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Strategy

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Primer

As Data becomes progressively more important to many businesses CRM and ERP are two important technology acronyms that businesses need to know about.

What is CRM?
CRM is an abbreviation for Customer Relationship Management and is a phrase used to describe all aspects of interaction that a company has with its customer, whether it is sales or service-related. It’s a business strategy that helps your business to better understand your customer, retain customers, provide excellent customer service, win new clients and increase profitably.

Much of CRM relies heavily on technology. CRM software will collect, manage and link information about the customer. You can use CRM software to create marketing campaigns, view a customer’s entire of history of interactions with your business and use it to streamline daily business and sales tasks.

What is ERP?
ERP is an abbreviation for Enterprise Resource Management. ERP software is used to manage the business. It integrates all facets of an operation, including product planning, development, manufacturing processes, human resources, financials and sales and marketing.

Today’s ERP solutions are designed to help you to improve the operational efficiency of business resources. Businesses use ERP systems to integrate all their business processes into a single system to efficiently and effectively manage business goals.

The Differences Between CRM and ERP

CRM focuses on front-office activities:
Organise marketing efforts, manage the sales pipeline, calculate time spent on converting leads to closing deals, streamline your sales processes, automates customer service, track a customer’s interactions with your business, share marketing and sales collateral, create data reports, learn which products sell best and when, prioritize leads, manage inventory based on historical sales data, collaborate to sell as a team, manage your business contacts, manage your business leads, share customer profiles with co-workers and See where leads come from.

ERP focuses on integrating CRM (above) with back-office activities:
Distribution process management, supply chain management, services knowledge base, configure, prices, improve accuracy of financial data, facilitate better project planning, automate employee life-cycle, Standardize critical business procedures, reduce redundant tasks, assess business needs, accounting and financial applications, lower purchasing costs, manage human resources and payroll.

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