What's the difference between CRM and ERP?

The impressions of Enterprise Resource Planning System(ERP) and Customer Relationship Management System(CRM) seems overlapping in many contexts as both handle loads of company contacts, company details, and company orders. Both systems are prone to handle a ton of information pertaining to a business or an organization. Thus business organizations often wonder what is the key difference between the two. What makes ERP stand out from CRM or vice-versa.

Indeed, many ERP service providers claim that CRM is no other separate entity, however a part of the ERP domain. Much like HR, Sales, or Purchase, they claim CRM also comes as a component of the ERP domain. Consequently, there is sufficient confusion when ERP and CRM are brought into the discussion table.

Let’s investigate how an ERP system separates from a CRM application.

From the various point of view, both ERP and CRM are similar in function, however, they have distinctive core functionalities. Both are significant business arrangements that improve both business income and profitability. 

Where main users of CRM application are from sales, in contrast, the users of ERP belongs to a diversified group. The users of the ERP framework can be the factory managers, HR personnel, buyers, accountants, sellers, and many others. 

ERP users are internal and supplier-facing and they seldom call a client much like a CRM user. ERP users rarely call a client that too just for answering any grievance or complaint of some kind. In contrast, CRM users are customer-facing and regularly communicate with clients to makes things faster. 

Broadly speaking, ERP and CRM users don't party together, they work in different paces. They hardly recognize each other's application can be useful at their business end. Basically, the main individuals in your association to have logins on both the CRM and ERP frameworks would be IT folks who are given the responsibilities of analytics, integration and so forth. 

Understanding CRM System

CRM frameworks are intended to record and store each snippet of data with respect to customer interactions. The information is institutionalized and effectively shareable across the association. To illustrate, if your business salesperson gets a call with a prospect, they may enter new data, for example, information about the client, notes on the discussion carried. 

Further, the sales team can make use of the client information to tailor another, the customized bulletin says a personalized email to attract or lure the prospect. Making use of the information, the sales team of your business can send a personalized newsletter prompting the customer to buy the service or product. 

With no much hurdle, making use of the CRM application, the business organization can easily pull the record of data and trigger for the next step of initiating sales. 

With the right CRM software in place, business groups can effectively structure and segment every single part of the client experience.

Also, CRM frameworks can make sales projections, nurture prospects, manage invoices/emails, analyze market trends, needless to say, a CRM offers all that functions that is pertinent to build new and maintain old customer relations. Via bringing more precision with client information, a CRM system ascertains client relations are significantly improved.

Understanding ERP System 

Very much like Customer Relationship Management, an ERP application is intended to professionally handle and streamline business operations. While the CRM application mainly focuses on the organization’s sales, an ERP system integrates together multiple departments of the business. Along with managing sales, an ERP system takes care of managing inventory, sales, purchase, accounts, human resources, manufacturing operations, and many others. An ERP brings in live interconnected management of specific business processes, making sure the enterprises are filled with standardized information and is readily accessed throughout every department. The complete automation of business activities with ERP brings more precision to data, improving business decisions. 

Key Functionalities of CRM and ERP

The above image illustrates the limited functionalities of CRM and ERP systems. However, the list of offerings is rich and intrinsic. 

Both ERP and CRM frameworks bring qualitative transformations and efficiencies in business forms. However, an ERP framework is broader management of the business, taking care of every segment of the business. Thus an ERP system significantly reduces the operational costs of the business enterprises. However, the two arrangements offer central repositories for client information.

In any case, a CRM framework acts as a catalyst for higher sales volume and better customer interactions. Regardless of the business size and complexity, a CRM application adds precision to customer relationship management via bringing transparency and accountability of the conduct. With the application in place, the sales rep need not worry about missing any leads or delay in communication. From triggering alerts to sending customer emails and invoices, CRM structures everything and automates the processes. It becomes easy for the salesperson to schedule activity and track every customer interaction. 

Optimizing client relations are no more strenuous as CRM guarantees clients are fulfilled. And with an ERP system, every business department can comprehend the work process with different offices. Officials can likewise get a continuation picture of what's going on in each department. This is profoundly basic for developing organizations and organizations that need to scale.

Deciding b/w  CRM and ERP 

The business organizations who keenly look forward to expanding their development, they frequently wonder which system to implement first. It very well can be a troublesome choice since both CRM and ERP have remarkable focal points. To scale, organizations should definitely improve their sales and profit. And this, in turn, demands good CRM software for your business. 

