Connect your E-commerce tool to your CRM (1/3)
FeaturedIf you own an online shop, it is hard to do without a customer relationship management tool (CRM). It is in fact one of the best tool combinations to help you to enhance your service offers and customer relationship.
We have identified three big steps for a facilitated data transfer between these two systems : the planning, the implementation and the maintenance. Follow our advice to smoothly connect your e-commerce tool to your CRM
First article of our series : the planning phase Step 1/3 : The planning phase – Defining your business rules
Goal : Assessing your needs to have a clearer picture.
Avoiding back and forth movements in the middle of the project due to unconsidered scenarios. Whether you undertake this process by yourself or resort to a service provider (through project management assistance), you will need to define the information that you wish to transfer as precisely as possible.
In the business, we talk of « business rules », which need to be defined based on the following questions :
1. Which type of data is to be transferred and in which direction ? Do you want to establish a one-way or a bi-directional data transfer flow ?
Example 1 : You wish to transfer the data from your Prestashop client modules and orders to your SuiteCRM’s accounts and opportunities objects.
Example 2 : You wish to update the data in the « Account » module in SuiteCRM and line it with your Prestashop data. This operation is called « data synchronisation » and enables you to maintain your data up-to-date in both systems. It is important that you know which data transfer direction flow is the most relevant for your business. Which modules do you want to transfer the data to ?
The question seems trivial, but is in fact crucial in some cases.
Example 3 : You wish to transfer one of your client’s multiple delivery adresses from your Prestashop to the « adress » field in your CRM. Problem is, a client can have multiple delivery adresses saved in your Prestashop but there’s only one delivery adress that can be transferred to your SugarCRM (same issue for SuiteCRM and Salesforce). That’s what we call the altering of data model. You will need to take a decision for this type of scenario. You can choose to set a rule which entails that the adress which will be transferred in your CRM tool is the default adress in your Prestashop. The success of your project partly depends on those small decisions.
2. Which action should be taken for each field ? It is time to go more in depth. The fields don’t always match between your e-commerce tool and your CRM : you will need to ask yourself how to manage each field in both systems.
Example 4 : You wish to transfer data from a Magento client object to a Salesforce « account ». Knowing that there is only one « name » field in Salesforce versus two fields in Magento (« first name » and « last name »), you will need to group them in order to transfer only one field containing the elements « Last name » and « First name ». Technically, that’s what we call « concatenation ».
Example 5 : How about dropdown fields or value lists ? Let’s say you wish to transform orders from your e-commerce tool into « opportunities » in your CRM. You will need to make sure the status of the order matches the one of the opportunity. If that is the case, a reimbursed order equates to a lost opportunity.
This preliminary work might seem tedious but it is vital for a smooth project course.
In the next article, we will tackle the subject of choosing the right tool for your data transfers between your e-commerce tool and your CRM.
Do you have advice to share on
You may also like : « Eight steps for a successful data migration » (Link : http://www.datacenterjournal.com/steps-successful-data-migration/)