Why should you integrate your CRM and Project Management Software?

Some claim that there are more differences between a CRM system and project management software than similarities. This is true in a way - they offer different functions to the businesses. The CRM systems focus on the external activities like sales, marketing and customer support and are designed to manage customer information and customer relationships. Project management software on the other hand is about internal business processes. So why should you integrate these two?

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Get rid of the customer data silos and gain 360 degree visibility

Keeping clients up to date on the projects and deliverables has been a never-ending juggling between multiple systems, employees, and departments. Departments, who all have limited visibility into each other’s data and work progress. The problem is that the data is being kept in separate systems. Maybe even in personal mailboxes and Excel sheets.

The CRM system holds the customer’s order requests, sales history and contact information. But the data about the value you are giving to the customers (work progress, invoices, planning, budget, timeline, etc.) is recorded in the project management system, which might only be accessible to some of your teams.

This kind of complicated communication between business departments often causes confusion for the customer (and the business) – or worse, misinformation. Answers take longer and make less sense. The relationship is weakened. The customer is not happy.

Connecting the two systems will help you to get rid of the information silos and gives 360 degree visibility.

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Advantages to connecting CRMs with project management tools

Many companies are therefore looking for a project management software which is integrated with a CRM system. By bridging the two systems, the software provides you clear visibility to sales, marketing, service, development and operations teams.

There are a number of strategic benefits to linking CRMs data with project management:

• Make well-informed business decisions based on the 360 degree overview about customer
• Build excellent relationships with your customers because you are able to offer fast and better customer support.
• Spot opportunities and move customers forward to become an ambassador
• Spend less time on gathering the customer intelligence which allows you to dedicate work on other business activities

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Easy software adoption

Resistance from the employees is one of the biggest problem businesses are facing while they are implementing a new software. One of the solutions is choosing a CRM system which already works seamlessly with your existing project management software. For example, Atlas CRM has built a CRM system which works seamlessly together with Atlassian's project management and collaboration tools Jira and Confluence. So you can manage your projects, collaborate inside and between departments and build relationships with your customers - all that at one unified interface.