Then again, ERP software drives the business with exact and precise information of all the business departments. Along with sales, ERP system brings precision to all other business activities with no disparity in operational characteristics. ERP helps with reducing the amount of capital invested in each business procedures, be it sales or any other. It generates insightful reports of each business undertakings, helping the organization in making smart business decisions and taking real-time precautions. 

Things being what they are, what you are looking for your business? Do you need CRM software alone or you need both? 

While CRM framework drives deals, ERP framework streamlines entire business tasks and lessen large expenses. Thus bringing together, a CRM and an ERP can augment business success and growth. 

By thoroughly and wisely understanding the core functionalities of each, you can choose which application works best for your organization. In any case, pause: you never again need to pick between two when you have Odoo. 

Get a complete CRM by implementing Odoo ERP at your business end. The open-source ERP application comes comprehensive in action and each module leaves its footprint for the most effective and efficient management of specific business functions. 

Odoo comes with 30 basic modules listing CRM, Accounts, Human Resource, Purchase, Sales, Ecommerce, Inventory, Manufacturing, Website, Project, Point of Sale, the list thus goes endless. Adding further the extensivity of each core module, there lists more than 20K plugins/apps meeting diversified and specific business functions. 

The large community of Odoo developers is constantly improving the Odoo ERP, deeply focusing on expanding the functionalities of each core module. If you take the journey of Odoo ERP, it is firmly affixed that Odoo is one of the fastest-growing open source  ERP with unbeatable feature listing. Each module is extensive, highly adaptable and scalar. 

To illustrate the power of Odoo, here we go with the 50+ benefits of Odoo CRM.

    1. Organize Customer Data

    2. Increase Your Sales

    3. Increase Overall Productivity

    4. Improve Marketing Strategy

    5. Real-time Status Updates of Sales Operations

    6. Reduce Client Close-Time

    7. Increase Client Close-Rates

    8. Lessen Client-handling Costs

    9. Increase Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention

    10. Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost

    11. Organized Prospect Handling

    12. Easy Internal File Sharing

    13. Organized Sales Calls -VOIP Integration

    14. Easy Elimination of Clients based on History

    15. Customer Feedback Recording

    16. Reduce Customer Churn Rates

    17. Elimination of Repeat Calls 

    18. Efficient Task Management

    19. Predictive Reporting For Smarter Business Decisions

    20. Sales Pipeline to strike balance b/w lead generation and lead management

    21. Integrates Business Emails

    22. Send SMS manually or on automation

    23. Automatic Payment Follow-ups

    24. Easy Client Segregation based on Profits

    25. Eliminated Data Redundancy and Duplication

    26. Internal Team Chat Option

    27. Setting Business Reminders

    28. Analyze Customer Preference and Purchasing Patterns

    29. Reduce Manual Labour and Manual Errors

    30. Sales Analytics For Business

    31. Easy Contract Renewals 

    32. Zero Data Leaks/Access Rights Issues

    33. Cross-selling/Up-selling

    34. Increases Margin of Profits

    35. Easy Assignation of Clients to Sales Team By Managers

    36. Easy Generation of Customer Quotations and Invoices 

    37. Electronic Document Signing

    38. The setting of Sales Targets

    39. Rewarding Sales Team for Outstanding Performances

    40. Mass Mailing Options

    41. SMS Marketing

    42. Social Media Marketing

    43. Email Marketing 

    44. Big Data/Accurate Sales Forecast

    45. Tight Security for Critical Business Data

    46. Improved Business Scalability

    47. Email Automation Features

    48. Efficient Tracking of Sales activities

    49. Automated Accounts 

    50. Seamless  Calculation of Sales Commissions

    51. Effective Time Management in Sales Operations

    52. Integration of Gamification

    53. Shortens Sales Cycles

    54. Improves Customer Grievance Redressal Rates

    55. Reduce Client Attrition Rates

    56. Working With Remote Teams Made Easier

    57. Appointments made organized and easier

    58. Complete Sales Automation

    59. Reducing Sales Training Expense

    60. Enhance Support Service Performances

    61. Easy Discovery of New Clients

    62. Populate Website and Becomes Lead Generation Tools

    63. Real-time overview of next  actions

    64. Increase Lead Conversions

    65. Increase Customer Retention

    66. Improve Customer Lifetime Value

    67. Keep your Inventory Intact

    68. Provides Performance Indicators

    69. Gain Competitive Advantage

    70. Integrates GPS to boost outreach

    71. Smart and Intuitive Dashboards