Successful businesses understand that the entire company – from sales to customer service to accounting – must have a consistent understanding of customers.  No matter what team you’re on, consumer data must be timely and relevant.  If an account manager is reaching out to a client, shouldn’t they be aware of any outstanding payments due or outdated credit cards?  Of course they should!  Especially if it allows them to be more helpful to the customer and more efficient and productive in their job. 

According to this article from Business 2 Community and research from Aberdeen Group, organizations with standardized and available customer data can:

• Performed significantly better in regards to repeat business year after year
• Ranked higher in expressed “high-levels of satisfaction” with the organization’s goods or services
• Maintained higher sales, with a larger percentage of the sales team attaining their annual quotas
  
  

With CRM platforms like Salesforce being the heart and soul of most companies day-to-day business, one of the key ways to provide this seamless experience is by integrating key accounting functions like billing and payments directly into Salesforce.  The benefits to this important integration abound, but some of the key wins include:

Stronger communication between key departments.  Better access to key information leads to better communication throughout the company because no one feels as though they've been left in the dark or finds themselves frustrated by a lack of visibility or information.  It also allows everyone to be more productive since they aren't working with partial information or working to track down missing information.

Improved customer communication and satisfaction.  Providing better access to customer information keeps departments from asking the same question over and over.  It also allows them to have more productive dialog with the client since they have a 360 degree view of that customer's activity. 

A better understanding of complex pricing plans and packages for customer service teams.  The increase in subscription billing in recent years has allowed companies to create more complex pricing plans to cater to the needs of different customers with varying expectations and demands.  This is great for sales teams, but can be difficult for customer service.  But it doesn't have to be.    

Better visibility into key customer metrics.  Integrating accounting/ERP systems directly into your Salesforce CRM will provide a much more well-rounded view into key performance indicators.  This in turn allows you to make better, smarter decisions about how to grow and strengthen your business.