When it comes to running a business, you’re going to have to juggle multiple needs and goals at the same time. While you may have overall goals as a company and as a CEO, those goals have to be broken down into smaller, bite-sized tasks for your employees to do. Different departments may be working on different tasks at any given time, with your development department exploring how to roll out a new feature and your marketing team taking product photos to use for a new marketing campaign on social media. All of these tasks affect your bottom line, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they always work in tandem.

This is why business integrations are so important. Having the right integrations doesn’t just empower your individual employees to work more strategically; it also offers departments a way to work cross-departmentally, allowing for much better pollination of ideas and more robust solutions to the problems you face. Even so, it can be difficult to get everyone on the same page, particularly because every department and employee has their own work style and needs. When it comes to boosting the performance of your business, here are some things to consider about integrations.

Don’t silo your project management.

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Project management is crucial to so many aspects of a business. At the same time, everyone has their own personal taste when it comes to the platforms they use to get on the same page. Slack, Trello, Monday, and BaseCamp are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to different project management tools, and each has its pros and cons. That being said, if you really want to generate sales and increase productivity, you can’t let personal taste alone govern which management tools you use. This is why you must think critically about the best way to address each department of your team when it comes to picking the integration tools you use.

For example, you may conduct a survey to see what sorts of ways in which your sales team and marketing team work together in regards to attracting qualified leads using lead generation campaigns. If most of your lead generation is done via email marketing, you’ll likely want a management platform that allows you to share email addresses and other contact information about your sales leads with your sales team via email list attachments.

That being said, if you’re using social media frequently, being able to collaborate with the sales team to discuss different lead generation materials that marketing is designing like ebooks, webinars, and landing pages may be important. Talking to the heads of each department is a great way to ensure that the features everyone needs are included in whatever platform you pick.

Collaborate with outside vendors who get your business.

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Of course, there are some times when you’ll need to work outside of your company, as not everything can be done in-house. Legal advice is certainly one of these areas where it makes sense to be working in partnership with your company and is familiar with your target market. For example, if you deal with a lot of buyers and business owners, you may need a law firm that understands how to work with financial institutions and the payments industry. ISO payment processing litigation can quickly get complex for any independent sales organization, regardless of if they’re a large enterprise or a small business.

In any case, it’s important to pick a lawyer or attorney who actually specializes in your industry if you really want to have a successful legal partnership. After all, a family friend may cut you a deal but be less likely to understand how the law applies to a registered ISO in the first place. It’s best to find a law firm (or any outside vendor) that will integrate seamlessly with your company, whether that has to do with payment processing or any other highly technical aspect of your company.