Integrating D365 Sales to Dynamics D365 Business Central
Finding your business revenue hit a dead-end with various components of your business operations can be a baffling scenario, at times. Integrating and collaborating beyond and across business units becomes key to rising above such challenges. A wide series of software is equipped today to help you soar high ahead.
Dynamics 365 is one such suite of business tools and modules that helps you in accruing Sales, Finance, Customers, and Growth under one umbrella. In particular, Dynamics Business Central is an efficient and effective tool to coordinate your ERP goals. Hence, when the mighty arena of CRM meets the dynamic world of Business Central, you’re about to embark on a journey that holds the promise of streamlined operations, enhanced insights, and synchronized data.
When your business aspirations and cutting-edge technology intertwine to generate efficiency at incredible levels, D365 Sales meets Business Central. Fundamentally, Business Central has evolved to address the unique challenges faced by every industry and D365 Sales deals with everything related to CRM. However, Business Central has the capabilities to fine-tune the customer experience besides operating as an ERP solution.
Therefore, integrating D365 Sales into Business Central is a lucrative business move to improve customer service. It’s not just about seamless data flow; it’s about converging your customer relationship management goals with your operational backbone, ERP.
In this blog, we’re delving deep into integrating Dynamics D365 Sales into the Business Central. We’re not just scratching the surface; instead, you can better understand the Dos and Don’ts of this business integration in detail, here. From data mapping to deciphering the synchronization setups, every essential step is explained below to plan your business growth.
Are you planning to integrate Dynamics CRM into your Business Central project? If so, then you’re in the right place! Let’s decode the blueprint of success, ensuring that your D365 Sales integration into Business Central is more than just a technical feat.
4 Steps You Must Follow to Ensure A Smooth Transition
Using Business Central, we at AdCirrus can help you take your business operations to the next level. You can leverage some ERP-specific features to optimize existing CRM systems and boost productivity. How, you ask? Read the below checklist that we’ve curated to guide you on efficiently integrating Dynamics D365 Sales into Business Central.
1. Documenting All Customizations Completed in The Existing CRM System
This should be the first step before connecting Dynamics 365 Sales to Business Central. Doing this will allow you to merge sales and marketing components to create a smooth workflow.
You can better understand your customers’ needs and requirements, thus enabling you to address them effectively. Having a holistic customer viewpoint will help you better see their spending patterns and wants, allowing you to improve your forecasting and maintain overall operational efficiency.
Start by creating a new workflow in D365 Sales by registering a unique “Account ID” on the Microsoft platform. Having this in place will allow you to eliminate and resolve any queries that may arise on the types and nature of customizations created and how that customization will impact your Business Central when operations simultaneously across Accounts, Quotes, or Orders.
Create a clear picture of how you wish to have your CRM flow look. Work on the UI, logic, and visualization first. Feeding the data can be done later. Integrating and syncing data is a breeze once you have a brief workflow structure.
Your UI component will decide how you can interact with your users and customer base through the CRM system. Create your app flow, a site map for navigation, data entry forms for customer inputs, and a clean view for optimal data display.
Next, ensure you integrate all your required customizations with the logic you wish to include in your business operations and automation. This includes setting the business process flow to walk customers through the CRM operations, automation, actions you can deploy to minimize downtime, and data validation and filters to prevent lag or saturation.
2. Cleaning And Validating the CRM Data Before It Is Migrated and Synced To Business Central
Now, after the customizations have been set up and you have your Business Central up and running, it’s time for data cleaning. Often, most companies overlook this, which can create a lot of data discrepancies between the ERP and the CRM systems, especially if they need to be synced or integrated.
Start by cleaning your CRM database. For this, skim through the entire CRM customer account list. Make sure that your inventory is up-to-date and accurate. Look at customer names and account IDs and match them to their data fields, such as addresses and contact details.
If there’s a mismatch at any point, flag it and rectify it immediately. Do not proceed further if there are any errors in the CRM database. Although taxing and time-consuming, this step is crucial to ensure your existing customer list is accurate and avoid mishaps when new customers get addressed into Business Central.
Creating a system and having regular checks and data validation is critical to ensuring that all customer information is inputted correctly and added to the CRM accurately. If not, as mentioned, it can reduce the efficiency of your existing CRM and facilitate the optimization of your automation processes.
To integrate Dataverse with Business Central, sync data from required fields such as customer names, customer ID, contact details, and corresponding sales from Business Central using equivalent rows in Dataverse like a salesperson or purchaser, customer account, vendor account, contacts, and currency used in sales transactions. You can opt for integration table mappings, integration field mappings, synchronization rules, and coupled records.
An important aspect is that all data syncing between Dataverse and Business Central is based on the scheduled execution of job queue entries. You can opt for Business Central Virtual Tables or Business Central APIs for real-time data between services. Doing this will help you understand present happenings and stay on top of ERP and CRM.
3. Leveraging Maps In Business Central Integration
Once the data is ready, it’s time to map out your CRM system in Business Central. This is the most crucial step since you must confirm how your database will be synced. For instance, if your customers only originate from the CRM and will subsequently be synced to Business Central, you’ll need to ensure that the synchronization is set up via the Business Central setup tables.
