Slide 1 : ERP & CRM
ERP & CRM Overview : ERP & CRM Overview ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
ERP systems are the financial relationship of the clients with the company
It deals with cash, inventory, and finance
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
CRM solutions are buying patterns and demographic data for marketing
It manages customer relationships, and sales opportunities
Unifying these two customer databases can help organizations ensure to focus on more profitable sales opportunities, marketing efforts, service charges, and on the most valued customers
ERP & CRM Benefits : ERP & CRM Benefits Benefits in the order to payment process in companies with high volume of sales and transactions
This is done by cost reduction:
Reducing errors in order entry systems
Conducting approval workflows for discounts
Reducing the manual work that involves entering the information systems in non-integrated ERP and CRM
Cross-selling of other products by highlighting and suggesting alternatives or enhancements
ERP & CRM Benefits (cont…) : ERP & CRM Benefits (cont…) Identifies which of your customers are profitable and which are not
Provides effective targeted marketing communications aimed specifically at customer needs
Enhances customer satisfaction and retention, ensuring that your good reputation in the marketplace continues to grow
ERP & CRM Drawbacks : ERP & CRM Drawbacks Requires to invest significantly for technical training of its employees
Needs competent operators who have a grasp of the integrated applications
Involves formatting applications in order to pave the way for the new integrated processes
ERP & CRM Integration : ERP & CRM Integration Tight CRM-ERP integration leads to operational effectiveness
By linking front office, customer-facing systems (CRM) with back-office systems (ERP, HRM, SCM), organizations can build an infrastructure that enables streamlines business processes, which in turn will lead to operational effectiveness enhancement.
The tight integration provides a consistent view of customer and back-office information for anybody who needs it, empowering the decision making across the enterprise.
ERP & CRM Integration (cont…) : “CRM and ERP systems are inherently different in the way data is stored and accessed; that makes it difficult to use as a single system.”
“It’s either a great CRM or a great ERP product, not both.”
“Eventually the parallel systems evolve into a more seamless integration with both systems performing independently yet feeding into each other. In this way, they can serve independent masters yet for all practical purposes can be referred to as a single system.”
Don Waskiewicz, president of Deep Blue Insights ERP & CRM Integration (cont…)
CRM & ERP Vendors : CRM & ERP Vendors ERP Vendors integration are attractive not only for efficiency-oriented customers but as well as cautious, and risk-averse customers will turn to them too
Companies investing in technology are concerned about the vendors long-term viability
SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle enjoy larger financial resources than most “best of breeds”
They have larger R & D resources with already working partnerships that they can leverage to strengthen their positions
It doesn’t mean other CRM vendors are not economically feasible, they just require some degree of risk-tolerance
CRM & ERP Best of breed : CRM & ERP Best of breed Best of breed applications focus on what they do is CRM, and have the experience to provide standard configurations and customization for a specific industry
Offers a great amount of flexibility, allows a company to focus on other business processes where they will benefit most from
Also be aware of existing IT infrastructure, since you want to minimize implementation and support costs since integration costs are huge because you’ll have to middleware to help communicate between applications
References : References Baker, Pam. "Integrating CRM and ERP: What Do You Do First?" 19 Aug. 2008. .
Integrating CRM with ERP. Rep. Baseline Consulting Group White Paper, 2002.
CRM Today. “Best of Breed vs. Suite” http://www.crm2day.com/content/t6_librarynews_1.php?id=50163