A large majority of digital projects we come across these days include some form of integration with third-party systems, these are typically anything from CRMs, ERPs or Payment Gateways.
From our years of experience, we understand that our clients often find the prospect of embarking on a web integration project daunting. Equally, if not properly planned out at the outset can become an expensive exercise.
In this article, we share with you our experience on the common types of web integrations and what to consider when planning out your projects.
Web to Lead
This is the most common type of web integration we see. Lots of organisations have connected their website forms to the lead modules of their CRMs.
The logic behind doing it is really simple. You avoid the possibility of web enquiries going missing or being handled badly by passing them into an existing lead management process.
For most organisations with one centralised sales force or customer services team creating this functionality is straightforward. All that is needed is for the fields in the form to map to fields in the CRM.
However, some web to lead integrations can be more complex. For example:
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- If we need to capture who the customer is as part of the web form (this often means that it needs to be assigned to a particular Account Manager)
- If the form is rules-based and can lead to leads being sent to specific departments depending on the data added (E.G. Customer services for complaints vs Sales for new customer enquiries)
These integrations tend to take a little longer to configure but in the overall web integration spectrum, they’re still relatively straightforward.
As most CRMs have a lead function, we tend to see clients needing this functionality selecting their CRM on price.
One of the drawbacks of open-source systems is that the lack of form management tools means that the rules-based form approach will require more web developer effort. Consider CMS platforms with comprehensive out of the box form functionality.
Customer login areas
These integrations tend to be more diverse than web-to-lead. Typical information integrated from CRM into front-end customer login experiences include:
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- Customer Name
- Customer Address
- Organisation Name
- Email Address
- Phone Number
- Name of Account Manager
- Email / Marketing preferences
- Sales Orders
- Complaints / Enquiry correspondence
- Trial statuses
- Previous Purchasing history
- Reward Points (often through integrations with rewards systems)
- Event tickets/bookings (often with additional ticketing platform)
- Policy documents/document uploads (often via additional document management system integrations)
- Delivery statuses (frequently with integrations with logistics partners)
Customer login integrations are frequently much more complicated to specify and require a much broader UX approach. Where most organisations fall down on is that they feel, logically, that it makes sense to integrate with all web services available.
This means that not enough time is spent on the integrations which have a larger impact on the overall customer experience.
Frequently, user frustration in customer login areas is due to the way that out of the box CRM and CMS integrations work. A common example of this is overly long enquiry processes because we need to capture information in a certain way for the integration to work properly.
In this situation, an integration specialist or a BA can help to specify how the logic of both systems can be changed to improve the overall experience.
Customer login areas range in size substantially. For more comprehensive integrations and integrations with high levels of end-customer usage, larger enterprise-level CRMs like Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce tend to be more popular choices.
The CMS platforms you should go towards, are ones that have great out of the box connectors and have a flexible integration bus that allows developers to create complex and robust integration quickly.
Product data, conversion tools and pricing information
OK so this isn’t the sort of thing that you would normally expect to see in a Customer Relationship Management system, but for some organisations (especially B2B organisations offering eCommerce) products, pricing and customer relationships are inextricably linked.
These integrations tend to include:
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- Product data (name, images, sizes, colours, etc)
- Product specifications
- Delivery availability
- Stock availability
- Basket abandonment
- Complimentary product recommendation based on previous purchases
- Special customer pricing (validated as part of a login process)
- Credit application processes (via integrations with credit checking partners)
- Credit limits (often through additional integrations with accounting systems)
With these sorts of integrations, the CRM needs to either provide a direct interface for the data they are providing or integrate with an eCommerce structure. Working without this and trying to apply individual product integrations at a page level is a world of pain to be avoided.
These integrations are normally complicated and have workflow rules attached to online customer activity to support the speed of the service. Examples of this might include putting time pressures on CRM users to accept/reject pending credit applications within a certain timeframe.
Organisations with this size of eCommerce requirement are also likely to be doing so much volume that stock management becomes a more regular challenge. This can mean that the CMS requires reporting controls which help to spot significant changes in customer demand before it becomes a major operational headache.
For this sort of requirement, the larger enterprise-level CRMs like SAP, Oracle and Dynamics proliferate. However, we often see hybrid solutions with smaller CRM systems working alongside cheaper ERP solutions. Look towards CMS platforms that have their own strong inbuilt eCommerce platforms.
A Web Integration Success Story
A leading manufacturer of specialist measurement equipment, TSI Inc., embarked on a digital transformation project that featured a lot of integration points.
The overarching project goal was to transform their business globally by the delivery of a tightly integrated, e-Commerce platform that met the e-business needs of TSI’s seven (7) core business/product divisions internationally.
The new platform needed to also focus on achieving operational efficiencies whilst meeting the communication with and management of a worldwide partner distributor network.
The platform had to be seamlessly integrated via bi-directional APIs into TSI’s existing SAP (ERP & CRM) system and facilitate secure online payment. Including a seamless B2B and Partner Distributor ordering capability, with advanced account management and fulfilment tracking.
During the build phase, e-commerce capability was set up and integrated directly into their SAP ERP to provide the ability for real-time data including:
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- Pricing, availability, stock levels, Business Intelligence Dashboard
- Ordering, request a quote lead generation, order history, quotations
Integration with their bespoke payments solution was also implemented, including site-wide pricing in multiple currencies.
A full channel distribution partner portal is now available which avails of all core eCommerce functionality, with one product catalogue meeting the needs of B2B customers and Distribution Partners.
A view previous order and place again function has also been deployed which will allow existing customers to resurrect a typical order and reorder with a few simple clicks.
Overall the delivered solution provides a solid, robust, highly secure, tightly integrated digital B2B eCommerce platform, one that will help TSI Inc. grow and evolve its business globally.
Interested in learning more? Check out some of our recent web integration projects.