Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is application software, which automates the internal functional departments of an organization. There will be a smooth flow of information across the functions like accounts, production, human resource and administration. ERP looks after the supply chain management, production management and accounts management. There is no such a tool available in the industry which can cater all the issues across the company.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is application which takes care of the sales activities, customer interactions, marketing products and customer service. The role of CRM is restricted to the sales related activities only.
With the help of ERP, the business owner integrates the internal business process where as with the help of CRM, he tracks the marketing related activates, individual sales performances, customer services and all.
Whenever a sales person receives any lead, it will be recorded in the CRM and there are some pre arranged boundary lines already kept in the CRM as per the business owner requirement. CRM allows the sales people to be constantly in touch with the customer. Each and every activity of the sales people is recorded in the CRM. CRM is the open dashboard, which can be seen by the sales manager and the specified sales guy. The system is automatically intimated the sales person regarding the next action plan on particular prospect.
1. Automated sales and marketing process
2. Regular work tracking of the sales person, which in turn leads to the higher sales productivity
3. Helps the company in cross selling the products, if the company is into multiple product lines
4. Ameliorated customer service as the system will automatically warns the sales person regarding the deadlines and this also leads to higher sales closures
5. Reduced expenses
6. Overall, higher profitability
1. Automated business environment leads to effective communication
2. Smooth flow of information between the inter-departments and intra-departments
3. Reduced lead time of the manufacturing products
4. Availability of relevant and accurate information on timeliness
5. Better decision making
6. Helps in improving ROI in the long-run
Each application has got its own features and benefits in a different way. ERP helps the entire organization by automating all the departments where as the CRM is restricted to only marketing and sales departments.
CRM is used in most of the sales oriented organization to keep track on the sales related activities. Even a sales organization needs ERP to carry out the internal order processing, accounts processing and human resource processing.
CRM addresses the issues in a narrow sense but ERP address all the issues across the company. We can not compare both the applications because both of them will do a tremendous job in their respective domains.
One thing is true that both can be integrated very well to simplify the entire business process of the company. Most of the big organizations are using both together to reap great benefit.
