In June and July 2008 RCD met on premise with over a dozen Connect customers and prospects. The meetings were held on the west coast, south-east, and north-east and included a wide cross-section of medium-to-large companies. An almost universal requirement amongst all groups is for integration of lead data into a sales force automation (SFA) or customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is being widely adopted by construction suppliers as a way to help centralize data, measure and manage distributed sales forces, and execute marketing campaigns. Gartner, a leading technology research firm, reports healthy growth rates for CRM software even as other technology investments decrease. When it comes to “CRM success”, useful and accurate information is indispensable. A CRM system without data is like a high performance engine without fuel. Accordingly, data integration with CRM is becoming a high priority. SearchCRM.com, a popular CRM-related web site, notes that “CRM integration is a major challenge for organizations of all sizes.” For construction suppliers that also rely on projects leads, there are additional factors such as project filtering, lead assignment, access to plans and specifications as well as project and company details. All of the business rules create a potentially complex situation for lead integration with CRM.

With one exception, all companies RCD recently sat down with prefer to filter projects by user, per territory, in advance of sending data to the CRM system. In other words, companies are mostly looking for a targeted method rather than a fire hose of data. Many companies also require on demand access to project details and plans and specs online. Web-based products like Connect can facilitate lead identification through their powerful search and filtering tools. Connect in fact has a full CRM integration option, called “DataLink”. This has become one of RCD’s fastest growing products since its launch in February 2007. DataLink provides a selected list of projects per user that can be seamlessly integrated into almost any CRM or SFA system. Integration services are provides by RCD Professional Services and a third party consulting firm.

It’s a CRM jungle out there! Working with a team that has a successful track record of implementation can reduce costs and increase integration effectiveness. If you are considering adding any third party data to your CRM or SFA system the best advice is to speak to your supplier. Chances are they can save you time and money and get their data into your system faster.

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