The success of a company is dependent on their sales and a finance department, which requires these two departments to seamlessly work together.

Unifying the sales and finance departments is imperative to the profitability of a company, whereas a lack of communication is a constant friction and drags on operations and growth.

Getting the entire company aligned — which is what people mean when they say ‘rowing in the same direction' — is terribly difficult.

If it were easy, we'd all do it.

So it's a rare opportunity to massively increase alignment, communication, and knowledge sharing across the sales and finance teams.

How can sales teams optimise their operations if they can't ask questions like “Which clients were invoiced? Which are due, or overdue? By how much? How late do they usually pay? What are our total overdue receivables?

Attempting to answer this (without data integrations connecting the teams) usually requires so much time and manual communication that it's easier to just get on with the job without this info, even if that means operating blind.

But the sales department needs this high-quality data, powerful reporting and up-to-date information at their disposal to drive maximum profitability.

And the finance department needs accurate data from which to construct valid invoices that will be paid promptly.

While the individual teams have better tools than those of yesteryear, and the CRMs and accounting software accelerates their individual work, for most companies the knowledge sharing between teams hasn't caught up.

That's why so many Salesforce Consultants emphasise on providing companies with better integration tools and resources.

Thanks to CRM and accounting software integrations, the path to creating a more seamless, transparent, and efficient workflow between the two departments is a possibility.

Integration software companies like Breadwinner, DBSync and Workato help bring sales and finance together by integrating Salesforce with popular accounting systems like Xero, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite or Sage.

These integrations help remove departmental barriers, provide management with reliable data and broader insight, and empower organisations so they can improve the company's bottom line.

They are most important for fast-growing companies as they expand.

Expansion itself is an accounting problem, as multiple currencies, multiple tax rates, and even multiple legal entities complicate the connection between sales and finance.

This increased complexity can only be solved by software or increasing headcount.

At the end of the day, finance integrations speak to the very heart of a company's concerns. They keep headcount under control while speeding time to payment and aligning sales teams to the company's cash generation.

An organisation that achieves this, particularly one with a common goal among teams, and is armed with better information, will ultimately demonstrate compelling and improved performance.