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Early on in business software, applications were rather simple. They provided ways of putting information in, pulling information out, and looking at what was stored in the application. The next evolution was software that provided some automation, such as automating math in accounting and payroll systems, and compiling reports of materials ordered versus materials used and so on. Software applications later evolved to include prompts, and customer relationship management systems became the stars in this next generation of software.
CRM software allows the sales or service representative to drill down to specifics of the customer. Customer relationship management applications not only give employees every detail of the history of interactions with the customer, the software evolved to, as previously mentioned, provide prompts. Those prompts may alert the employee when a customer is due to re-order supplies and the employee can take the re-ordering burden off the customer. CRM also considers new products and services, and integrates them into the CRM system in such a way as to automatically alert employees to present these new offerings to customers either proactively or during a regular order. CRM does so much more, and because of CRMs depth and breadth or capabilities, CRM became vital to excellent in customer management across nearly all industries. The value of CRM, however, has now been altered by enterprise resource management applications.
It is generally agreed that effective CRM applications can no longer serve as stand-alone software, at least, not within companies large enough to have invested in enterprise resource management software. Customer-facing employees need to understand the whole of their customers' experiences as it relates to all departments with the company. CRM software needs to therefore be integrated with the entire enterprise software system.
At a minimum, an employee using a CRM application to fulfill a customer order should be able to automatically obtain from manufacturing and shipping when that order can be filled. On another level, it is probably a good idea for a sales person to know, by way of accounting reports and their integration with CRM software, that a customer is not paying his bills before trying to sell the customer more products. And pity the poor customer service rep following up to ensure deliveries have been done to expectations only to find out the customer filed a lawsuit a month earlier regarding lost or late shipments.
To get the most out of software investments, companies that have legacy CRM systems will need to revisit their CRM vendors to see if they have expanded their offerings to include enterprise-wide ERP systems (many have), or if they have developed integration capabilities, and perhaps partner with, third-party ERP vendors.
On the flip side, corporations that are evaluating ERP vendors will also need to be sure that either the vendor offers CRM as part of the enterprise solution, or that the application software can interface with existing, legacy CRM solution. CRM and ERP applications add tremendous value to a company but unless they are integrated, the company is missing a vital benefit of the totality of today's ERP systems.
By Denise Harrison
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#1 Authority for ERP software & Business Systems
