6 Benefits of Integrating Your Dynamics CRM With QuickBooks
Customer relationship management software (CRM) helps you convert your contacts, improving your marketing, sales, and retention efforts in the process. Accounting software allows you to keep your finances in order, gaining both quick overview and in-depth knowledge about your revenues, expenses, and more.
At first sight, the only thing these two types of software have in common is the fact that they improve business processes in some shape. Accounting and marketing, you might think, does not often overlap. But in reality, integrating both processes comes with a variety of advantages for your business. In fact, here are 6 benefits you can gain from integrating your Dynamics CRM with QuickBooks.
1. Enhancing Customer Profiles and Information
Whether or not you already use a CRM to enhance your sales and marketing efforts, you know about the value of information. During their buyers’ journey, your audience receives more than 100 emails every day. Your only chance to stand out is with a message that is both relevant and targeted exactly to your audience.
The same truth holds for the sales call. If you simply call sales-qualified leads with a blanket statement, they’re much less likely to become customers than they would if you approached them with a sales pitch tailored to their needs.
By integrating your accounting software with your CRM, you can solve both of these problems. For existing customers, you can draw on financial information and order history to make a more relevant marketing and/or sales pitch. Considering the ROI of customer retention, this added information could be the difference in helping your business grow.
2. Avoiding Duplication for Increased Data Integrity
When your Dynamics CRM and QuickBooks accounting software run separately, you almost necessarily risk data duplication. Two identical records will have to be maintained for the same customer. That, in turn, can compromise your data integrity, as duplicate updates are not always intuitive or easily followed.
Through a CRM and accounting software integration, you can solve that problem. QuickBooks and Dynamics, for example, allow users to promote and link customer profiles on both platforms, making sure the information always remains in sync. The result is not just less required data entry, but greater accuracy and integrity.
3. Understanding Accounting Data in the Context of Your Customers
Much of your accounting data will provide valuable insights into the health and success of your business. But do you know what that data actually means for individual customers? If you do, you can draw conclusions that help you improve your marketing, sales, and financial processes.
Imagine, for example, running a report that shows you the average revenue created by one of your marketing automation campaigns. Alternatively, compare multiple campaigns or sales efforts in light of their actual costs. Adding customer context to your accounting data gives you a much fuller (and more accurate) pictures not just of your business health, but the reasons for that health and growth.
4. Syncing Price Lists and Inventory for Integrated Sales Information
As part of your accounting software, you probably maintain price lists of your inventory. These lists help you understand exactly what each order is worth, how much revenue you bring in, and how much of that revenue is net profit. Similarly, you maintain inventory information to make sure you know when to reorder, and how much it will cost.
What if this information was part of your CRM platform? Now, you can use pricing information in both automated marketing campaigns and internal sales processes. Similarly, you can sync real-time inventory information with your CRM. As a result, your sales team will always work with the latest and most accurate information on both inventory and price.
5. Improving Sales to Shipment Workflows
Especially if you market to businesses, but even in some consumer-based industries, the sales process consists of far more than simply selling a product online or in person. You might have an invoicing process, a standardized order form, an automated inventory reduction, and more before the prospect actually becomes a customer.
CRM solutions simply are not built for this type of complexity. They’re designed to help improve customer and prospect relationships, not manage your ordering business processes. Accounting software, on the other hand, falls short on the marketing and sales end.
An integration of both Dynamics and QuickBooks, on the other hand, can integrate the process from beginning to end and make it more consistent for the customer as a result. Your audience won’t feel like they’re being moved between systems; instead, they experience a single, streamlined ordering process all the way to becoming customers.
6. Streamlining Your Business Processes
Finally, CRM and accounting software integration streamlines your business processes as a whole. Once installed, the integration will not require regular overhead or oversight, effectively allowing you to move to a single data system despite retaining the individual functionality of both.
It does, of course, require some initial installation and configuration to get started. In addition, your sales and financial teams may need trained on how the new information will positively impact their daily jobs, and the possibilities that open up as a result. But after this initial set up and training phase, integrating Dynamics CRM and QuickBooks allows you to take advantage of all of the above — plus many more benefits!
That leaves the installation as the only pain point for most businesses looking to take advantage of the capabilities. And that’s where we come in. Contact us today to learn how you can not just improve your sales processes using Dynamics, but also integrate it with additional software like QuickBooks to improve and grow your business.