Benefits of a FinTech and CRM Integration
Heather Davis Lam

Heather Davis Lam

Heather Davis Lam is the Founder & CEO of Revenue Ops LLC, and holds multiple certifications from Salesforce, Salesloft, Hubspot, and other revenue operations platforms.

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The Benefits of a FinTech and CRM Integration

Blind spots cause problems. Not just while you’re driving but while you’re trying to navigate the information superhighway. How can you decide where to go when you don’t have the correct data? How can you avoid an accident if you can’t see what’s hiding out of sight?

Integrating your financial technology (FinTech) system with your customer relationship management (CRM) system is critical to get a 360-degree view of your clients and all their interactions with your company. And not just their financial exchanges but all their actions overall.

Did they call customer service? What products have they purchased lately? What is the Lifetime Customer Value? These are critical questions to consider when making the best decisions on how to move the business forward.

FinTech and CRM Together

An incomplete picture of your business is both unhelpful and potentially dangerous. The lack of clarity means your decision-making is missing something. How do you actually know your growth is sustainable? Are you making decisions based on reality or your perception of reality? 

These questions highlight the importance of having clean data in one place – particularly within your financial numbers. Accurate and centralized data creates easy access to real-time insights and breaks down the typical info silos among departments. The best way to do this is to integrate your FinTech and CRM, in addition to all of your other corporate sales and marketing technology. That way, you can see a comprehensive picture of your entire sales and marketing funnel through the retention process and analyze both pre-sale and post-sale metrics to see what’s working and what’s not.

Integrations help us to connect the data from these disparate systems into a unified platform so that we can analyze the data and create a single source of truth upon which we base our business decisions. As a result, everyone evaluates the same data in a single system, thereby eliminating the need for manual manipulation and making it possible to create data visualizations that tell the story about what’s happening in the business through the data.

Integration Options

There are a few different integration options depending on your CRM and FinTech applications. It’s also important to consider your short-term and long-term business objectives when deciding which integration path to take.

You can use a pre-built integration app to connect your FinTech system to your CRM. This app has been developed and vetted by software companies to ensure that no malicious programming code is lurking somewhere within. Therefore, you can feel confident in the security of the integration, and it should be reasonably quick to implement. The drawbacks to this approach are that customizations are limited, and subscription fees are usually required for the duration of the integration app’s usage.

Another option is to work with a developer to build a custom integration between your FinTech and CRM. Custom app development can be expensive but accommodates full customization and flexibility around your business processes and needs. Subscription fees may not be associated with this approach. Still, your system will likely require regular maintenance to ensure that the integration consistently meets the stringent guidelines outlined in the FinTech industry for managing data. 

Finally, some FinTech solutions offer a built-in or native connector to link directly to the CRM. This option provides the least amount of customization. Usually, it requires you to purchase a specific tier of your FinTech solution package to gain access to the ability to use the native connector. This solution works best with lightweight FinTech programs that don’t pass a large volume of data from your financial platform to the CRM.

Integration Steps

Integrating your FinTech with your CRM sounds good, so how do you start? 

The key is to find an integration partner who is familiar with both your FinTech system and your CRM. They will help you create a list of potential integration methods that can be utilized with your particular tech stack and can help you evaluate the pros and cons of each approach.

Here are three things you can do to prepare for the integration process.

Document the essential pieces of information you wish to sync between systems and key KPIs you’re looking to report on once the two systems are integrated. This list of requirements will help the integration partner understand the end goals for the integration and ensure that the synchronization captures the appropriate data for reporting purposes.

Determine a budget that you’re comfortable with for the integration. Understanding what funds you have available for this integration will help the partner propose potential solutions suitable for the tech stack and your budget.

Discuss a reasonable timeline and project plan for the integration with your integration partner. In addition, creating a post-integration support plan to maintain the system would be prudent.

Get Started

Revenue Ops LLC is here to help you with your integration needs. We have experienced experts on staff who can help you connect your FinTech systems with your CRM so that you can eliminate your company’s blind spots and surface those metrics you need to make the right decisions at the right time. Contact us today to set up a discovery call so that we can learn more about your business and your integration needs.

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