CRM (Customer Relationship Management) allows organizations to get closer to their customer, therefore, the focus is on customer data, or external data. Customer Relationship Management is defined by Computer Desktop Encyclopedia as "An integrated information system that is used to plan, schedule and control the pre sales and post sales activities in an organization" (customer relationship management, n.d.). A CRM mainly deals with marketing and sales departments, and it’s main goals include:

  • Improved sales performance,
  • Improved management visibility,
  • Improved customer support,
  • Improved marketing, and
  • Reduced costs (Wettemann, 2004).

SCM (Supply Chain Management) allows organizations to efficiently manage their entire supply chain from purchasing to distribution and logistics. I think that the main focus of SCM is on purchasing or transactional data, or internal data. SCM and ERP are often different systems in many organizations, which makes it difficult to "Connect Demand with Supply" as Michael Schrage’s article discusses. The difficulty will play an important role for technology managers as the two systems can have contrasting objectives. Schrage offers an example of this:

"There’s no question that you can optimize the efficiency of a supply chain at the cost of being less responsive to customers. For example, I might save my firm 25 percent of hard dollar costs if I eliminate some distribution centers and carry less inventory. That decision would probably make my company less responsive to customers, since they might then experience more stock-outs. But that trade-off may be worth it. What I pay for that extra inventory may cost more than what I lose in sales from customers who don’t find the stock they want. The question is: What’s the better business investment?" (Schrage, 2004).

EPR (Enterprise Resource Planning) attempts to bridge the gap between the SCM and CRM packages by providing a "unified software program divided into software modules that roughly approximate the old standalone systems" (Koch, 2006). I think that the main focus of ERP systems is data sharing, data distribution, and data quality in order to avoid duplicate and redundant. Kock states that the main goals for an organization to undertake EPR:
1. Integrate financial information,
2. Integrate customer order information,
3. Standardize and speed up manufacturing processes,
4. Reduce inventory, and
5. Standardize HR information (Koch, 2006).
When it comes to ERP systems, I think they can provide many benefits and paybacks for an organization that chooses to implement the system and does so effectively. An ERP system should be carefully planning, analyzed, and designed prior to implementation, followed by training and maintenance. This can be a huge task to undertake for any organization. I think that the differences in these systems is due to the lack of ability to truly fulfill an organization’s complex needs and business processes across the various departments and functions.

These systems encompass the main enterprise-wide information systems. These systems feed into the decision support systems such as data mining and OLAP using data warehouses, marts, etc… There are additional systems that are more focused on specific business objectives. Some of these systems include, but is definitely not limited to:
- Decision Support Systems
- Sales Force Management Systems
- Executive Information Systems
- Strategic Information Systems
- Group Support Systems

Resources:

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 4:35 pm.
Categories: Uncategorized.

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