Integrating CRM Across Your Organization for Business Success

Andrew Blackmore

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783001057
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Science General
• Index: Computer Science

This book is written for IT leaders across organizations, whether they are managers, project managers, or developers who are charged with integrating CRM into IT systems for business success.

Integrating CRM Across Your Organization for Business Success

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Integrating CRM Across Your Organization for Business Success

Copyright © 2016 Impackt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author(s), nor Impackt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Impackt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Impackt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: January 2016

Production reference: 1180116

Published by Impackt Publishing Ltd.

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Credits

Author

Andrew Blackmore

Reviewer

Davy Pelssers

Acquisition Editor

Richard Gall

Content Development Editor

Vaibhav Pawar

Copy Editor

Tanvi Bhatt

Project Coordinator

Priyanka Goel

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Maria Gould

Paul Hindle

Graphics

Jason Monteiro

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

About the Author

Andrew Blackmore works for Sage Software Solutions in Vancouver. He has spent the last 15 years leading the development of integrations between CRM and ERP applications all over the world, using every different technology available and for any conceivable business use case. Over that time, he has built up a large store of experience and knowledge that he is imparting in this book. He has seen first-hand the business benefit of integrating CRM in organizations and has a deep familiarity of the techniques and solutions in this book.

Andrew's passion is developing software in an ingenious way to build efficient, innovative solutions that provide a real lasting business benefit for customers. He is currently working on the new cloud and mobile solutions projects for Sage.

I would like to thank my wife and family for their support and encouragement.

About the Reviewer

Davy Pelssers is a freelance SAP CRM and SAP CRM Authorizations consultant. He started his SAP consulting career in 2000, and since then has worked within several SAP modules in the past such as SAP IS-U, SAP BW, SAP CRM, and SAP Authorizations. For the past 10 years, his focus has been in the area of SAP Customer Relationship Management and SAP CRM Authorizations. In this last area, he has become a real expert due to his profound research. His main strengths are his capability to creatively design solutions for complex customer requirements, his persistence in solving issues, and his drive to always learn new things.

Davy is founder of the company Dasap Consulting BVBA and is located in Belgium.

He is also the owner of the website www.sapuniversity.eu where a group of motivated SAP consultants from over the world share their knowledge by writing useful articles about the established SAP modules.

Preface

Every business that deals with customers has a CRM application of some kind to manage customer interactions, and an accounting or ERP application of some kind to deal with financial transactions. Even though the business process of managing customers is directly related to the business goal of making new financial transactions, these two applications are rarely integrated.

This book is dedicated to showing you how to build an integration between your CRM and ERP applications.

I have spent most of my career working on systems integration projects. I have spent the last thirteen years with Sage Plc, a global business management software company, building integrations between CRM and ERP applications. Sage produces over twenty ERP applications–from tier 1 single-user accounting applications to tier 5 enterprise-level ERPs–in different geographies across Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and Africa, and it has integrated most of them with its CRM application, Sage CRM, and other CRM applications. This has given me a very wide range of integration experiences with many different technology stacks and features.

This book is aimed at anyone who is thinking about building an integration between any CRM and ERP application. You could be an IT manager, project manager, or developer in a business that uses any decent CRM and ERP application, or a business partner or development partner for any commercial CRM or ERP application. You could be thinking about building an integration from scratch, or extending an existing integration.

The structure of the book is designed to take you, in a logical sequence, through all stages of building an integration; from a discussion of the business benefits of building an integration, through how to build an integration, which features to build, and how to project manage the implementation. I have kept the scope of the projects at the low end of the scale, always avoiding super complex architectures and designs so that they can be implemented by one or two good developers.

At the end of the chapters, there are advanced workshop checklists, which are aimed at exploring alternatives, shortcuts, improvements, and different design approaches that you can take. You should follow through the design of a feature, and once there is an understanding of the design goals, you should go through the advanced workshop section to evaluate alternatives that may be more suitable for your own particular situation.

Once you have read through the chapters and completed the workshops and advanced workshop sections, you should have all you need to start your integration project. You should have a business justification for implementing your integration, an integration architecture for your integration, and detailed designs for each of your integration features, all tailored to your CRM and ERP applications. You should have a resource plan and project plan for implementation and deployment, and an ongoing plan for support and maintenance of the integration.

What this book covers

The book takes you through all stages of building an integration, including a discussion of the business benefits of integrations, how to architect and design an integration, which features you should build that are of most benefit to you and your business, and how you will project manage and develop the integration.

Chapter 1, What is CRM Integration and Why is It Good For Your Business, talks about what we mean by an integration that links a CRM application with an ERP application, what are the business processes that will be affected by an integration, and most importantly, why we do it—...

Table of contents

• Integrating CRM Across Your Organization for Business Success