Your business is only as successful as your accounting and collections. Without these important back-office tasks, you wouldn’t be able to pay your staff, vendors or any bills required to run your organization. Your accounting data also affects marketing, sales, customer service and the delivery of goods and services. Have you ever considered your accounting department when choosing your CRM?
Do you know how important your CRM is to accounting and collections?
While the accounting department is responsible for invoicing, receiving payments, reporting and more, they also provide valuable data used to make business decisions. Your CRM can provide customer information including sales orders and forecasting, commissions tracking, notes related to customer activity and anything else required to get a full view of the customer relationship. This information helps to predict future buying actions from your customer and prompts your marketing department to personalize any offers sent through emails, newsletters or other communication.
Your CRM houses customer information but a good CRM also incorporates billing and receivables. This data helps your credit manager determine which clients pay on time and which clients don’t. Those that are more responsive to invoices could also be incentivized with higher credit lines and your sales team’s upsell offers. Those that are consistently late in paying would have their credit lines reconsidered. Cash flow and working capital depend on consistent accounts receivable. Properly managing your clients’ credit lines reduces late payments and collections.
Speaking of upselling, your accounting department will be overjoyed to know that predicted cash flow is improving. With customer data, sales forecasts, notes, orders and billing information all stored in a CRM, your sales team will be able to identify opportunities and when a customer is ready to buy. Historical trends, emails and other data could tip your sales staff that there is low-hanging fruit, ready for picking.
Because all of the customer information, sales trends and notes are all located in one system, internal communication is easily accessible. Your sales team knows that an account’s invoice is past due and therefore, shouldn’t be extended any credit. Your collections team knows that an account was given special consideration on an invoice by the sales manager and will be paid later than usual. The accounting department knows what commissions will be due. Everyone is on the same page because every point of data is located within a single system.
The marketing department gets a view of product and service offerings that are the most attractive to customers. The sales team gets an overarching view of the customer, including if they aren’t paying on time, so they can follow up as needed. The products or services can be stopped if the customer account is in collections. Reports can be obtained by any department to make important business decisions, budget, forecast sales or predict where changes are necessary. All in all, a quality CRM keeps all departments working in unison so that your staff is efficient and good at what they do. When everyone is on the same page, the customer receives accurate and professional customer service.
“Studies also show that people working in teams tend to achieve better results and report higher job satisfaction. In a 2015 study, executives said that profitability increases when workers are persuaded to collaborate more.”
LaunchPad Media Management offers analytics and flexibility in a system that is available anywhere and at any time. By using the LaunchPad Media Management tool, your accounting department gets:
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