No company is prone to human factor errors. That’s why it’s crucial to minimize human interactions. Smart automatization systems can simultaneously track thousands of events, provide troubleshooting insights, and predict future trends.
There are two common systems for online business: CRM and ERP. At first glance, they are oddly similar, while in reality, they are entirely different. So, which option suits you more? In this article, we compare CRM vs. ERP to determine which will be better for businesses of various kinds. Buckle up; it will be interesting!
🧑💻💵 What is CRM?
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. This software system acts like a digital headquarters for customer-related things. CRM automation gives you the following opportunities:
- Organize and track. You can collect and organize customer-related data, including personal info, liked pages or goods, comments, email communication, and call logs.
- Automate customer-related tasks. You don’t need to run mundane tasks daily. A fine CRM can automate many tasks like follow-up emails, sales funnels, etc.
- Gain insights. The human mind can’t catch everything around it and is prone to logical errors. Sometimes, even the best marketers can miss new trends. At the same time, CRM reacts even to the slightest changes, showing you possible threats and opportunities.
- Boost in-house collaboration. With properly developed and customized CRM, you can enhance the cooperation of internal departments. You will see improvement in marketing, sales, and even logistics, as multiple divisions can interact with each other directly through the CRM dashboard. It saves hours of working time.
You need a CRM if you own a business that daily interacts with many users. Whether you are a solopreneur or a multinational corporation, managing customer relationships is crucial for future growth and success. You can also create a complex CRM for contractors and clients that will track all your interactions with both of them, building an even more sustainable system and bringing even more insights to your team.
🧑💼🗄️ What’s the ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning is another crucial system for modern businesses. It concentrates more on the internal aspects of the company. While a CRM helps manage customer relationships, an ERP manages the core operational processes of your business. It can include customer-related data, but it’s not necessary.
Think about ERP as the conductor of your business orchestra, bringing different departments together in harmony. Here is what this digital conductor can do:
- Connect all departments. You can sync all divisions and offices under a single roof. Minimize time-consuming interactions like calls or meetings since you can see the progress of each colleague right in the system. ERP system integration connects everyone: marketers, supply chain, R&D, accountants, etc.
- Automate mundane tasks. Fine ERP can perform repetitive tasks like order processing, inventory management, payroll calculations, and reporting instead of you. It will free up employees for more strategic work.
- Boost efficiency. E-commerce ERP connects all departments into a singular system, streamlining ongoing processes and eliminating redundancies.
- Additional insights. Those systems are trained to see hidden details. While CPM shows trends and possible insights into your client-related communication, ERP offers real-time visibility into multiple aspects of your business.
While CRMs are essential for all businesses with thousands of customers (retailers, experts that sell their master classes to mass audiences, etc), ERPs are more complicated. They can track both internal and customer-related data.
The ERP suits medium to large businesses with complex operations and multiple departments. If you need help with data synchronization, manual processes, lack of visibility, or inefficient workflows, an ERP integration might be your solution.
CRM VS EPR: What’s The Difference
Each system is important to the business in its own way. They serve to fulfill different local objectives, but all contribute to a single business goal. For instance, Wezom has elaborated on all the aspects and purposes of using these systems for businesses in the article “ERP vs CRM software development: How to make the right choice.” Below, we have summarized the difference between ERP and CRM to ease your comparison.
🔎 Focus
CRM is focused only on client-related data, as it can track each online interaction with them. On the other hand, E-commerce ERPs concentrate more on internal operations, as they can manage a business’s core operational processes, such as finance, accounting, HR, supply chain, and manufacturing.
🔧 Functionality
CRM can act like a centralized customer database, where you store all clients’ information, including preferences and purchase history. You can nurture potential clients through CRM sales funnels.
Properly written custom CRM software can provide additional marketing automation, including email campaigns and social media. They can help you to organize and segment customer data for more precise and targeted communication.
Meanwhile, ERP accounting systems are great for financial management. They can automate accounting tasks, track expenses, manage budgets, and generate financial reports. And the Retail ERP software can provide deeper supply chain and product management. Hence, you can get real-time insights into business performance across all departments.
🧑🎤🧑🏭🧑🏫 Target Users
These tools have slightly different target audiences. Marketing, sales, and customer departments mostly use CRM systems. You can also integrate those systems into supply chain and logistics department workflow. Generally speaking, CRM’s target users are those who directly communicate with clients.
On the other hand, ERP can be used by any division in your company. Its main aim is to gather all departments under one roof. You can integrate CRM and ERP into a single system, creating a comprehensive service for your company.
📱💻 Implementation
It’s easy to develop and implement CRM SAAS: in most cases, it will take up to 3-4 months, depending on the complexity of your case. On the other hand, it takes much work to develop and deploy ERM SAAS. Launching a properly working ERM system will take at least 4-5 months.
You may wonder what caused this difference. In CRM, developers create a relatively easy system for 2-3 departments, while in ERP, they need to build a tool for multiple divisions or even offices. It’s far more complicated since ERP is a more complex system uniting totally different departments.
🤑 Funds required
As we said previously, developing a CRM system is relatively easy since it is a more narrowly focused tool. Developers spend less time and resources on these, as they can implement cloud-based solutions and rent cloud servers for your digital product.
On the other hand, ERP systems are custom and much more complex. Usually, they are located on the company’s local servers to store and process internal documents.
Complex CRMs sometimes require more time and effort than simple ERPs. Therefore, to avoid wasting resources, you should define the end result you want to get before starting the development. Sharing as many details about your idea as possible is crucial so experts can pre-calculate possible timing and required costs.
CRM and ERP: What Is Better For You
As we said, there is no winner in the ERP VS CRM battle. Both have the same purpose: to optimize and speed up business processes. The differences lie in a specific target audience and the tasks they manage the best.
CRM suits those who are looking for a system that is highly focused on customer-related interactions. In comparison, ERP fits businesses with branched and complex internal structures since it eases communication between all your departments, including customer-related ones.
The main thing you need to determine in the ERP vs CRM battle is your strategic goals. And Corpsoft.io experts will identify which system works best for achieving them and help you create a scalable and cost-effective system for your business.
Contact us today and share your business vision, desired features, or processes you want to optimize. After that, just relax; we’ll take care of the project from the start and support it as long as needed.
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