CRM Business Intelligence: A New Frontier in Business

The primary difference, of course, is the fact that a CRM product is an entire system that regulates nearly all aspects of a customer’s experience including marketing, sales, support, and service. There are additional applications for human resources, contact management, inventory control, calendaring and more. CRM business intelligence ensures that all of this various data is streamlined into one central database that is readily accessible and the CRM can be used by all departments within a company.

Business Intelligence, on the other hand, is essentially a computer-based method for spotting and analyzing data trends in terms of sales and customer tendencies acquired by your CRM. It does not offer as wide a range of resources that a CRM system does and has significantly fewer management tools that can apply to areas outside of its specialty--namely reporting, predictive modeling and statistical analysis. Consequently, the valuable centralizing of disparate forms of data in one place, which is an integral part of a CRM system, does not occur in Business Intelligence systems.

This capability is another key distinction between a CRM system and Business Intelligence: a CRM merges data analysis with the deployment of particular business actions based on that information. Business Intelligence will grant access to that same data but will leave the facilitation of this information, and all of its practical applications, to the user’s discretion.

Generally speaking, a competitive CRM system utilizes many of the same modules that Business Intelligence provides in terms of analytics, predictive analytics, data and text mining, as well as the benchmarking of information. But whereas Business Intelligence can merely identify pertinent trends and stratify various types of information, a CRM system can act on this data while directly incorporating it into other facets of a company.

For instance, both CRM and business intelligence software can analyze sales information to identify what elements of the surrounding community make up a key customer demographic. The CRM business intelligence can then forward this information to the marketing department and come up with methods for exploiting this information in terms of promotions and advertising. The success of this CRM business intelligence combined action will in turn be evaluated and refined even further.

CRM business intelligence integration can provide more insight into your customers by analyzing their behavior and preferences to allow you to run targeted ad campaigns. Such well-thought-out marketing campaigns via your CRM business intelligence solution can help capture similar customers and improve sales. 

There are many benefits to using a CRM business intelligence software solution for your business:

• Appraisal and pricing of your goods: with the help of the data provided by your CRM business intelligence solution, companies are accurately able to comprehend the market trends for their products, hence, price their products more efficiently. With information to real-time inventory and supply chain data using a business intelligence plugin in your CRM, you are able to price your goods according to current demand and supply. 
• Better decision-making: With the aid of shopper behavior analysis, trends, and industry influences, your CRM business intelligence solution can interact better with your customers and help your marketing efforts.
• Better segmentation and engagement: with the Big Data from your CRM business intelligence solution, you will be able to understand your customers better. Customer differentiation, segmentation, and identification are aspects of marketing that a CRM business intelligence can help you explore enabling your CRM to interact with customers with emails, calls, sales meetings, and other ways to highlight your products. 
• Customer service optimization: CRM business intelligence data can help you run multi-channel marketing campaigns with personalization. This can improve how a customer responds to your brand and improve customer retention and loyalty.
• Loyalty programs: CRM business intelligence helps you achieve loyal customers. With the help of customer loyalty programs, you will be able to retain such loyal customers and ensure that your ideal customer base is attended to properly. Higher customer satisfaction means continued business for your company. 

Let's explore how a CRM business intelligence integration can be used in business:

• Customer service: with CRM business intelligence data, you will be able to detect customer service issues more quickly. Order delays, prolonged response times, and complaints can ruin customer service for your new or loyal customers. With customer segmentation data from your CRM business intelligence solution, you are able to take a targeted approach to customer service needs.
• Sales: with valuable insight into sales patterns with a CRM business intelligence integration, you are able to analyze trends on a live dashboard to monitor the performance of your sales lead conversion. With personalized dashboards for each salesperson, you are able to track important sales metrics such as total sales, lead conversion rates, revenue, average deal size, and quota attainment by your sales staff using your CRM for sales and business intelligence.
• Marketing: with the use of a CRM business intelligence solution, you are able to target the most lucrative customers for your business. With customer segmentation data via your CRM business intelligence integration, you can run personalized marketing campaigns to further facilitate a lead conversion. Being able to track CRM marketing metrics such as website traffic, customer acquisition cost, customer retention rate, and growth rate can help you gauge how successful your marketing efforts are.
• Human resources management: CRM business intelligence solution can also help your HR team track employee performance and monitor sales and marketing objectives. CRM business intelligence integration can also help your HR team configure vacation schedules and optimize your company’s human resources.

Explore the best CRM business intelligence software integrations for marketing and learn more about how CRM business intelligence can help your business using our CRM buyer’s guide.