CRM Data and Workday Adaptive Planning Integration for Better Revenue Planning

Spreadsheet with numbers for revenue planning

What Is CRM Integration? 

Integrating CRM data with Workday Adaptive Planning will take your revenue planning to the next level. CRM integration refers to the process that connects a company’s CRM systems with other platforms to create a synchronized dashboard. 

With centralized data gathered from multiple sources, technology officers are therefore able to achieve improved data accuracy, streamline their workflows, and gain a comprehensive view of customer interactions, financial transactions, and consumer behavior. The combination of these factors allows sales, marketing, and customer service teams to all access the same valuable information and create a seamless experience for both internal processes and customers. 

With HubSpot and Salesforce CRM integration services, the process can be taken a step further. These systems provide additional information about customer activities and sales metrics that consolidate customer revenue and financial data into a single interaction. 

CRM Integration with Workday Adaptive Planning Maximizes Efficiency

The alignment of a company’s CRM systems provides a crucial service, as it presents a clear view of the financial health of the business. The analysis of current customer behaviors and trends offers valuable insights into future revenue generation, and with that information available at the push of a button, businesses can make informed strategic decisions and maximize their overall returns on investment. 

The Power of CRM Integration

Corporate data adds value, but only to the team that can sift through it and draw out valuable insights to redirect trajectory in the first place. CRM integration services, on the other hand, provide a formidable tool with which to comb through and harness complex business data. When combined with corporate performance management tools, such as Workday Adaptive Planning, companies can gather and respond to new information at record speeds.

Enhance Decision-Making

When a company constructs new business strategies based on data-driven and actionable insights, it can predict future trends and succeed in complicated, volatile industries and markets. CRM integration fuels these insights with efficient data retrieval and conclusions plucked from multiple data silos, which are then housed in a single, cohesive platform. 

Companies can manage their customer relationships and cultivate them with proper CRM integration as well. As they gather valuable data about customer behavior and responses, business leaders can respond with plans to meet their needs. In short, they gain the tools necessary to provide customers with value-added experiences that will, in the long term, enhance their experiences and leave them hungry for more. 

Improves Operational Efficiency 

With a precise and efficient data-gathering process, companies can formulate and carry out new tactics at record speed and ensure they make decisions based on accurate information. 

Automation accelerates business processes and handles data volumes that no manager could — in good conscience — pass on for manual data entry. Instead of allowing information to sit by the wayside or scanning said data with human eyes, CRM integration imports valuable information in seconds with zero manual input, effectively minimizing the odds of errors and increasing corporate agility in the fast-paced economic sphere.

CRM integration can also handle data entry, task scheduling, customer segmentation based on demographic data and interaction history, managing pre-generated email campaigns, and creating new welcome emails based on customer categorizations. All of these aspects, which work to increase operational efficiency, allow businesses to allocate their employees to higher-level strategic work that makes better use of their expertise. 

The ability to pivot in response to new data provides an unmatched advantage: Increased visibility and alignment across the board combine agility with precision, meaning everyone across verticals can move together toward a shared vision. 

Key Considerations for Integrating CRM Data with Workday Adaptive Planning

As integration begins, technological resource officers must approach the combination of software platforms with a viable strategy to maximize benefits. Consider using these critical capabilities to ensure a maximum return on investment:

Real-Time Performance Metrics 

The ability to calculate, update, and measure progress against key performance indicators in real-time is vital to modern business. These checks can monitor and compare actual numbers against those initially planned and ensure that sales revenue, customer acquisition costs, and conversion rates meet standards. 

Through these methods, businesses can identify seasonal trends or take note of potentially sudden changes to react appropriately and plan for the future. For example, metrics can identify seasonal trends that adjust future revenue casting, and businesses can then adapt their marketing, stock volumes, service capacity, and even pricing to maximize profitability and optimize budgets. 

In a different case, the CRM system might identify bottlenecks in website conversion rates at a specific part of the sales process. Leaders could identify these actionable insights immediately, thanks in large part to the quick data access that CRM integration provides, and then direct sales and UX design experts to analyze and develop a fix to the problem. 

Product Revenue Allocations 

A clear picture of revenue distribution across product portfolios, which CRM integration can paint more clearly than any other system, allows for the precise shaping of business strategies. A quick glance at data dashboards will demonstrate which products perform well and which lag behind, allowing leaders to adjust accordingly. 

