Top 5 Reasons to Have Map Integration as a Part of Your CRM Strategy

What gives more visualization while designing the next month’s marketing campaign: A long list of CRM records or the CRM records plotted on a map?

While planning strategies, it is important to visualize the data, especially with businesses where the location affects sales numbers. Obviously, the data list lacks clarity on the good or bad performing regions.

When location is the major part of the business, why not have it on map? If the same data is plotted on a map, it can give instant clarity. And to make that possible, you need a plugin that integrates with the CRM and displays the data on a map.

There are multiple CRM solutions available, but here we are going to discuss one of the most popular, Dynamics 365 CRM, and how integrating it with maps can change how your sales and marketing team work.

Why Should You Have an Integration of Dynamics 365 Map With Dynamics 365 as a Part of CRM Strategy?
The answer to this question is to empower your team with location-based data and better visibility of the data in the language they understand. If you need a comprehensive answer, we have made a list of reasons that explains how much it can benefit your business.

Unlock the Door to Geographical Aspects of CRM Data
Integrating your map plugin with your Dynamics 365 plots all the CRM data on the map. Initially, you had a long boring list of data. While designing the marketing strategies or making reports of regions based on their sales performance, you can feel the lack of understanding and visualization of the data. But when the same data is on the map, you can clearly see the regions with fewer pins and those with more pins (One pin is one CRM record).

The CRM records are plotted on a map, and when you hover over the pin, it shows the details of the clients. You can also customize the details you want to see. For instance, let’s say you plan to run a campaign next month to convince new customers. And for that, you can figure out from maps the regions with low sales. What would you have done if you did not have maps? Going through a list of locations, trying to filter the regions that have fewer records? The visibility is more in seeing the records plotted on a map than having the total number of records in a list.

Empower Sales Team By Helping Them Reach Their Appointments on Time
Only the salespeople would understand the struggle of reading the CRM data and finding the location on Google Maps or Bing Maps. They have to do this multiple times until they finish off their list.

The struggle is not only switching between the apps but also not realizing the order they should follow to meet clients to minimize the traveling distance. They don’t know the total traveling time it would take to meet all the clients.

Sometimes, they get caught up in traffic and arrive late at the meeting. This does not lay a good impression on the clients. On the other hand, despite trying their best to meet the clients, sales reps are unable to complete their target.

But after the integration of maps with the CRM, they can enter the locations of all the clients they have to meet or the manager can design the schedule and share it with sales reps. The maps give optimized routes that save them both time and distance.

They can choose the road with no tolls, avoid highways, road closures, or extensive traffic and reach their destination on time. Thus, they save time and fuel; ultimately, money!

Since the Dynamics 365 Map Integration, finding Nearby Customers has Never Been Easier
Does not everything go as planned? Appointments get canceled, sales reps have free time slots, or meetings can wrap up before the expected time. Do they!

To make the best use of their valuable time, sales reps can see the nearby customer based on their current location or the location they enter. They can quickly catch up with old clients or meet new ones. This would save them a lot of time.

This feature shows the clients’ location and the time it would take to reach them. They can enter the radius in miles, and it would show the concentric circles keeping their location in the center. The pins that fall inside the circle are the ones nearby them.

Easy Tracking of Meeting Timings and Reports
Meetings play a major role for a company as they either wish the feedback from the clients or wish to sell the product. Sometimes, the managers might want to know the feedback from a few clients as soon as possible to plan future strategies.

In that case, what would they do? Call the sales reps to know how the meeting went. Or wait for the sales reps to call them? What if the sales rep was in a hurry and forgot to call? What if the manager calls them while they are in a meeting? Reasons can be any, but the sales reps and the manager would spend a lot of time communicating.

Calling every time for the information might not go well sometimes. Rather than waiting this long, what if we say you can see the meeting details on your CRM? So, once you have the map plugin integrated with your CRM, the sales reps can use the check-in and check-out feature once they enter and leave the meeting. They can update the reports and add the details to their meeting page.

The managers can see whether the meeting is on or not, how long it lasted, and the reports or details of the meeting. To avoid any fake entries, the sales reps would only be able to check in once they have reached the client’s location. This would ensure all the data entered is genuine, and you can rely on the reports for future strategies.

Moreover, you would have correct data on the time your sales reps spend in meetings. Their hard work can be noticed in the number of hours they spend with the clients and can be appreciated for the same.

A Few Other Attributes to Simplify the Usage of the Plugin
The plugin’s purpose is to simplify data visualization and challenges that on-field employees face. So the plugin has to be simple and easy to understand, or it would defeat its purpose. Here is what makes map integrations your best choice.
Heat Maps: Heat maps show the locations based on the density. The visualizations of territories and data become much easier with the heat maps. It helps managers to visualize better and plan accordingly. They can make heat maps with different filters and save them while planning the next strategy.
Multi-language Support: The plugin comes with support for multiple languages. The users can choose the language of their choice. It works best for businesses having staff from different countries or having business overseas.
Web Mapping Services: The plugin gives you the liberty to choose the web mapping service of your choice. You can choose from Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps that best fit your preferences.
Multiple Dashboards: You get multiple dashboards with different entities and data comparisons. You can also get it customized according to your business requirements. With multiple dashboards, it gets easier to plan daily and monthly activities. Also, the managers can quickly view the status with these dashboards.
Advanced Search: Search by location details, drawing shapes, or selecting a particular region on maps. It is convenient to get details of any specific region with maps. It would then show the clients details of the selected region or territory.
Security Templates: Share only the required amount of data with your employees. You can create different security templates based on roles. This means they can only access a certain amount of data, not everything! Thus, no risk of data leaks or data breaches. The employees could only see the data relevant to their job role.

Wrapping Up
Businesses with on-field employees need technology that simplifies the CRM data and helps them visualize it. Integrating maps with Dynamics 365 is the best you can do to make the workflow seamless. Map integration simplifies the tasks for managers and on-field employees. They no longer require users to use multiple apps to find routes to client locations. They will have it all in the mobile-friendly map plugin. Now, all you need to do is find a company that offers this plugin, review the features to see whether it satisfies the points discussed above, get it customized if necessary, and integrate it with your Dynamics 365.

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