As brick-and-mortar stores become fewer and farther between and more business is conducted entirely over the internet, companies have to find new ways to build and maintain relationships with their prospects, leads, and customers. More and more today’s companies are developing those relationships by using technology to personalize customer experiences. One way that technology can help this process is integration: combining, interpreting, and using customer data from the systems you already have in place.
Enterprise Integration: Compile, Organize, and Analyze Your Data
You likely already have multiple systems that gather, store, and analyze a lot of data from your leads and customers. There are software systems available for finance, sales (CRM), marketing content management systems (CMS), enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, manufacturing resource planning (MRP) systems, and more. Using integrated customer data analysis, you can use the data from all these programs to your advantage. The more data points you can gather from different systems, the more you can personalize each customer’s experience. This process is called enterprise integration: connecting the systems you already have in your business to make them “talk” to each other and share data.
A comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) solution captures and analyzes information about each of your customers: their interests, buying habits, and even life events. Not only can you keep track of Mary’s age, income, demographic information, and location, but also details about her buying habits ranging from how frequently she buys fresh produce to whether she’s getting ready to make a life change. The more you know about your potential clients, the more you can tailor your marketing to their needs.
For example, if you are a bank, your CMS may record data that shows Mary has used her bank-issued credit card to purchase an expensive dress from a boutique and put a deposit on an event space. Analysis of this data can allow you to conclude that Mary is getting married. (In the past, that knowledge might come from a teller observing a new engagement right when Mary utilized in-person services and having a conversation.) Now that you know Mary is about to make a life change, it’s a great opportunity to offer her information about a home loan, life insurance policy, and appropriate investment products. “Smart” data analytics like this allow you to gain personal insights into your customers that previously came from personal interactions and have been missing from the online-only customer experience.
Using Integration to Enhance Your Customer Relationships
For optimal success, all of your customer data needs to be fully integrated into one overall sales and marketing strategy. This should include using the data you are already gathering with your CRM and other enterprise sytems to generate and customize content to your prospects and customers. To take it to an even higher level, you can then integrate the data you’ve collected into a data warehouse that combines it with information gathered about your customers from your partners and business associates. (A number of services facilitate this kind of information sharing.) Then, you can incorporate this information into your web content management (WCM) system. Armed with this information, you can tailor each user’s web experience to their needs and preferences, including interactive content and video content—which in turn can allow you to glean even more insight into your audience.
Businesses that effectively use enterprise integration stand apart from those that use “one size fits all” marketing strategies. Making the customer experience convenient, targeted, and personalized helps a company to build long-term customer relationships and promotes loyalty through both convenience and depth of service.
Talk to PulaTech today about how we can help you integrate your enterprise systems, tap into the power of predictive analysis, and use data analytics to build and deepen your customer relationships. Contact us to get started!
