Your Christmas card campaign reflects the quality of your ERP/CRM integration!
December is the time when companies send Christmas cards to their business partners as a gesture of good tidings. Often, several cards are unintentionally sent to the same person, which can be embarrassing and annoying! This reflects the level of data integration in your organisation. How good is your IT integration today?
Consequences of poor integration
Companies around the world struggle daily with the consequences of poor ERP/CRM integration. The majority of them use multiple systems for these different areas, which are often implemented in a "silo" approach. The integration between these subsystems is poor at best. Or worse: non-existent! It is not uncommon for the official system to be accompanied by dozens of individual registrations in Excel and Access. These function as independent systems. However, we also see situations in which the integrated ERP and CRM systems are not used in an integrated manner. The result of all these scenarios is data redundancy.
The distribution of Christmas cards in particular makes these duplicates painfully visible in your data. Not only for you, but above all for your customers, prospects and suppliers. What impression do you give them of your company? How do they rate the professionalism of your organisation? Or does it perhaps explain the many mistakes your company makes over the course of the year?
The damage caused by sending multiple Christmas cards is, of course, forgivable. And the cost of the extra envelopes and stamps is manageable. However, it's a completely different story with incorrect deliveries, specifications that deviate from the agreements made and invoices that are sent to the wrong address. The reality is that your customers are willing to switch suppliers for less these days.
There is also hope
The good news is that December is the best time of year to make New Year's resolutions. So if your Christmas card campaign has these characteristics, it might be a good idea to put modernising your ERP and CRM systems at the top of your list of resolutions for 2022!
Our conclusion
The Christmas card campaign shows how well a company's ERP/CRM integration works and reveals common problems caused by poor system integration.
Use the time to reflect, uncover sources of error, identify potential and start the next year prepared.
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