Maps integration with Dynamics 365 CRM allows you to geocode the customer databases and extract their exact location. These attributes can thus help with effective ERP to boost sales and services offered. It will also allow your associates and sales executives to amp up their game and improve their presence in the market, thus contributing to revenue growth.
Geocoded data extracted using Maps will allow you to derive geographical insights into the Dynamics 365 CRM database. You can locate data and even plot it on a digital map using push pins, allowing you to see sales patterns and relevant trends such as revenue, leads, or industry estimates using graphical data visualizations like pie charts, heat maps, and bar plots.
Having data points mapped out allows better analysis to aid in decision-making. You can even define a selected radius and strategize per area to create a more dynamic game plan. Doing so will allow you to establish and allot sales territories to representatives, thus boosting your operations’ overall productivity.
Further, Maps allows you to better target locations with customized marketing campaigns for effective client acquisition and lead generation. It will also help you deliver quality CRM services and improve your ERP. And the best part? You can sync existing Census data into your CRM for a more exhaustive customer database.
Finally, Maps integration will support you in keeping up with a hectic schedule by optimizing it. You can plan and auto-schedule multiple appointments and generate an optimized route with turn-by-turn navigation through Google Maps and Waze to ensure you reach all your bookings well ahead of time.
4. Creating An Effective Cutover Deployment Plan To Ensure A Successful CRM Integration
An effective cutover plan ensures seamless CRM integration into Business Central. Document the steps required to deploy the D365 Sales integration into Dynamics Business Central. You must provide all the setups that come with the new Business Central production instance.
Look at the data sync directions, and check if they’re set up correctly to ensure that the Business Central and CRM are backfilled with the correct data. Finally, you must see that you’re allocating appropriate time to complete the integration, including building the data in Business Central or CRM.
Hurrying through this process will result in more obstacles than solutions. And if you’re up for it, our team at AdCirrus ERP can assist you in the integration of Business Central.
We will ensure all integration steps are correctly completed to facilitate seamless sync between D365 Sales and Dynamics D365 Business Central. Doing so will allow us to warrant smooth project deployment in CRM and ERP.
Once everything is orchestrated to the tee, we will help you correct any errors. Besides, we can also optimize all actions to address any failures or system breakdowns. A foolproof cutover plan is critical to completing your ERP and CRM project cycle.
5 Mistakes To Avoid While Integrating Sales To D365
Dynamics D365 Business Central can help you solve many sales problems and boost ERP. To make the most, it would help to keep these things in mind before you start integrating both platforms to ensure the desired results.
1. Failing To Have A Game Plan
It’s essential to map out your action plan before taking any step. Have a goal and devise a plan to make it achievable. This includes identifying, and listing all expectations, and setting milestones to ensure you’re moving in the right direction. Pre-planning and testing are crucial to ensuring that your ERP and CRM integration is top-notch and to gain a competitive edge in the market.
2. Not Cleaning Your Data Properly
Before initiating integration, spend time sifting through and profiling your CRM database. This includes reviewing source data, understanding its data format and structure, clearly understanding the content, and trying to locate any interrelationships. Remove duplicates and eliminate any outdated data. Doing so will allow you to identify outliers and deal with these misfits accordingly.
Since D365 Sales offers custom fields, chances are your data is highly specialized and segregated. However, when migrated to Business Central, the database may translate differently than planned. Thus, we always suggest you check any fields and standardize them accordingly to prevent data loss or skewness in synced data.
If you’re unsure how to do this, AdCirrus can help you navigate the data validation process. We will help you identify relevant data points from your CRM inventory and offer data profiling services to make integration seamless.
3. Failing To Look At Prior ERP Integrations
If you’ve already integrated Sales into your ERP system, it’s time to take a step back. Yet again, the process is the same. Clean your data and account for various integrations in place before syncing. The good news is that Business Central supports hundreds of integrations, the most notable ones being MailChimp, HubSpot, LinkedIn Ads, and Unbounce. Plus, it also offers an open API to simplify other integrations.
4. Not Integrating Smart Solutions
Data cleansing and validation aren’t just enough. Once your database is ready, you must combine all data points into one view. Start by consolidating all relevant information to remove duplicates and null values and identify existing relationships. Then, transfer your data into Business Central. If you use third-party applications and integrations, check for compatibility, and make the required changes before moving your data.
5. Failing To Train And Educate Yourself Beforehand
Microsoft Dynamics D365 Business Central is a complex application with many applications and solutions. So, investigate all its features and understand everything it offers before you start. Invest resources in self-training, online training, or one-on-one coaching.
Reach Out To AdCirrus To Create High-Value Customer Experience Solutions
While integration is a good move, you’ve got to ensure that the above-mentioned checklist is considered. Yet, if you’re finding it all hazy, then let us help you. We at AdCirrus provide highly optimized and customized ERP implementation solutions. Effective systems such as Business Central can implement maximum ROI and improve revenue generation tremendously. Contact us for more details and information!
