The ability to add new functions and software to your CRM can be game-changing, allowing you to scale your system according to your needs and budget. However, choosing a flexible CRM with the right level of support is vital to realising these benefits.
In today’s high-tech B2B world, there is a tool for everything.
From email marketing to accounting and lead generation, the SaaS and cloud services market provides businesses with a huge range of specialised software.
This has revolutionised small companies’ abilities to scale-up their operations in a way that suits them. Today most SaaS providers offer pay-monthly plans on a range of upgradeable packages.
Of course, trying to manage these multiple tools individually would be nearly impossible, which is where CRMs come in.
Your CRM is the hub that connects all of your business, sales and marketing functions—including integrations.
For those who don’t know, ‘integrations’ is the term given to any capabilities that you add to the core CRM. This could include anything from email marketing to accounting software.
It’s critical that your CRM allows you to successfully connect and automate new integrations so that you can scale your business.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at how the right CRM can help you grow your business through integrations.
Power Up Your Business
Firstly, let’s take a look at the main benefits of getting your integrations running through a single CRM:
Improve efficiency through automation
Connecting integrations through your CRM allows them to seamlessly communicate with each other. This means you spend less time switching between them and transferring information from one to the other.
Better management of data
Collecting data from multiple channels and storing them separately is a recipe for disaster. Your data becomes siloed, which makes it hard to manage. Attempting to consolidate it manually results in duplication and human error.
By connecting all of your channels via your CRM, you allow your data to be collected in a single place and in a common format, where it can be easily accessed.
Better customer experiences
There’s nothing worse than disappointing a customer due to forgotten information or inefficient service.
By streamlining your channels through CRM integrations you can tailor your services to better manage customer relationships, resulting in happier customers.
Find Your Perfect CRM
There are three main types of integration:
- Native integrations: These are integrations that are built into the CRM by the provider. They tend to be common business tools.
- Third-party integrations: These integrations are developed by external companies and are designed to ‘talk’ to your CRM.
- Custom integrations: These are created by a developer to meet your unique business needs.
In order to scale effectively, a CRM needs to have wide compatibility with a range of third-party integrations, flexible architecture and dedicated developer support.
Before choosing a CRM it’s important to consider to what extent it fulfils these criteria and whether it will complement your growth strategy.
Let’s take a look at those criteria in greater detail:
Wide compatibility
With so many APIs, apps and SaaS services out there, it’s vital to get a CRM that can connect with most of them. The greater your CRM’s compatibility, the less time your IT team needs to get an integration up and running.
Flexible architecture
If your CRM can’t connect an integration your IT team may need to do some work to get the two systems working together. The more straightforward and intuitive the underlying architecture is, the easier it will be for your team to make their own adjustments.
Dedicated developer support
But what happens if your team struggles to implement an integration? Or worse still, what if you can’t find software that meets your needs? In these cases, you’ll need dedicated developer support. Many CRMs don’t offer this, and those that do will often charge a premium—as will third-party developers.
Meet KulaHub
KulaHub is an online CRM and email marketing system for growing businesses. Our range of custom integrations allows you to tailor and scale your CRM to meet your business needs.
We integrate with most third-party software, including Xero, Office365, Google Analytics and Zapier.
Our dedicated technical and operational support teams are available on the phone to help you take your CRM’s capability to the next level.
That’s not all. KulaHub also enables you to generate new leads, create detailed reports on your sales activities and get the best out of third-party plug-ins.
If you’d like to learn more about how KulaHub can help you develop a data-driven sales process, contact Andrew Booth on [email protected] or call 0800 049 6044.
