What is Integration?
During a recent webinar hosted by SCRIBE, a CRM integration solutions provider, the company’s senior sales engineer Pierre Hulsebus said that the most important thing when taking on a project is to reach a common understanding of what integration means to everyone involved.
What is the End Goal?
“What is the end goal? This is the question you should be asking before beginning any project,” Hulsebus said. “You have to plan with a measurable outcome and have a common understanding of what success looks like, then get down to specifics.”
After a common goal has been reached, Hulsebus said you should discuss the budget and figure out the time impact for the project. According to him, this is usually when business process issues come up so it is important to map out the project and understand what exactly you’re integrating.
“Know your systems and what they can support,” Hulsebus said. “Data quality is the top issue for user adoption, if there’s bad data in a system people will find a way around it and this could leave gaps. So you must address data quality issues before anything.”
One Size Does Not Fit All
He also said that it is important to decide which approach is best suited for your company. One size does not fit all. You must pay attention to the design and performance of a solution and choose the option that will deliver results in a timely and profitable way.
Perhaps one of the most important aspects of implementing customer data – according to Hulsebus – is user account testing.
Strive for Feedback
“This should be a constant part of the process,” he said. “Strive to get feedback from everyone involved in order to address needs and reset expectations. Have clear communication and check-in all the time to make sure things are flowing.”
In the end, a happy customer will result in a successful project, therefore, companies should also include their customers in every step of the integration process and listen to their feedback.
How We Can Help
Although it is important to make sure that applications are integrated properly, it is also critical to build a rapport with customers in order to grow your business. 360 Visibility and SCRIBE have done so with clients such as Marketwired and Hockley Valley Resort by helping to integrate Microsoft Dynamics solutions with their systems.
Elaine Ewing, controller, Marketwired, said that the company has used other software providers before reaching out to 360 Visibility, but the levels of service they were getting were not up to expectations.
“We switched to 360 Visibility and were so satisfied with their services that we are still with them and are using SCRIBE for various projects,” Ewing said.
Peter Tan, CFO, Hockley Valley Resort, said his company was experiencing similar difficulties before switching to 360 Visibility.
“Before implementing 360 Scribe, there was no interface between Dynamics and our Hospitality Solution. Printing out our daily revenue numbers was tedious and error-prone,” he said. “We wanted a robust solution that would deliver results. 360 Scribe has done this, saving money year over year in productivity – and frustration.”
Learn More
Contact us for more information on how we can help with your integration needs.