The term “CRM integration” sounds like techie-talk, but it’s an issue that sales managers simply cannot afford to misunderstand. The reason is simple: if not integrated with the rest of your company’s systems and applications, your CRM system will be far less useful and powerful than at its full potential.

Let’s start with the basics. There are two types of CRM integration: front-end and back-end. The best way to understand the difference between these two concepts is to use an analogy from day-to-day life.

Your home entertainment area probably contains a TV, a VCR player, a DVD player, and a cable box – each with its own remote control. In order to get the entertainment content that you want, you probably are forced to spend time learning and remembering all the idiosyncratic features of each remote control. That’s a LACK of front-end integration. Now, imagine you’re tired of hassling with those four different remotes. So you purchase a universal remote that can control all your video devices by translating your button-pushes into what each device expects to see. That’s “front-end integration.”

Now, suppose you want to record your favorite television show and watch it on your laptop while you’re on the road. While there are ways to make this happen, anyone who’s tried to do something like this quickly finds out that televisions and laptops don’t work very well together. The files are different formats and even the plugs are different. That’s a LACK of “back-end” integration. Now, imagine that you found a Website that made it very easy to download the television programs that you wanted to see. No data conversion, no special plugs. That’s “back-end” integration. (In this case, the Website has done all the back-end integration for you.)

A CRM system lacks front-end integration when sales professionals are presented with a patchwork quilt of different programs, each with a different “look and feel.” The lack of front-end integration means that your sales professionals will be forced to waste time and effort trying to remember the idiosyncratic page layouts and data entry requirements, thereby reducing productivity. To fix this problem, you need a “portal,” a program that sits atop all your other programs, making them look more consistent and easier to use. This front-end integration provides your sales team with a consistent and logical interface, even if the programs and add-ons come from multiple vendors.

Similarly, a CRM system lacks back-end integration if it’s a collection of disjointed programs that store data in different formats and on different machines, without being connected together. The lack of back-end integration means that you’ll have to spend extra time and effort wrestling with more than one copy of your customer data. To fix this problem, a CRM system must adhere to an “architecture,” which is a set of standards and connecting programs that allow different CRM databases to share and compare data. An architecture allows a CRM system to store data in a consistent and logical fashion so that programs from different vendors can more easily use the same data.

In other words, front-end integration makes your CRM system easier to use and therefore more productive while back-end integration helps ensure that your customer data remains accurate and up-to-date.

Note that the two forms of integration are not always present at the same time. It’s entirely possible to have a CRM system that looks great (i.e. front-end integration) but performs poorly, like a Ferarri body bolted onto a Yugo chassis. Similarly, a CRM system can be internally consistent (i.e. back-end integration) but present the user with a pig’s breakfast of weird and confusing screens. Therefore, if you want to get the most out of your CRM system, you’ll need both types of integration.