Introduction
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software are two of those tools that are quite essential for any modern business that has certain goals to achieve in near future. Both of these software might seem similar in a few certain ways; however, both of these tools are quite significant and tend to play a vital role in the success and progress of a business.
Enterprise resource planning software, or ERP, generally focuses on streamlining processes across the store along with focusing on general business aspects. CRM systems help improve the overall impressions of the business with current as well as potential customers.
During the steady journey of a business’s growth, these tools tend to acquire, store and generate enormous chunks of data about employees, customers, and other business areas. Utilizing this data for rapidly achieving certain milestones set by a business might be a bit laborious for the employees. However, if businesses consider integrating AI into CRM and ERP tools, they will be able to handle this data and information much more conveniently and utilize it to produce desired results.
According to a study conducted by IDC, AI-enhanced CRM activities are expected to boost global business revenues by $1.1 trillion by the end of 2022. IDC conducted a survey to find out how the integration of AI with CRM impacts the economy. During this survey, they acquired various use cases from respondents where AI might be useful in making the CRM systems better. Following is a graph that depicts the percentage of participants either who plan to use the specified use case or are already using it :
How Integrating CRM and ERP with AI Can Assist your Business
Integrating AI into CRM and ERP software is an essential to-do task if you are planning to grow your business rapidly in the long term. Following are some facts that will assist you in comprehending how integrating artificial intelligence into CRM and ERP can help you in your business.
- Both these tools collect massive data over the years during business operations. This data can be analyzed and utilized to produce desired outcomes by integrating AI.
- AI can help by collecting customer data from various touchpoints and then combine it with the data collected by CRM.
- Routine responsibilities like payroll and accounting can be automated by AI.
- The correlation between a specific business operation and current sales trends can be identified by integrating AI into CRM and ERP.
- Improve customer service with the help of virtual assistants and AI-powered chatbots.
- Optimize prices of the products or services offered by a business according to trends to take advantage of the market conditions.
- AI can assist in acquiring data conveniently from CRM and ERP by using chatbots.
Making the Most of Artificial Intelligence Integrated into CRM and ERP
The leading software providers usually prefer integrating AI in ERP and CRM. With the added assistance of AI, these software offer tons of new features that are quite useful for business users. Following is how integrating artificial intelligence into CRM and ERP can be beneficial for your business:
1. Deeper customer understanding
CRMs contain a vast amount of information regarding customers; however, added AI features are quite assistive when it comes to retailers understanding their customers in a specifically personalized way. Artificially intelligent solutions take socio-economic demographics, purchase history, and several other factors into consideration for the purpose of analyzing the profile of a certain customer. With the help of AI, CRMs can analyze millions of customer profiles for the sake of improving customer experience, personalizing searches, and providing better product recommendations to the customers.
2. Sales assistance
The sales team of any business usually works on several tasks on a daily basis including finding, researching, and contacting leads, giving replies to emails, and various other compulsory tasks. Artificial Intelligence can be useful in providing valuable assistance to the salespeople of a certain business when it comes to saving time and utilizing it on other significant tasks including cross-selling, converting leads, up-selling, and more.
Certain CRMs have AI-powered tools that assist salespeople of an organization to find potential leads and their contact information. These tools also do the job of collecting news from certain data sources that are relevant to those potential leads and their organization as well for the salespeople to target them most appropriately. More AI-powered tools integrated into CRMs help analyze email sentiments along with predicting the closure of deals.
The likes of information mentioned above are quite helpful when it comes to connecting with prospects, prioritizing tasks of salespeople, and selling smartly to the clients of the business in a smooth way.
3. Enhanced customer service
Quick and prompt customer service is usually considered the backbone of any business. As the use of social media is increasing day by day, the customers avoid complaining personally to the service agents of a business. Instead, they prefer discussing the issues they are facing regarding the products and services offered by a business on social media platforms as well.
Hence, relying only on the customer’s history that is generally available on the CRM is surely not a good approach. An AI-driven CRM can assist in collecting data from various channels including social media websites and combining this data with the data existing in the CRM. This collective data of a customer can be quite helpful in solving product and service-related issues that the customers are facing. The more the issues will be resolved, the better the products will get.
Major Benefits of Integrating AI into CRM and ERP
Artificial intelligence has a huge potential that can boost the output of any CRM system belonging to a certain organization. AI can bring a vast factor of positive change in the efficiency of ERP and CRM systems. It can help build specific targeted offers for the customers of a business by delivering predictive behaviour results.
It can also provide a complete view of the entire prospect until the retention journey of a certain customer that can be quite assistive in developing better business strategies. Following are some of the major benefits of AI into CRM and ERP:
1. Understand how your customer feels
The foundation of a prosperous organization is its sales and customer service. Companies tend to spend a vast chunk of their budget on CRMs that can assist them in optimizing their sales strategies. If these CRMs are integrated with AI, they will become even more useful and efficient than before.
An artificially intelligent CRM can interpret data and can also help out in identifying certain customers that are expected to make another purchase. AI-powered CRM software can predict customer behaviour and can implement personalized actions that can increase the chances of conversions. This will also assist in developing a positive image of the business along with generating more leads.
Besides the above, artificial intelligence is now also being used to study the emotions of the customers as well. It can majorly assist you in converting your dissatisfied customers into satisfied ones along with increasing their retention rate.
2. Providing an instant response to customers
The most applicable approach to boost customer satisfaction is by providing them with the most viable customer service. Immediate replies from a company are quite sufficient for customers when they are facing issues with the products or services provided by the company.
