Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and customer relationship management (CRM) software usage has become common across businesses of all sizes. The new idea is to take the ERP software and the CRM software and integrate them.
In many cases, companies already have both an ERP system and a CRM system. They were most likely implemented separately, however, and continue to function separately. The question you’re asking is “If my non-integrated ERP and CRM systems are functioning well as separate entities, should I still consider integrating them? Is the extra time and money and work worth it?
More and more businesses are saying “Yes.”
First, consider what a lack of integration means to your company. You might be, for example, a manufacturer whose accounting functions are handled in your ERP system. In your CRM system you have the information from your sales team. Integration means that instead of having to enter data into two different systems, it is entered once and available everywhere. In fact, companies often see immediate savings because of that feature – entering information only once reduces the number of errors as well as the extra manual labor required to do double the workload.
ERP systems are used to manage a company’s inventory, manufacturing, distribution, and accounting along with their financial relationship with their customers. CRM systems are used to manage the company’s “personal” relationship with their customers, including their buying patterns, personal information/demographics, and customer service inquiries. Combining the two systems means a unification of customer data, which gives a company better insight into their customer base because they are able to view both financial and nonfinancial data at the same time, without regard to where the data is created or where it is technically stored.
Integrating allows employees to have a complete view of customers. Ultimately, this allows them to answer questions more promptly, more thoroughly, and more accurately, as they will have full access to a customer’s purchase history, the status of their order, and other important information that allows them to be more productive employees and better customer service representatives.
Integrating your ERP system and your CRM system also allows you to automate business processes that were formerly done manually. This is another way in which errors are reduced and employee productivity is improved. You will be able to design your unique business processes, define business rules, and then automate their execution. At any point you may also modify, delete, or create new ones as well.
Customer service, of course, is not the only thing that integrating your systems will improve upon. Integrating the systems will also combine the calendars from each system, allowing the entire company to share scheduling information. This functionality allows for the quick and simple scheduling of meetings and for supervisors to have an overview of employee tasks.
So you can see why, for many businesses, the monetary and time investments needed to integrate their ERP and CRM systems are worthwhile. Because ERP systems are used to manage the “back end” of the company – receivables, inventory, payroll, etc. – and the CRM system manages the “front end” of the company – customer relationships, sales numbers, etc. – imagine the power that a business would have if they could control both the back end and the front end all in one place. What you would gain in regards to profitability and productivity would far outweigh any costs that might be incurred during the integration process.
