The days of needing to reconcile marketing buys in one system against results in another are long gone. The reality is this: Technology is a basic and necessary tool these days. Most business owners probably can’t imagine how they would keep up with demand if it weren’t for the ability to integrate across multiple platforms.

Here are three top reasons why you should embrace cross-platform integration if you haven’t already.

1. Don’t miss your budget.

When is a lead not a lead? Sounds like a simple question, but how much time do you have to spend weeding through what you thought was a well-performing campaign only to discover your sales counted just a quarter of the results as valid? Setting up cross-platform filters to keep marketing and sales in sync will save you time and money.

Now you can adjust allocation before it’s too late. For example, Gragg’s propriety system pulled Figure 1 in just a few clicks. It illustrates how we can view real-time lead data through affiliate channels against what truly qualifies as a lead.

Figure 1

2. Don’t wait an entire conversion cycle to know how your campaign performed.

Cross-platform integration allows you to view real-time channel results aligned with your conversion data. By linking sales touch points to campaign results, you can shift strategy mid-campaign. This 360-degree view enables you to foresee how pulling one lever can affect everything else. Figure 2 illustrates how efficiently integration allows you to determine effective media mix by cost per acquisition.

Figure 2

3. Do more with less.

As any business owner knows, business growth requires improved process efficiencies, increased profit margins, and development of innovative solutions. Through cross-platform integration, efficiencies can be immediately recognized through reduced data entry and reporting.

With cross-platform integration, only one dashboard is needed to query data from other platforms. This enables users to reduce vendor costs by using their API without the additional interface and service fees. In many cases, the largest increase in profit margin comes from sales technology services and tracking functionality. Some marketing professionals leave this to IT, but experience has proven that success is achieved when the CMO and CIO partner. It’s crucial to not only know the outcome but how it mapped out to that point to identify opportunities.

While your first thought when contemplating innovation may not be integration, it is quite influential in creating new solutions. The 360-degree view of the entire cycle from campaign to conversion helps you deliver what is needed, when and how it’s needed.

If you aren’t integrated, you’re spending the money somewhere right now and likely more than you would if you were running more efficiently.

We all have budgets to hit, customers we are accountable to, and CEOs with high expectations. Regardless of your industry, become fully integrated and start taking advantage of the automation and growth opportunities available.