Maintaining a reliable database of customer information is the key to successful customer relationships. That's why many companies rely on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Siebel, or Oracle. Whether your CRM is on-premise or in the cloud, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software can automatically update your CRM with the most accurate information. RPA takes over the repetitive tasks of maintaining your CRM, ensuring that the information in your CRM is synchronized with vital business applications, such as an ERP. This saves you a significant amount of time - time that can be spent on acquiring new customers or supporting existing ones.

Why Integrate and Automate CRM?

Companies rely on a wide range of critical business applications for their daily operations. With all these individual systems, it's crucial to provide a centralized source of information. CRM systems make this possible, but it's all the more critical to get the right information into your CRM. If all your salespeople track everything in a spreadsheet and report only once a month, you could lose sight of their potential customer base. Additionally, you would not be able to keep track of where opportunities lie.

Don't let valuable customer data get stuck in your various business applications or with different users. Integrating apps with your CRM and updating them automatically ensures everything lands in the same right place immediately.

CRM Automation Use Cases

One of the best reasons to apply CRM automation is to provide more efficient customer service. Empower your customer service department to keep track of everything happening in one place. Many businesses have their sales and order information in their ERP system but not in the CRM. You can automate this process and have the ERP system send data to your CRM to trigger a thank you email, or send a salesperson a notification to follow up with a customer. Automated communication between disparate systems can enhance the quality of your customer service by keeping everyone in the loop automatically throughout the customer lifecycle.

Automation makes case management, such as tracking customer tickets, easier and seamlessly integrates everything with your CRM. For example, you can automate the input of quotes, orders, shipments, and more. This automation allows your customer service staff to no longer chase the data from one system to another, freeing up more time for essential tasks like actually interacting with your customers. It's also easy to automate contract management. By tracking document and contract expiration dates and setting a time-based trigger, you can automatically initiate a process that notifies suppliers or customers of renewals.

RPA Integration Methods

There are many entry points for integrating RPA software with your CRM. Three of the most commonly used options are:

• Using an API or web service is the most efficient and straightforward way to connect your systems. Most CRMs, like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics, come equipped with this capability.
• Direct database integration may not be as efficient as using an API, but it can work, especially with internal systems where you know you can safely interact with the database.
• User interface automation works when there are no APIs, and you want to extract information from a Windows desktop or web browser to save time on data entry.

Ultimately, your organization and its processes determine the best approach for automation. If you want to learn more about automation possibilities, please contact us. We're here to help, and our software robots are ready to get to work for you!