What’s a CRM Database [Integration and Maintenance]

A CRM database is the storage mechanism for all of the information related to your Customer Relationship Management processes. No matter what CRM system you select, all of the information that’s generated around your customer relationship will have to be recorded somewhere.

While notes scribbled on the backs of business cards could theoretically be called a CRM database, cloud-based solutions offer far more robust features and capabilities than a physical Rolodex (a rotating file of business cards).

Any vital data related to your relationship with a customer can easily be stored in a CRM database using customer data software. This may include data from a wide range of business processes and data sources including: 

• Customer contact information.
• Records of interaction with sales or support.
• Involvement in marketing campaigns. 

Even when all of this data lives in various systems across the business, various database integration strategies may be used to tie all of that data together in useful ways. 

While there could also be 1,000 reasons to implement a CRM database, listed below are three primary reasons to contemplate:

With the entire sorts of data mentioned above, what number of customer relationships do you’re thinking that a single human could maintain of their head? In line with Dunbar’s Number, that limit is around 150 maximum. 

A CRM database can easily hold thousands and thousands of records and beyond and supply access to the records with ease.

Most businesses grow beyond a single worker. Once that happens, the necessity to share information across the corporate to coordinate service, sales, and marketing expands. A CRM database offers an ideal solution for storing up-to-date information in a central location that each one relevant employees can access. 

Other than the operational efficiencies that come from a central database, the power to investigate, segment, and higher understand customers is an incredible profit. The flexibility to see trends in customer needs opens paths to higher serve those customers. Offering higher service to customers translates to higher revenue and profit.

Maintaining the differing types of information and systems inside your CRM database, in addition to the database system itself, is crucial. Here is find out how to maintain a CRM database:

If the information in your CRM gets dirty, a lot of its advantages may be wiped away. Examples of potential problems with dirty data include:

• Duplicate records.
• Incomplete records.
• Stale information.

It is necessary to construct systems and processes that keep data within the CRM database clean from these problems. Consider processes reminiscent of requiring unique email addresses, integrating with external systems directly, and training all users of the database to enhance the cleanliness of the information.

As with every technology, security updates are very vital. This is particularly vital with sensitive customer information. There are frequent news stories about data breaches as hackers goal CRM databases for the wealthy amount of information that’s stored there. 

Along with keeping your data clean, make sure that you retain your database itself updated and secure or discover a secure cloud partner who can allow you to manage this aspect so you possibly can deal with your customers.

With so many differing kinds of information that may be related to a selected customer, it’s prone to have a wide range of different systems where that data will live natively. For instance, customer contact information may live within the invoicing system while service requests live within the ticketing system. As well as, marketing and sales often bring their very own sets of tools reminiscent of ad and analytic platforms, commission and opportunity tracking, or phone systems, to call a number of.

Listed below are two basic strategies to integrate a CRM database across an organization:

It is feasible to centralize the entire tasks above right into a single system that shares a single database. With the wide range of plugins across the WordPress ecosystem, it isn’t unreasonable to piece together the entire tools you would like right into a single system and database. 

If that is the strategy you select, you may want to examine out a number of the exciting QuickStart products we’re creating over at Nexcess. 

If your online business needs multiple tools to run, nonetheless, you’ll need to integrate and mix data across multiple databases. The critical requirement to find a way to do that might be a typical customer number or ID.

A standard customer ID is a single value that follows a customer between different systems. This key will mean you can query data from different systems and have a key to affix various data sets together. This might be so simple as using a customer email address or may be made a bit more robust through the use of a novel identifier assigned to every customer.

Let’s walk through an example of how this customer ID may be used to integrate a CRM database with other systems.

A customer involves your website and decides to enroll as a customer. They complete the signup form, pay their money, and at the moment are an official customer. The eCommerce system captures contact information together with data about their order and payment, and it assigns the shopper a novel identifier.

That customer contact information, unique identifier, and details about their order might be created as a brand new record within the CRM database. These details at the moment are visible to all customer-facing teams to create a cohesive and exceptional customer experience, regardless of what team interacts with the shopper.

Now, let’s say the shopper has an issue with their order. The brand new customer logs into the portal and creates a ticket to ask for assistance. That ticket is created in a separate ticketing system, though it’s created with that very same unique identifier. 

The ticket system could now report back to the CRM database that there’s one open ticket attached to that customer ID. 

While every business will need to search out its own best path for making a CRM database, Liquid Web has a wide range of tools that can assist. From installing MySQL on a VPS to a High Availability Managed Database, we are able to allow you to construct out your personal CRM database today.