How to Stop Copying Data Between Excel and Your CRM
Manually transferring customer information between spreadsheets and CRMs creates extra work. Learn how to connect the two without losing control of your data.
In this guideJump straight to what you need3 sections
Every Friday, somebody opens a spreadsheet containing new customer enquiries and copies the information into the CRM.
The process isn't especially difficult. It just needs to be done carefully, every week, without forgetting anyone.
That kind of work often survives for years because each individual task seems too small to justify changing.
Yet transferring information between Excel and a CRM is exactly the sort of repetitive process worth examining.
Why businesses keep two copies
Spreadsheets and CRMs often serve different purposes.
A spreadsheet might be used to collect information from a website, prepare a sales report or manage a temporary list of prospects.
The CRM stores customer records, communication history and outstanding opportunities.
Problems arise when both applications contain information that employees need to keep consistent.
A salesperson updates a phone number in the CRM. An administrator adds a new customer to the spreadsheet. Somebody else downloads a fresh export and accidentally overwrites a more recent change.
Before long, nobody is completely sure which copy is correct.
The temptation is to automate everything immediately, but first it's worth understanding why both copies exist.
Sometimes the spreadsheet is still necessary. Sometimes it exists only because nobody has connected the original source of information to the CRM.
Decide which direction information should travel
A useful integration starts with a clear rule about where information originates.
If employees enter new leads into a spreadsheet, the automation might watch for new rows and create corresponding CRM records.
If the CRM is the main customer database, it may make more sense to update the spreadsheet from the CRM rather than the other way around.
Some workflows require information to travel in both directions, but two-way synchronisation introduces additional questions.
What happens if the same customer is edited in both places? Which change should take priority? How will duplicate records be detected?
For many small businesses, a one-way workflow is easier to understand and maintain.
Imagine a fictional local wholesaler that receives orders through a spreadsheet-based process.
When a valid new customer is entered, an integration could check the CRM for an existing match, create a record if necessary and report whether the transfer succeeded.
Employees would no longer need to copy the details manually.
However, the integration should also recognise incomplete rows and avoid repeatedly creating the same customer.
Start with clean information
Automation moves information quickly. That isn't always an advantage when the source data is inconsistent.
A spreadsheet might contain several formats for phone numbers, different spellings of company names or email addresses with accidental spaces.
Before connecting it to the CRM, review the fields and decide which ones are required.
A small amount of preparation can prevent the automation from filling the CRM with records that employees later need to correct.
It also helps to test the workflow using sample data before connecting it to live customer information.
At Software Logic, we explore spreadsheet and CRM integrations that reduce manual copying while keeping business information organised.
If your team stopped copying information between applications tomorrow, which records would stop moving, and why haven't those systems been connected already?
Have a question about your business? Talk to Liam.
Counting readers…