These days, it is essential for the success of your business to have great CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems in place.
Your CRM system centralizes your important customer info, organizes it, and keeps it where anyone in your corporation who needs it can access it easily. This means it is much easier for you to make changes to orders or reach out to your customers with your marketing efforts.
On the other hand, your ERP system manages your business’s financial and operational aspects. It can help you keep track of your inventory, profits/losses, budgets, and even information on your employees.
Did you know that integrating your CRM system with an ERP system can give you more power? For example, this allows you to access your customer information from your ERP system as you are working on orders and building your budget. This will ultimately save time and help you make educated business decisions.
Below, we will show you how expanding your Salesforce platform with Goldfinch ERP can make your life easier.
Some Things Just Go Better Together
As a Salesforce customer, you understand the value of this platform. You can easily store and manage your customer info, automate your administrative tasks, and supercharge your reporting. These core benefits and more have helped companies streamline their technology and processes. As a result, Salesforce has become the most popular CRM platform globally.
However, by integrating Goldfinch ERP with your Salesforce CRM, things are about to get so much better.
You Can Create a Master Record of Your Customers
In today’s economy, your success is tied to your customers’ success. The key to determining their loyalty is your ability to connect, engage, and demonstrate your value to your customers consistently and authentically. This will determine the likelihood that they will continue to be your customers. Every team in your company can drive positive engagement. When your sales and finance are on two different platforms, it’s hard to keep track of customer engagements.
Integrating an ERP system with your current Salesforce platform brings both departments together. Everyone will have access to the same customer record from the initial contact to the close of the sale and delivery. Everyone can get the same answers, and everyone can care for the customer.
You Can Streamline Your Invoicing and Accounts Receivable
When you integrate an ERP with your Salesforce system, CFOs and other financial leaders within your company can enhance invoicing and accounts receivable processes, resulting in huge savings and faster payments. Instead of spending time importing/exporting spreadsheets and manually keying data into separate systems, finance leaders who have access to your master customer record have all they need.
In addition to sales information, this can include billing info, shipping addresses, and so much more. Everyone gets a big-picture view of the customer, which means invoicing and AR improve.
You Can Close the Books Faster
One of the metrics used to measure the efficiency of your accounting team is how many people and how many days it takes to close the books. Integrating ERP with your CRM allows you to complete the books faster. It ensures accuracy throughout your accounting cycle so that you don’t have to make adjustments at the end of the month.
You will be moving faster, but you’ll also be able to manage data efficiently and accurately, which means your employees can focus on other tasks—you don’t need as many hands involved in the accounting of your business.
You Can Reduce Billing Errors, Customer Disputes, and DSOs
One of your finance team’s primary goals is to speed up your cash flow. Unfortunately, faster billing can result in more errors if you have a manual system. However, by integrating an ERP with your CRM, you don’t have to track down contracts, find order confirmations, or get billing taken care of, as everything is already in one place.
The best part is, that it doesn’t matter what your products/services are; all billing is managed through your ERP system so that your finance team doesn’t have to work as hard and your customers know what they owe and when payment is due. Therefore, an ERP leads to reduced days [of] sales outstanding (DSOs), customer disputes, and billing errors.
You Can Empower Your Customers with Portals & Dashboards
Invoicing is nothing like it used to be. Consumers don’t have any problem canceling a subscription for a service they don’t use, and the same goes for the business world. As the economy has evolved, customers want to know the value they are getting from you.
Customers want the ability to view their account info when they want to. They want to know what they owe, make convenient payments, and ask questions or raise concerns about their bill. Salesforce gives you the tools to provide your customers with their billing/payment portal. When you integrate ERP with your CRM, your team can interact with customers to answer questions and solve any issues. At the same time, cash flow optimizes because it decreases your DSOs and supports multiple currencies.
You Can Comply with New Rules Regarding Revenue Recognition
When newly placed revenue recognition rules (ASC 606, IFRS 15, and AASB 15), accounting became more complicated. By integrating an ERP with your CRM, you can efficiently manage and account for your revenue data, no matter what your revenue model.
The appropriate revenue recognition tool can automatically recognize revenue from the source, including invoices, contracts, opportunities, projects, and orders. Also, an ERP can handle complex use cases. While it’s true that accounting is complicated, a solid CRM system paired with an ERP can make things much easier.
You Can Automate Processes to Increase Your Team’s Efficiency
The whole point of technology is to make repeatable, predictable tasks easier. The same concept applies to cloud-based software. By integrating an ERP with your Salesforce CRM, you can automate your accounting transactions and accelerate billing cycles, which means you need fewer resources for your daily administrative tasks.
The best part is that when you increase your team’s efficiency on these tasks, you allow them to focus on projects that can help your business grow.
You Can Grow Your Business by Offering New Products & Services
Your marketing and sales teams tell your customers that the sky is the limit. Then, the finance team quickly says it can’t be done. However, when you integrate an ERP with your CRM, your operations and finance teams can work together to develop and bring new revenue streams for your business to the market.
Such teamwork yields reaching into new markets with your existing products/services, bundling your offerings creatively, or developing a new product. It all becomes easier when you have everything on one platform, no matter what it is.
In Conclusion
To be most efficient, you need great CRM and ERP systems. You already enjoy CRM with Salesforce—Now, you need a high-quality ERP system to pull together the rest of your team. GoldFinch ERP can help. We’re experts at marrying Salesforce CRM with ERP.
Let’s talk today to discuss how we can help your organization!
