The integration of CRM (customer relationship management) can give you valuable insight into your customers by gathering all the bits of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends into one repository.

There are many CRM application integration products on the market. However, implementation of CRM will tax your existing resources, and not just the financial ones. Keep in mind that no CRM software integration is a plug-in solution. There will be lots of details that your staff must attend to such as the following:

1. Communicate to the CRM installation team what your expectations are of the system. Failure to do so will result in costly changes later on.

2. Your internal staff will be needed to test the integration of CRM and your IT staff will be needed to help with CRM integration. This may be time consuming especially when the staff must attend to their normal duties.

3. CRM data integration creates work on the back end to import the data correctly. You must be able to take your old data into the new application and that usually means a massive clean-up project for your staff.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Define what your want your CRM implantation to accomplish

The success of any CRM integration is clearly defined business requirements. You have to know what you want to accomplish or how will the vendor know what it is that you want? Your business may want a very basic CRM implementation or a very complex one involving many different departments.

I recommend: Smaller businesses and organizations should consider looking into Microsoft Outlook as a basic CRM solution. Email, contacts, meetings, notes can all be synchronized and accessed via the web. A complex CRM installation involving cross functional areas will require a comprehensive CRM solution. Check out the customizable solutions offered by Salesboom.com and Entellium.

Decide whether your business CRM integration solutions will be hosted or on site

Choosing a CRM solution that is hosted is very cost effective, however it may be more difficult later on if your business needs to expands its CRM functionality.

I recommend: SageCRM provides both on site an hosting CRM solutions. They also have a free 30 day trial so check out the Sage CRM website. Hosting CRM solutions can be provided by NetOffice.

Consider using a CRM application integration vendor who specializes in mid-sized businesses

There are plenty of CRM solution providers out there, but if you have a mid-sized business, why not use a vendor who can cater to your needs? The vendors who primarily sell to large scale companies may not be able to give you the individual attention that you deserve.

I recommend: For CRM products easily customized, try ADAPT or Soffront.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  When considering any CRM installation, ask to see an online demonstration. This will help you to quickly determine whether a product may be able to meet your business needs.
• •  If you already have a CRM solution, ask how the CRM system implementation can accommodate your current data.