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The front-to-back-office integration capabilities of Sage CRM
Sage CRM provides out-of-the-box integration with leading Sage ERP products including
Accpac ERP, Accpac Pro, MAS 90/200 (US), Sage 1000 and Sage 200 (UK), Sage 100
(France & Spain), OfficeLine (Germany). This means that companies that have previously
invested in Sage ERP products can quickly and cost effectively leverage their back-office
data and functionality within the front-office environment of Sage CRM.

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The challenges of front-to-back-office application integration for
SMBs
Front-to-back-office integration can help companies to dramatically reduce administrative
cost, speed up order fulfilment and improve customer service. While this may seem like a
real win-win scenario for all involved, it is not without its challenges.
Undertaking point-to-point, retrospective integration can be a costly, complex and risky
proposition for SMB organisations, and even when a company manages to achieve its short
term integration objectives, there is no guarantee that future CRM or ERP upgrades will not
render the integration inoperable.
The availability of CRM solutions with out-of-the-box, easy-to-deploy product integrations to
market-leading ERP solutions, therefore, represents a highly compelling proposition for SMB
organisations seeking to leverage the benefits of front-to-back-office integration costefficiently.

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In the quote-to-cash example cited previously, these capabilities could automatically
generate an order in the ERP system as soon as the account manager promotes a quote to
an order within the CRM system. This means that the order can be processed without delay,
and the customer benefits from a speedier turnaround. As the quote is generated using ERPsupplied
pricing and tax calculations, the potential for error due to out-of-date information is
eliminated and workflow automation ensures that an order does not have to be re-created
manually in the ERP system, removing process duplication and ultimately reducing cost.

Rex

In the quote-to-cash example cited previously, these capabilities could automatically
generate an order in the ERP system as soon as the account manager promotes a quote to
an order within the CRM system. This means that the order can be processed without delay,
and the customer benefits from a speedier turnaround. As the quote is generated using ERPsupplied
pricing and tax calculations, the potential for error due to out-of-date information is
eliminated and workflow automation ensures that an order does not have to be re-created
manually in the ERP system, removing process duplication and ultimately reducing cost.

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In the quote-to-cash example cited previously, these capabilities would enable the account
manager to verify that their customer had not exceeded their credit limit prior to placing a
new order. If an issue exists, it is flagged with the customer immediately rather than at a later
when the order reaches credit control. Again, this helps to eliminate errors and process
duplication downstream.

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360 degree customer visibility
Enabling users to view combined financial and non-financial customer information within a
single application, regardless of where the information is generated or stored is another key
requirement for front-to-back-office integration.
360 degree customer visibility is particularly useful for account managers, that may require
access to a customer’s purchase history or for customer service representatives that may
need to update a customer on the status of an order.
Providing these users with access to both financial and non-financial information eliminates
the customer data ‘blind spots’ described earlier.

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Front-to-back-office data consistency
Being able to share consistent data between the CRM and ERP applications is an essential
requirement for front-to-back-office integration. Customer data, however, is structured
according to specific application types. Organisations, therefore, need to be able to create
dynamic links from entities within their CRM system (such as the ‘company entity), to the
corresponding entity within their ERP system (such as the ‘account’ entity), whereby changes
in either are propagated in both. This ensures that both front-office and back-office staff are
working with the same information which reduces or removes the need for re-work and the
potential for error.
In the quote-to-cash example cited previously, these capabilities would enable the account
manager to generate a quote based on the most accurate and up-to-date information
available at the time and, as a result, eliminates the potential for error and process
duplication down the line.

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In simple terms, front-to-back-office integration is made up of three inter-related elements:
1. Consistent data between related entities (e.g. ‘company’ and ‘account’) within the
CRM and ERP applications.
2. 360 degree customer visibility, regardless of whether customer data originates in the
CRM application or the ERP application
3. “Straight-through” processing which enables a user to initiate a transaction (e.g.
booking an order) which then automatically triggers all related business processes as
appropriate (e.g. order approval, shipment, invoicing etc) and passes seamlessly
from one application (e.g. CRM) to the next (e.g. ERP) without the need for extensive
manual intervention (e.g. re-keying information, paperwork or verbal sign-off).

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The fundamentals of front-to-back-office integration
The aim of front-to-back-office integration is to bring together disconnected business
processes (e.g. quote-to-order and order-to-cash as part of the overall quote-to-cash cycle),
applications (CRM and ERP) and datasets (financial data and non-financial), and translate
them into a mechanism to: (1) manage customer relationships more effectively, (2) reduce
costs, (3) increase profitability and (4) achieve sustainable competitive advantage over the
long term.

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The workflow management capabilities of today’s ERP and CRM applications have gone
some way in addressing these issues by introducing exceptions monitoring, mandatory fields
and removing the need to re-key and re-check information as transactions pass from one
stage to the next. This in itself, however, does not fully address quote-to-cash business
process requirements if the back-office environment remains disconnected from the frontoffice
system. If a member of the sales team, for example, generates a quote based on outof-
date pricing information or stock availability, and subsequently converts this quote into a
customer order, it is likely that this error will only be identified later at the order approval or
shipping stage. The order will need to be passed back to the salesperson for correction and
then re-processed by the finance department. As a result, order completion is delayed for the
customer, administrative cost increased for the company and workload is unnecessarily
duplicated for sales and finance staff. Clearly, where this scenario arises on a regular basis,