Before we had AI and CRM, it was much difficult to provide a quick response to the queries made by consumers. However, now things have evolved. Thanks to artificial intelligence, companies can consider automating common queries that can free up extra time for the customer representatives to pay heed to the critical queries made by consumers.
Businesses around the globe are focusing on implementing chatbots in their CRM systems. Before long, AI-integrated CRMs will be able to give real-time advice to the sales representatives as well. The integration of AI can help automate businesses that can assist in improving customer engagement and satisfaction. In short, artificial intelligence has become a must-to-have thing for every organization around the globe that plans to improve their customer satisfaction and achieve their sales goals.
3. Enhancing application development
A very noticeable benefit of integrating AI into CRM and ERP is that it will assist in developing or integrating applications that tend to increase conversion rates.
For example, if you integrate CRM with customer feedback software, artificial intelligence will be able to access this data automatically. By utilizing insights, companies can enhance the quality of their services and products to deliver the best customer experience to their consumers. This can be quite beneficial for a business in the long term and can help achieve certain goals set by the sales team within a certain time.
4. Helping out in lead management
Sometimes, your sales representative may have a lot on their plate and they may forget to follow up on a lead. Due to this, you might lose a lead and this is something a business cannot afford.
Hence, if you consider integrating artificial intelligence into your CRM, it will help you simplify the lead management task. By doing this, AI can do the job of sales representatives without needing an actual salesperson. AI can automatically send out relevant emails or text messages to leads to catch up, leaving you nothing to worry about.
AI can do most of the simpler tasks that the sales team usually spends a lot of time on getting done. With the help of AI, the team will be able to focus on more complicated tasks that require a lot of focus and attention, rather than spending a major chunk of their day on much simpler tasks. In short, artificial intelligence is greatly helping out businesses and is revolutionizing the way sales teams engage and nurture their leads.
5. More leads
Customer relationship management software and artificial intelligence together can be able to provide much more comprehensive details on various parameters like price optimization, lead scoring, cross-selling, forecasting, and more.
Artificial intelligence can also analyze the past sales scenarios which include the rejected and accepted deals, buyer behaviour, and more, along with providing useful insights into it. AI develops recommendations that are quite assistive for sales reps at all stages of the sales pipeline.
In addition to that, AI can also be quite helpful for you when it comes to identifying which strategies are working and which ones need improvement. It is an absolute package for your sales and marketing team which leads to an increased number of leads closed. In short, AI integrated into CRM can be quite effective when it comes to boosting the overall revenue of your company by acquiring more sales.
6. Managing global audience
The internet has brought the world closer than it ever was before. However, with the internet, a complex challenge of serving the customers overseas got in the way of businesses.
Language installation has always presented itself as a barrier around the globe, for small startups to established businesses. However, with the advent of AI, now there are tons of AI-powered tools that can comfortably translate the titles of listings and searches for users to visit the businesses online and communicate with them without any hassle.
Giant companies like Microsoft and Google are offering AI-powered translation tools that you can combine with your CRM tools. This facility enables every business to reach out to its customers all around the globe.
Future of AI integration into CRM and ERP
When we talk about the future of AI integrated into CRM and ERP, we can eagerly say it’s bright. In the near future, AI-powered CRM systems will get better than ever. Even now, AI-powered CRMs can learn from the historical patterns and past decisions which enables the business to close more leads and make more sales. AI will also become able to predict future customer behaviour accurately.
With the help of AI integrated into CRM and ERP systems, sales reps will be able to connect to their consumers on a whole new level as they will be able to predict exactly what customers want and how they want it. This useful information will be utilized to provide a much better customer experience. Good customer experience undoubtedly leads to more sales and customer retention, ultimately boosting the overall revenue and growth of the company.
In addition to the above, AI will assist team workers and develop an urge in them to be more productive and show better results. Sales reps will not have to bother about data entry manually. Intelligent algorithms of AI will be able to segment customers easily along with storing and sorting valuable information regarding the customers that can be utilized by sales reps in the future to close more sales and provide customized offers to the customers.
An intelligent CRM powered by AI algorithms will help your sales team comprehend the satisfaction of your consumers in real-time. Once you acquire this insight, you will be able to take timely actions and identify the problems occurring at the moment. Artificial intelligence is going to be the key reliable strategy in the future to better analyze the intentions of consumers of businesses around the globe for providing personalized products and services to them.
Conclusion
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software are undoubtedly quite essential tools for modern businesses. However, when these tools are powered by AI, their functionality and efficiency doubles. Many companies are benefiting from AI-powered CRM and ERP software when it comes to generating more leads and closing more sales.
In addition to assisting the growth of any business, integrating AI into CRM and ERP can also be quite effective in lessening the burden of sales reps regarding general day-to-day tasks like sending emails and text messages to potential leads and so forth. With AI taking the headache of managing these simple routine tasks, sales reps will be able to focus on more detailed and complex tasks like planning strategies to improve the overall image of the business in masses and enhancing the quality of products and services currently offered by the business.
If you have not yet integrated your CRM or ERP software with AI, you are certainly leaving a lot of money on the table. Maybe it’s high time you realize that AI can get your business to new heights that you can’t even imagine. If you are looking for a smart AI solution that can boost your sales and effectively manage your potential leads by integrating with your CRM or ERP, consider going for Grabb AI.
Grabb is an intelligent AI solution that integrates with your existing CRM or ERP tool to enable automated extraction along with analysis of big data linked to sales. This data can help boost your sales and increase your revenue in the long run. So, what are you waiting for? Contact us now to get your business automated and artificially intelligent before you know it.
