Enterprise Resource Planning. (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are business driven software that helps in increasing business efficiency and reducing cost for an organisation . Using CRM and ERP helps to effectively manage customer interaction .
ERP may help you to effectively measure sales and marketing department performance but will fail to measure the performance of customer which is often measured by a CRM software . Let’s discuss some merits and uses .
CRM
CRM is a software helps to manage company’s customer interaction in organised manner . CRM compromises of all the features like sales and support , customer interaction and engagement , prospectus and business partner .
Traditionally CRM was the software used by only sales department to maintain client and prospectus . But when it comes to reality CRM is used by different department for multiple purposes . For instance a CRM can be used by sales department to take regular follow ups , sales projection can also be predicted by CRM , and at the same time support and complain department may use CRM to raise a support ticket and assign the executive for solving the complain / support to customer . Modern CRM also has marketing automation system thus enabling marketing department to send mass email to all customer at once regarding any kind of promotion or offers thereof .
When is specially comes to the used of the CRM , there is no limit of its usability . It is just like sea which has no end point .
ERP
While at the coins one side CRM focuses on front side office management , ERP system on the other side focuses on business at large . ERP facilitates sharing of information with the rest of the company , thereby facilitating improvement of overall efficiency . ERP has been customised for each of the industry individually as per their demands and supply like manufacturing , product or finance department ERP system automates many of the organisation process thus enabling company to make better strategic decision .
In other words , ERP is back office application as it is no way related to customer management .
CRM And ERP
Look why the title of this section is not ” CRM or ERP ” . Both software servers completely different task which is yet a very important task of the organisation . CRM helps in building a deeper relationship with the livelihood of any business organisation ” Customer” thereby making a profitable enterprise , whereas on the other hand ERP allows internal management of the organisation as it may encounter from time to time .
Having both solution for business namely ERP and CRM software solution is always proven beneficial for any company thus increasing profit , saving time and increasing staff efficiency .
Usually a growing business organisation will first adopt a CRM solution to establish a stronger customer relationship and several support department . In small business organisation there is a small room and teams are just a few feet away , then obviously there is no need of using the ERP system .
Thereby a CRM system will help in marketing automation together with maintaining healthy relationship with clients by sales force automation , thereby creating new business opportunities thus helping business grow to the point when ERP system becomes the necessity of the organisation .
Integrating ERP And CRM
Once your business system has stepped into ERP system together with CRM its time to start thinking about the integration process of CRM and ERP .
Lack of integration gap may increase the information gap within the company . For instance a manufacturer might keep the stock record on the ERP system which may later be crossed checked by sales department before processing any of the orders , thereby confirming stock availability and also automating the task of stock update , which may result in some error in case of manual entry . On the same time a sales representative may check the customer credit history and can give them stock as per the existing credit history only .
So before purchasing or handing over your software development requirement , business organisation should evaluate their specific needs and requirement to the software development company. Here at Winklix , every business organisation must adopt a basic CRM for their organisation , but if later on their working are getting complex day by day , then they may move to ERP system integration .