Choose What is Best for your Business: ERP or CRM or Both

Companies need to be agile and flexible to adapt to the latest emerging trends and use smart technologies to have a competitive edge over others. Businesses around the world are moving to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) enterprise solutions to increase process automation and enhance the customer experience to grow and scale the business.

ERP and CRM are the need of the hour and play a vital role in transforming your business. ERP acts as a one-stop solution to connect multiple business functions to streamline complex operations. CRM empowers you to provide personalised customer experience and enhance customer journeys to increase brand loyalty and make customers for life.

Now, let us explore ERP and CRM in detail, their features & benefits, a comparison of CRM vs ERP and what is best for your business or both and more.

What is CRM?

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a smart integrated software solution aimed at empowering the teams to have a 360-degree view of customers. The solution helps the business to track the case details and manage the customer interactions stored in a centralised cloud database. It enables the teams to access the required details and data insights in real-time when they need to increase service efficiency and customer experience.

Businesses back in the 1970s-1980s realised the need to change their marketing, sales, and service approach from ‘Product Empathy’ to ‘Customer Empathy’.

If we go back, CRM was initially designed for the sales team to automate the sales process which gave birth to Sales Force Automation. Companies moved to focused marketing that gave birth to modern business concepts like Channel Management and CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) using smart customer database statistics to develop a customised marketing campaign for more connect and impact.

In today’s times, CRM provides a comprehensive view of the prospective leads and existing customers’ data including email, buying history, contact details, social media posts, service requests and support tickets to provide an enhanced customer experience.

Features and Benefits of CRM

Let us discuss how CRM capabilities can make a difference to your business.

Identify Sales Opportunities in the Sales Funnel

Make use of CRM solutions to track customer data, analyse consumer behaviour based on data insights to identify sales opportunities and collaborate with cross-functional teams to close sales.

Monitor Sales and Smart Sales Forecasting using Real-Time Data

Empower your sales managers to monitor the team’s sales performance, perform a gap analysis to plan improvement areas and do smart sales forecasting using sales data insights to boost sales.

Intelligent Lead Qualification and Priority Setting to Close Sales

CRM helps you to set priorities and perform smart lead qualification based on the similar cases win ratio for maximum utilisation of your time and resources to close sales and meet business goals.

Task Automation to Increase Process Efficiency

Shift from manual and routine workflows to automatic and readymade features like customised sales quotes, customer feedback, and personalised email marketing to empower sales, marketing, and customer service to remove manual, obsolete and repetitive tasks to increase process efficiency.

What is ERP?

It is a one-stop software solution to help companies manage their complex business operations by connecting multiple business processes (marketing, sales, finance, operations, supply chain, manufacturing, human resource, service, and support together by facilitating a seamless flow of data across departments in real-time.

Early Warning Signs to Know, Your Business Needs ERP

If you are reading this, it means you are facing problems with your business growth or wondering if you should move to ERP now. Let us explore the major early warning signs that your company needs ERP.

Old Software Limiting Business Growth

If you are facing issues expanding your business due to the limitations of the old software. You know it is the right time to move to a smart ERP like Dynamics 365 ERP to grow your business across regions globally using the localisation features as per the local market.

Disparate Systems Not Compatible with Each Other

If you depend on multiple systems to manage a business and with the advent of technology, each system is going through changes based on emerging trends. If they are not compatible with one another (eg. sales software is not compatible with your marketing software) leading to a wastage of time and resources limiting your profit and increasing your operational costs.

Unable to Meet Customer Demand

If you are finding it tough to match the expectations of your customers due to a gap in your customer’s demand and service delivery due to the limited information available to your team. Move to Dynamics 365 ERP Solution now to empower your team with AI-powered data insights to take accurate decisions.

Features and Benefits of ERP

Optimise Operations to Boost Performance and Smart Decision Making

ERP changes the way you manage your business by revamping the business practices using AI to increase productivity. Make use of smart data insights to perform intelligent business forecasting and take more accurate business decisions to scale your business.

Manufacturing Process Automation for Maximum Operational Impact

ERP solutions like Dynamics 365 ERP automate business processes using cloud-based data and manufacturing automation feature to improve transparency and easy cross-functional collaboration to help your team take actions faster for maximum operational impact.

Flexible and Agile Business for Growth

Make use of an ERP like Dynamics 365 ERP that helps your business to adapt to emerging trends and local market demands. It helps you to readily take data-driven decisions to stay ahead and achieve exponential business growth.

Conclusion

We have you covered with the CRM, ERP and their benefits to check what is best for your business. Dynamics Square is the leading Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner with exposure to delivering 500+ projects successfully across Australia. Contact a Dynamics 365 Consultant now to help you choose between CRM vs ERP or both as per your business needs.