A product that underperforms, for instance, could signal a need for adjusted and increased marketing efforts or a redirection of assets toward a more profitable product. It may also push for the analysis of which products and services perform best among specific market demographics. 

These forms of data enablement empower marketers to create more specialized outreach efforts and even use the CRM system itself to direct marketing information to the most pertinent groups. 

Customer Insights 

Behaviors across a massive customer base can be challenging to navigate without automation, but thankfully, integrated CRM data provides immediate snapshots and long-term analysis of customer counts, churn, upselling, and downselling. 

The ability to track and understand these metrics allows businesses to identify previously-obscure areas of opportunity and adjust retention and outreach strategies accordingly. Upsell rates, in particular, can also help determine which customers continue to find value after their initial purchase, data that allows for tighter budget allocation and an overall increase in profitability. 

Territory and Sales Planning 

The analysis of customer data by region empowers decision-makers to develop a more efficient allocation of sales resources and grants them the opportunity to optimize their overall sales strategy. 

For example, if one region shows a relatively high sales volume compared to representatives, the potential for missed opportunities in an untapped market can drive additional hiring in that region. In the inverse situation, with low volume but high representatives, it may be time for resource reallocations, a change in strategy and market, or layoffs. 

Additional Benefits of Integrating CRM 

In addition to enhanced across-the-board decision-making and heightened operational efficiency, CRM integration enhances other areas, such as cybersecurity and scalability. These ensure that companies can both continue to grow at the proper pace and invest only when necessary while, at the same time, remaining safe from external threats as their attack surface grows. 

Data Security 

As they gather high-value customer data that cybercriminals are often keen to get their hands on, any CRM integration solution must provide a robust suite of protections to ensure the security of sensitive data.

Centralized data storage and access inherently bolster data security. A single attack surface creates fewer points of failure and allows technology and security experts to fortify a single position against attack. 

CRM integration allows administrators to create systems that include access to controls that limit which employees can access data other than the information they need, in turn reducing the odds of human error, which stands as the cause of more data breaches than any other source. 

The integrated system can also construct access logs and audit trails to track compliance and detect compromised accounts — and lock them down — before severe damage occurs. Some platforms may offer additional security options, such as high-end encryption, to provide protection beyond access controls and security fundamentals like phishing training and regular password updates. 

Scalability 

Businesses need to grow and evolve along with business expansion. To that end, an integrated CRM source should provide the scalability necessary to grow with the company at the same pace. It must handle increased data volume and complexity without an impact on performance while also minimizing wasted revenue. 

A scaling model that increases in time with business needs rather than via set tiers works best for this approach to cost savings. The CRM solution should also have the capacity to update immediately when its business adds a new product line or enters a new market, or begins to gather data on a new demographic. The ability to add categories, slot them in alongside their existing peers, and draw data from those silos to form new categories are all vital. 

Platform product extensions should also allow the platform to grow and change as business needs evolve and more extensions become available for use. 

Finally, as the business grows, it should be able to take on more advanced analytics, planning, and forecasting tasks, which may integrate more variables or cover a larger area or demographic, thus requiring greater processing power to analyze appropriately. 

QBIX Analytics Takes the Integration of CRM Data with Workday Adaptive Planning to New Heights 

QBIX Analytics harnesses the capabilities of Workday Adaptive Planning and combines them with valuable insights from CRM data. The seamless integration between the two disparate systems changes the way companies interact with their customer data on fundamental levels. 

At the most basic, we aim to reshape how companies view and apply their data to their business strategies. These integrations create a broad-spectrum perspective on customer relationships, sales, and market trends, a veritable treasure trove of actionable insights that better inform decision-makers and allow them to steer their companies in the right direction. 

Our capabilities spring from real-time, up-to-date data that allows leaders to make those higher-quality decisions faster than ever. In turn, they drive new workplace growth and streamline their operations. The synergy also liberates expert workers from mundane tasks and empowers them to apply their true talents to high-concept strategy development. 

The Benefits of CRM Integration

The wealth of benefits breaks down data silos and allows organizations to make informed decisions about investing their capital. When all is said and done, CRM integration allows better strategic alignment, thereby improving efficiency, productivity, and profitability. Contact us today to learn more about how we can make it happen for you.

Further Reading