Front-To-Back-Office Integration

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Front-To-Back-Office Integration

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manage customer relationships more effectively, reduce costs, increase profitability and
achieve sustainable competitive advantage over the long term. Front-to-back-office
integration, however, can be costly and complex for companies, especially SMBs. The use of
pre-packaged integration, therefore, represents the most effective solution for these
organisations.
Sage CRM provides out-of-the-box integration to market-leading Sage ERP products. This
equips SMBs, on a low-cost, low-complexity basis, with consistent customer data across
their front and back-office environments and provides users with real customer visibility
across financial and non-financial data, as well as facilitating straight-through processing
which significantly reduces errors and administrative cost. Over the long-term, companies
using Sage CRM’s front-to-back-office integration capabilities can expect to significantly
decrease administrative cost, increase customer satisfaction and consequential revenue
opportunities, and build sustainable competitive advantage in an increasingly challenging
marketplace.

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Conclusion
Independent research suggests that customer intelligence gaps still exist after the majority
CRM implementations because the issue of back-office connectivity has not been adequately
addressed. Where this is the case, customer data cannot be shared effectively and business
processes are punctuated by errors, delays and paperwork. This is likely to result in
customer satisfaction issues and spiralling administrative cost. The success of a CRM
project, therefore, should not be judged solely on how effectively it brings together font-office
operations, but on how it also facilitates interoperation with the back-office environment,
encompassing people, processes, departments and applications.

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A cost-effective, flexible and upgrade-ready integration platform
Sage CRM’s front-to-back-office integration capabilities are particularly cost-compelling for
organisations that have already invested in a Sage back-office solution. Specifically, the
integration component can be deployed using minimal consulting resource and, generally,
without the need for additional hardware infrastructure. Additionally, because Sage CRM’s front-to-back-office integrations are loosely coupled and SOA-based, they are upgrade safe
and also facilitate future migration from one Sage ERP product to another while minimising
cost and risk

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Self-service enablement
Sage CRM also provides the capability to deliver key CRM functionality directly to customers
through a self-service web portal which, when combined with front-to-back-office integration,
allows customers to:
1. Access their full account details online including invoice and delivery history
2. Configure and place orders online using pricing rules that automatically incorporate
company-specific volume purchase agreements and discount structures.
3. Query order and delivery status online, as well as proof-of-delivery details.

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Once an order has been created in Sage CRM, a corresponding order is automatically
generated in the ERP system where it can be processed immediately. Delays and errors are
eliminated because: (1) accurate pricing and VAT calculations have been carried out within

the CRM system at the point of entry and (2) the order already includes all of the data
required by the ERP system.
Companies, as a result, can achieve significant cost and time savings on an on-going basis,
as well as significantly enhancing customer service through on-schedule order fulfilment and
reduced order errors. The following diagram illustrates the uninterrupted, optimised, costefficient
and customer-centric front-to-back-office process flow that Sage CRM provides

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Facilitating ‘straight-through’ processing
Sage CRM’s out-of-the-box integrations allow companies to implement “straight-through”
business processes that provide the workflow and automation capabilities that manage the
entire customer lifecycle seamlessly across all interaction and transaction types. Specifically,
Sage CRM’s quotes and orders functionality bridges the process automation capabilities of
the Sage front-office environment and the Sage back-office environment, and, as a result,
removes the need for manual intervention as orders generated within the CRM system are
passed automatically through to the ERP system for processing and fulfilment. Additionally,
front-office staff are equipped with the data and functionality they need from the back-office
system to carry out complex pricing and VAT calculations, as well as being provided with
real-time inventory information to ensure orders are fulfilled on a timely basis and in line with
customer expectations.

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Sage CRM’s true customer visibility enables:
1. Sales teams to maximise their revenue potential through the identification of latent
cross-sell and up-sell opportunities within their customer base.
2. Sales representatives to book orders correctly, first time, every time, by providing
them with access to the account, pricing and stock information they need to do their
jobs effectively.
3. Customer service representatives to address customer queries with confidence by
providing them with the shipping, invoicing and returns information that they need to
do their jobs effectively.
4. Customer service managers to ensure that their customers are current on
maintenance and service contracts, and that their service level agreements are
delivered on a profitable basis
5. Marketing executives to carry out detailed financial segmentation on their customer
base to support highly targeted and effective go-to-market programmes
6. Marketing managers to calculate ‘real-world’ return-on-investment based on actual
revenue yield from their marketing programmes.

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360 degree customer visibility
Sage CRM enables front and back-office employees to discover and share deeper, more
meaningful customer insight based on a combination of CRM-derived and ERP-derived
intelligence. Sage CRM’s ‘trading account’ entity facilitates the mapping of multiple accounts
contained within the Sage ERP system, to their appropriate company record within Sage
CRM. This provides an ERP-empowered CRM user experience with customer transaction
information delivered through the native CRM user interface. It also allows ERP-based
customer data to be surfaced within dashboards, reports and tabs, and used within groups,
lists and workflow automation

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Front-to-back-office data consistency
Sage CRM’s out-of-the-box ERP integrations provide for bi-directional synchronisation of
customer information, both financial and non-financial, between the Sage front-office
environment and back-office environment, ensuring that:
1. Information is captured once at source and then automatically propagated to all
relevant fields throughout the Sage front and back-office environments without having
to wait for it to be re-keyed and re-validated as it passes from one system to the next.
2. The most accurate and up-to-date customer data is available to front-office and backoffice
employees at all times.
3. The most accurate and up-to-date pricing and inventory information is available to
front-office staff at all times, meaning that quotes and orders are correct and that
customers are accurately advised as to the lead-time of their orders according to realtime
information rather than guesswork