We need to integrate with a third party software, what options do we have?

There are a number of ways to integrate your TrackerRMS CRM application with your ledger, from manual keying of transactional and financial information all the way up to real-time end-to-end integration using complex web-based transactional management tools provided by our integration partner.

A cost effective mid-tier solution to integration is via flat-files which consists of the frequent batched secure transfer of flat files (typically Excel or CSV files) between your internal financial system and our secure offline servers which are programmed to listen for inbound files and process them against your own CRM database.

Benefits
The benefits of flat-file based integration are as follows:

  • The cost of integration is significantly less than that of real-time integration methods as there are no third-party licenses to purchase or integration scripts to develop
  • You can choose to integrate only those processes that are applicable to your business process which means a far more focused effort on linking the 2 core applications
  • Controls can be put in place around the frequency and content of the information, for example re-runs, overnight batches, weekend only runs etc so more flexibility in what and when integration occurs
  • The time taken to implement flat-file integration is reduced as we tend to use reports and routines already available to you via your system

How it works
Within most ledger applications (and depending on your specific system), you have the ability to both export and import key information, for example invoices and invoice items.

By forwarding these reports to our servers, we are able to process them on your behalf and integrate them seamlessly with the information stored with the TrackerRMS CRM. We do this ensuring that the Account Codes from your finance system match up to the Internal Reference in TrackerRMS which then links all contact and transaction information between the 2 accounts on both systems. This process of synchronisation can also be integrated if required.

In order to provide your finance system with the information it requires (for example invoice items to update the ledgers), we simply configure a standard report that can be extracted either manually or automatically when required for import.

How we implement

The process can be summarised as follows:

  1. The process of implementing flat-file integration is:
    - Account creation from TrackerRMS – Ledger
    - Invoice Items generated in TrackerRMS – Ledger
    - Invoice and Credit Notes from Ledger – TrackerRMS
  2. TrackerRMS to assess sample files produced by the Client from your finance system to ensure our servers understand the format and process correctly
  3. The Client to specify and assess the reports produced by TrackerRMS to ensure they are correctly processed by your finance system
  4. Testing of the end-to-end process to ensure it is in line with the clients requirements
  5. Implement live and provide reporting and monitoring to allow the client to keep abreast of the process ongoing

Note: As the owner and subscriber to your finance system, it is the responsibility of the Client to specify the input files and produce the ledger based reports required as the product and version of your finance system and content of data changes from client to client.

Automation
Once the end-to-end process is defined and working correctly, the Client may wish to automate the entire process so as to involve no human intervention in the integration of the 2 systems. TrackerRMS has the ability to both receive and process files sent securely to our SFTP servers and also send information pulled by the Client on-demand in order that the Client can control the frequency of automation.

Further Information
For more information on flat-file integration or the other forms of integration we provide, please contact us at support@tracker-rms.com or speak to a member of our Sales and Account Teams.