Are you drowning in a sea of manual data entry, spending hours each week copying information from one system to another?
You get an order online, and copy the details over to your shipping system? Or you get an email request from a customer and put it into your request tracker spreadsheet? I have worked with businesses where the staff are spending up to 25% of their time just moving information around, and it is putting brakes on business growth. And that is even before they realise that they can’t track key business information because it is all sitting in different systems.
And even worse, more data movement means more chance for mistakes. Has a customer changed their email address in your ordering system, but you forgot to update in the invoicing system, and you wonder why you aren’t getting paid? Or are your support team calling a customer back on the wrong number, or just spending half their time on every customer call trying to find out all the information about the customer in multiple places? It doesn’t take much imagination to realise how bad this is – for you and your customers!
So what is the answer?
I feel so old when I talk about this. Years ago the solution was to hire an IT person and create a lot of code to move the data around, and honestly those links were always fragile at best. The good news is that there are SO many modern technologies available to solve this problem for you.
There are 2 ways you can solve this problem:
- Build links between different pieces of software
- Replace the different solutions with one integrated solution
I’ll cover each option below to give you some idea of what is possible.
How can I build these links?
When you build links between your systems you often rely on APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). These are connection points that software providers create, ready for you to use to move information around.
For example your CRM might have an API that sends out changed customer details, and you might link this with your invoicing software’s API that allows you to send in updated customer details, which could solve the “wrong customer detail” problem we talked about before. There are probably pre-built tools in the CRM that help you put these links together to connect common pieces of information – for example, if you look for standard integrations you can easily find how to move new or changed contacts from Active Campaign (a CRM) to Xero (a finance system).
Sometimes these integrations will work direct from one app to the other, sometimes you need to by a tool that manages these links – Zapier is a good example of a common tool that helps with this.
This is a relatively simple way of solving lots of problems, but there are a few things to be careful of:
- Does the standard link work the way you want? For example, a common way to link contact details is to use the same email address. But what if the same email address appears multiple times in your records? You might need to find another way, which is much trickier if you veer away from the standard APIs.
- Do you have to buy more software? Adding in yet another monthly payment for another piece of software like Zapier might be worth it, but make sure it will give you value!
- Do you have the expertise? These connectors are set up to be easy, but you may need a little technical know-how to get it moving. Do you or your team have the time and interest to learn? Or will you need to pay for someone to help?
There are also tools that do a lot more than just connect standard APIs. There are now automation tools that can do so much more – they can update information during the transfer process based on rules you set – for example if a phone number needs to change format between your systems. They can have rules like “only move the information if the customer is not a cash customer”. There are even tools that let you record what you are doing on your computer and help you turn that into a fully automated process.
These tools are not always cheap, and the investment in getting them set up might seem too much, but this technology is moving so fast, particularly when you add in AI capability, that it can sometimes be worth just waiting 6 months and looking again at what is out there.
What would an integrated solution look like?
If you have groaned at the thought of the complexity of building links and adding yet another moving part to an already teetering structure, you might want to consider getting an integrated system. The two most common types of integrated systems are:
- ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems
ERPs will generally bring together all the internal parts of your business – from finance and HR to inventory management, procurement and manufacturing. There is usually a bit of crossover with CRM too, on the customer interface, particularly with sales orders. An ERP will bring together all of these functions without having to have different software for each area.
CRMs can handle all things customer, from marketing, sales and customer service. Many organisations have different CRM tools to do these different functions – perhaps one tool for email marketing and another for sales and another for customer service. There are CRM solutions that will bring them all together for you, so that your service team don’t need to spend the first minute of every customer interaction trying to find all the information about that customer across multiple systems.
These tools can be amazing, but it is a big deal to set them up and move information from your old systems into a new one. Often this is a decision that comes at a tipping point of business growth. When are you truly being held back by having everything in different places?
Having said that, if you are just starting out and making early software choices, you might consider looking at the entry-level options for some of the integrated tools. While it might seem like a lot now, the cost of making a change later can be huge.
How can I do this?
The old days of needing a lot of technical expertise to solve for this are over, but you do need your thinking cap on, and an understanding of the information you are moving around.
The steps I suggest are:
- Decide on the approach that you want to take, and where the biggest value is.
- Select and invest in the tools you need. Perhaps a trial of one thing will reassure you that this can work?`
- Find the right person to do this job: is there someone on your team that you will train up? Or will you find someone outside to help?
- Make a plan, get a quick win to prove the value to you and your team
Do you need help with deciding how you want to tackle this problem? Reach out in the comments and I’ll contact you to book in a free call to try and help you untangle your problem.
Or are you already thinking of investing in new systems, perhaps some integrated CRM software? If you have a small business and would like some affordable guidance, we are launching the CRM Game Plan course next month with pre-filled selection and implementation templates to guide you to the very best CRM solution for your business. It is designed to help small businesses make a confident decision about what CRM to buy and then make sure they implement it to deliver the value they are expecting. Head over to https://salespod.com.au/crm-game-plan-landing/ to learn more.
What challenges are you facing with moving information around?
