5 Best Practices For An Integrated Sage CRM – Sage ERP Accpac Environment

Now that you have been using Sage ERP integration for a while, it’s safe to assume you are giddy with excitement as the worlds of your ERP and Sage CRM systems have come crashing together in a sweet and blended fashion.

No doubt the inevitable information overload has revealed itself to some extent; two systems, living in perfect harmony, can present a wealth of data eye-candy. So, what are the best practices for keeping your user experience tight and on point when you need to depend on the power of both applications?

1. Don’t pop-up any Accpac transaction screens if you can help it.

Accpac web deployment is one of the core underlying technologies that helps you share information between Sage CRM and Accpac. This technology allows you to view Accpac documents, using the Accpac screens, in Sage CRM. The downside of this is that logging into Accpac from Sage CRM uses an Accpac LanPak, the screens tend to take a long time to load, and when they do, you are removed from the Customer context. The great news is, for most key transactions, Sage CRM translates the Accpac data and displays in a Sage CRM screen.

Above: AR Invoice #56 in a native Sage CRM screen. Information is presented in the context of the rest of the customer data.

Above: AR Invoice #56 in a native Sage CRM screen. Information is presented out on an island, away from the rest of the critical Sage CRM data.

2. Double secret hint!

The Accpac Web Deployed screens can be individually disabled in the Administration -> Users -> Users area on the User Details tab.

3. Enter Quotes and Orders in Sage CRM instead of Accpac.

I’ve mentioned this in previous articles; the new, integrated Quote and Order screens are slick, easy to work with and present the best of both worlds. Enter and promote Quotes and Orders in your sales system while having the documents seamlessly sent to your ERP system for eventual fulfillment.

4. Access aging information and statistics in Sage CRM.

If you spend most of your time in Sage CRM working against Customer and Vendor records, why complicate matters by switching to a second application? While Sage CRM will never displace the functionality that an ERP provides, it does a great job of pulling forward the most needed information. In this case, Customer Aging information and transactional statistics.

5. Build the Dashboard of your dreams!

The interactive dashboard in Sage CRM 7.1 may be the most exciting new functionality in the current level of integration with Accpac 6.0. Based on the native linking between the applications and some additional configuration through the Administration area (see an example of linking external databases from my colleague, Tony Erlain.), you can potentially bring in any and all Accpac data.