As lots of businesses change their pricing models and move towards a Recurring Revenue Model in 2020, it’s more important than ever to get a handle on your key business metrics. Committed Monthly Recurring Revenue, Customer Churn, Customer Acquisition Cost, Customer Lifetime Value to name a few! Having worked in a start-up that experienced mega growth, I have undergone the pain of not having unified systems. Now it’s time the front and back office systems started talking…

The beginning of the cloud revolution

When the cloud systems took over, Salesforce led the way. Their fantastic CRM gave visibility into all sorts of business metrics and made it assessable. CEOs and CROs were able to view powerful dashboards showing bookings, leads, lead conversion and pipeline from any device with an internet connection. Service Cloud also gave great insights into the health of your customers.

But something was missing…

I had a vision that the Customer Account record should be a rich source of data, a one-stop-shop for a full view on that particular customer. But, with the lack of financial data (considered ‘back office’) alongside that generated by Salesforce, this wasn’t the case.

The solution

Enterprise Resource Planning integrates all your core business processes to offer a more complete view of your performance. Even better is having an ERP solution that seamlessly integrates with the Salesforce platform (or is native to the Salesforce platform). Then, you can truly bring together your front and back office systems to form a comprehensive understanding of your business and customers. Imagine navigating to a customer record and being able to see all opportunities associated to the account, all cases raised by that customer, the value (ARR / MRR) that customer is worth, invoices outstanding, DSO for that customer. The data and analytics possibilities are endless from a company level right down to a customer level.

The power of the finance team

Using an ERP solution that is native to Salesforce (such as FinancialForce, Accounting Seed and ZumZum Financials) adds even more information to your Salesforce Accounts and Opportunities. This means the finance team can become true business partners, provide valuable insights back into the business and help make more valuable and informed decisions. As a result, you get a 360° view of not only your customers but your business too. Again, this data can be accessed from any device, meaning you can access your data from virtually anywhere!

What about Quote to Cash?

Applying a Quote to Cash system can offer faster sales cycles, as well as greater accuracy across contracts. However, trying to then integrate your Quote to Cash process with financial systems can have time and cost implications for businesses. The overriding question leaders ask, is it worth it? Having a digital strategy mapped to business processes creates sustainable growth. By unifying systems, data, employees and customers through lead to ledger leverages competitive advantage for mid-size and enterprise companies. If you’re looking to future-proof the success of your company, implementing a technology solution that connects the customer journey is key and will enable these fundamentals: –

1. Accelerated information processing across an integrated business network
2. Increased automation to eliminate manual input and management of orders and invoices
3. Improved task prioritisation based on value creation and need for exception handling
4. Less complexity by providing complete, contextual information to speed up approvals
5. One point of truth for all your sales and financial forecasting and reporting
6. Smarter, agile collaboration that fosters intelligent cooperation, productivity and engagement
7. Streamlined business and operational optimisation based on process flexibility, real-time analytics, and full-scale visibility

However you decide to unify your CRM and ERP, the benefits are undeniable. Get in touch with the team to learn more.