Guide

What do you need for a CRM integration? The requirements

Before a CRM integration even makes sense, a few things need to be in place in your business. What those are — and which supposed requirements actually aren't.

Request assessment ↗CRM integration

Proposal upon request3 to 6 weeksAs of 2026

In short

For a CRM integration, a business needs three things: a clearly defined process that currently costs time or orders, existing content or data to work with, and a person authorized to make decisions. Technical expertise is explicitly not required.

01 — Requirements

What you need for a CRM integration

A clearly defined trigger. Not “we should do something with AI,” but a process that demonstrably costs time or orders today.
Existing content or data. CRM integration works with what's already there. The more complete the starting point, the shorter the setup.
Access to the systems involved. Whoever manages the credentials needs to be involved from the start — this is, in our experience, the most common cause of delays.
One decision-making contact person. One, not three.
Willingness to refine after launch. The first weeks in real operation show what was missing in the concept. That's normal and accounted for.

02 — Participation

What we need from you

A contact person who can make decisions — not just forward them.
Access to the affected systems, in time and not on launch day.
Real examples from daily business — the messier, the more useful for testing.
Two to four hours for coordination, distributed over the project duration.
An answer to the question of what success means. Without it, nothing can be assessed afterward.

03 — Fit

When it's worth it

The process in question occurs at least weekly.
It follows rules you can write down — even if there are exceptions.
Today it's manual work that no one enjoys doing.
There's one person who decides, not three who need to coordinate.
You can name what would tell you it worked.

04 — Questions

Frequently asked questions

What if different departments use different systems?

Then one of them is designated as the central source, the others feed into it automatically. Maintaining two equal systems in parallel leads, experience shows, to exactly the contradictions that a CRM is supposed to resolve.

What does the training look like in practice?

Using your real data, not sample datasets. The team practices the workflows it needs daily and receives a brief written summary afterward as a reference.

What happens to our old data?

It will be transferred, cleaned, and consolidated. Duplicates are the norm — usually the same company exists three or four times in different spellings.

Can we simply import existing Excel lists?

Yes, that's the standard when starting. Before import, duplicates and inconsistent spellings are cleaned up, otherwise the new system just inherits the old mess.

Is this GDPR-compliant?

With a European provider, data processing agreement, deletion concept, and documented legal basis, yes. A CRM without a deletion concept is an open issue under data protection law — that needs to be set up as well.

How do we ensure it gets maintained?

By making as little maintenance necessary as possible. Everything that can be created automatically is created automatically. What remains manual work is reduced to what is actually needed in daily operations.

Which CRM is the right one?

The one your people actually use. For small businesses, a lean system that gets filled automatically is almost always better than a powerful one that stays empty. We recommend based on workflow and team size, not feature list.

05 — Next

CRM integration by region

Next step

We'll look at your starting position.

Tell us what's eating up time today. That becomes an assessment with effort and benefit — and only then an offer.

Send inquiry ↗ office@pipeline-solutions.at OR +43 681 207 64 203