams trust each other to deal effectively with problems and work together to find solutions. Without an integration, mistakes happen. With mistakes come blame and distrust, particularly as it’s often difficult to tell whether a mistake was the result of carelessness or simply lack of access to accurate information.
3) Integration provides the basis you need for growth
To grow, you need to plan, think and innovate. You can’t do any of those things without reliable, high-quality data. Whenever you begin to plan for future change, you need to know exactly what’s going in the present. A Salesforce ERP integration helps you do that as it gives you trustworthy data that you can use to develop strategies and set goals without any second-guessing or cross-checking.
An integration also helps you grow by reducing the amount of time you need to spend on admin and putting right the errors that creep in without an integration.