Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MAY 2014
Begin by establishing
a common lexicon
between all members
of your team and all
of your stakeholders
so there is no
misunderstanding or
misconstrued intent or
action along the way.
Scribe Software Corporation 1750 Elm Street, Suite 200
P: 1.603.622.5109
F: 1.603.622.3862 www.scribesoft.com
So, where do you begin? Here are your first ten steps.
mean
by
>>> 2
>>> 3
>>> 4
4
Beyond the
fundamental
data structures
of your ERP,
CRM, and MA
systems its key
to understand
what the custom
workflows are
and how their
dependencies and
connections are
structured.
from
the
>>> 5
By definition,
the high-level
goal of any
integration
project is to
make things
work well
together.
>>> 6
5
The most
important system
you will integrate
will be the
community of
people who will
actually use the
integrated systems
and data.
As important as
it is to know your
technology systems
and data
structures, it is
even more critical
to know your user
community.
>>> 7
It is obvious that bad data will always have a negative impact upon
your results. What is not often considered is the impact bad data
can have on user adoption.
When you evaluate system initiatives that have failed in the past in
an attempt to determine where the project went off track, the
likelihood is that the root cause was the failure of users to adopt
the new system. This may be caused by a failure or lack of training,
but more often than not it is caused by the users perception that
there is no value for them in the new system. This perception is
often created by a lack of data quality.
When data is clearly erroneous, the typical user will not assign
blame to the data. Rather, they will see the system as failing.
More than one occasion of bad data can easily cause users to
simply stop using the system and find ways around it, usually using
what they had previously used to accomplish the same functions.
Data Context
Each of the systems involved has a different focus, a different
context that the data exists in, and may see specific data entities
differently.
For example, an account in an ERP is usually a company that
does business with you. Of course, if your finance department is
looking at it, an account is really a categorization for a given
income or expense flow that exists on a Chart of Accounts in the
general ledger. By contrast, your CRM sees an account as a
container for many contacts which may have a wide variety of
activities and events related to them.
The ERP is focused on invoices and inventory. The CRMs focus is
far deeper, a far more intimate understanding of each customer
and each contact within each customer company. The CRM may
be considered to have more focus on the hierarchy within the
10 BEST PRACTICES FOR INTEGRATING YOUR CUSTOMER DATA
PUBLISHED BY SCRIBE SOFTWARE CORPORATION 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
>>> 8
Careful review
during the
integration
process can
often uncover
flawed or less
efficient
processes that
can readily be
improved
during the
integration
process.
>>> 9
SELECTING AN APPROACH
>>> 10
Remember that
users quickly
become impatient
with anything they
perceive as not
providing
reliability and
value.
>>> 11
SETTING EXPECTATIONS
>>> 12
10
CUSTOMER INVOLVEMENT
>>> 13
>>> 14
>>> 15